Hello, friends! So, my computer has passed beyond this vale of tears. I fully intend to get back to all of your wonderful reviews, but it's going to take some time. But don't worry, faithful reviewers! I haven't forgotten you! And I will try to stay regular on updates, but if I don't, you know why. The story will still get posted, it just may not be posted like clockwork.
We drove most of the way back to Forks in silence. Every time my dad opened his mouth to speak, he shut it again quickly. I'd never seen him so visibly torn up before; he was usually more the stoic type. But then again, he'd never lost his oldest friend before.
We parked in the driveway and Charlie carried my bag inside, then slumped on the couch with his hands over his eyes to block out the light from the overhead. I quickly set about making tea, because it seemed like the sort of thing you do in a situation like this. Then I brought out two mugs, placed one in front of Charlie on the coffee table and one in front of me, and waited.
My dad took a few sips of tea, even though it was still way too hot, and then wrapped his hands around the mug. He had to be burning himself on the hot ceramic, but he didn't say anything about it. Finally, after a few false starts, he began to talk.
"There've been all these attacks on the rez ever since you left. We thought they were animals at first, but they began to seem related…"
My eyes widened and I had to bite back a cry of alarm. Attacks? On the rez? "What happened next?" I asked fearfully, since Charlie seemed in no hurry to continue.
"Well, at first it was a couple of kids on the rez. I didn't know 'em personally, one of 'em wasn't even from here, she was visiting from Makah. Then her niece turned up dead, a real little thing, just a toddler. Then Jared Cameron and Sam Uley turned up dead—I don't know if you remember Sam, he was Leah Clearwater's boyfriend—and that was when we started thinkin' maybe these weren't random animal killings, because the Makah girls were both related to the Clearwaters, and Jared and Sam and Leah have always been thick as thieves. And then, last night, Billy was attacked by the...whatever it was. Tore out his throat, didn't leave barely anything for the buzzards…"
"Oh my god," I whispered, wrapping my arm around him. "I'm so sorry, Dad… Is...how's Jake?"
"Dunno," he said hollowly. "nobody's seen him since before Billy was attacked. We're worried he's...he might be…"
"He's alive," I said automatically, not because I had any reason to think he might be but because I felt I would know if Jacob Black were killed. The whole world would know. The sun would go out. "He's...he'll turn up, Dad. He will. Did you ever find the, um...thing that did this?"
"This afternoon my deputies found a grizzly, shot dead just inside the border. It had some things in its stomach…"
"I understand," I cut in quickly. "You don't have to go into detail."
"But it can't have been random," said Charlie, taking another gulp of tea. "I just keep goin' over it and over it, and it can't have been random. It's too interconnected. Out of six dead, four can be traced directly back to Harry and Billy. Jake's missin'. There is something going on, something is real fucked up over there…"
"But it's over now," I said. "Isn't it over now?" Then, because it occurred to me I shouldn't let my dad know how much I already knew about the situation, I added feebly, "I mean, the bear that did it's dead, right? Doesn't that mean it's over?"
"I doubt it," said Charlie. "I think the bear's incidental. Maybe it just found some free eatin' in the forest. Maybe someone was siccin' it on people. I don't think this is over yet, Bells, and I don't want you setting foot on that rez until I know what happened, you hear me?"
"But—" I protested, panic rising as I thought of what that meant. "What about Jake, Dad? When he turns up, I have to go see him…" He'll turn up, my brain repeated in anxious circles. He'll turn up. Jake'll turn up. "He'll need me," I finished, gulping back a sob as I thought of what he must be going through. Wherever he was.
"I don't know," said Charlie. "I think this might be a drug thing, Bells. He could be in—"
"Jake is not involved in drugs, Dad," I said with furious certainty. "Billy wasn't. How can you say that? How can you even think it?"
"Bella," said Charlie, putting his mug down and standing up. "I love that kid almost as much as if he were my own kin. Lord knows Billy was more'n a brother to me. You know I don't say these things lightly. But I know what it looks like, and I know what goes on. My first priority is to keep everyone in Forks safe. If it's drugs, we'll get him the help he needs, and we'll keep him alive, and we'll be there for him. I'm not gonna throw him to the wolves, but if it is drugs, I'm not gonna turn a blind eye, either. No one else dies, not here." His voice cracked on the last word and I realized how exhausted he looked.
"Come on, Dad," I said, standing up too. "You should go to bed. It's already eleven. Is there...anything I can do?" Other than attract vicious serial murderers to make a buffet of our closest friends and neighbors...
"Just...stay safe, will ya, Bells?" he said. "I'm gonna be paranoid and insist that you start checkin' in with me. It didn't matter as much with you on the other side of the country, but I need you to at least shoot me a text or somethin' every couple hours, just so I know you're not...so I know you're safe. Till we get this sorted out, that's all. And I don't want you goin' anywhere near the rez. You stay at home or in town at all times. I don't suppose you feel like going back to Jacksonville for a spell, till it blows over…" He tried to make it sound like a joke, but we both knew there was nothing to joke about.
"Don't worry about me," I said. "I'll either be here or at the Cullens' place. School starts up in a couple days. You'll always know where to find me, okay? And Jake'll turn up, and it'll...it'll be okay. Eventually."
"Sure," said Charlie. He locked the front door and a whole slew of shiny new deadbolts, and trudged wearily to bed.
After rinsing out our tea mugs, I went up to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and hair. I washed my face, slowly, deliberately. I was putting off what I knew would come next. And sure enough, as I pushed open the door to my bedroom, Edward was waiting for me.
"You knew about this," I said flatly, before he could say a word. Edward shrank in on himself.
"I'm sorry, Bella," he said. "I didn't realize how close your dad and Billy were—"
"Yes, you did," I said, anger welling up. It was almost a relief, to be angry instead of sad and terrified. "You kept this from me, and you knew, you knew how I would feel about it. You've seen his car in our driveway like a million times by now. You know no one else ever comes to visit my dad, they're practically brothers! Jake's my friend, Edward! I've known him forever, and you know it!"
Edward looked shocked at my outburst and put a finger to his lips, but I wasn't worried about my dad. A bottle of Nyquil had been sitting out on the bathroom counter, and he hadn't rinsed the cap. He wouldn't wake up until he had to. And I didn't blame him.
"I want you," I said sternly, "to tell me everything. I mean it. From the start. Don't even think about lying to me, Edward. Not now. Not after everything."
"Very well," he said quietly, sitting down on the edge of my bed. I considered sitting beside him—I wanted nothing more, in fact—but I knew if I did that I'd be a goner. He'd kept something big from me, something he knew would affect my family, and I needed to focus on that and not his smell or the smoothness of his skin. Instead, I sat in the ancient rocking chair my dad had kept up here since I was little enough to need to be rocked to sleep. It had been my Nona Swan's chair—the daughter of the full-Quileute woman whose blood linked me to Jake and Billy.
"Now," I said. "Talk."
"It...it wasn't going well," he said weakly. "I know with a psychic and a dozen vampires, catching James should have been quick and easy, but… Well, for one thing, Victoria didn't sit this one out like we hoped she would."
"Victoria," I echoed. "The one who's good at escaping, right?"
"That's right," he said. "It should have been easy, but, remember, Victoria eluded The Volturi. No one escapes the Volturi. Their tracker's the best in the world, the greatest tracker who's ever lived. And he's just one of many highly-skilled guards who make up Aro's army, and she evaded them all. She's a powerful creature, and I regret to say we underestimated her at first. It seems that Victoria's escape act operates almost solely on moment-to-moment instinct, rather than pre-determined choice, so Alice couldn't get a bead on her. But even that wouldn't have been a problem, if it weren't for the Quileutes."
I closed my eyes tightly. This was it. Billy, and Leah's boyfriend—how had they died?
"We formed a treaty with the tribal leaders in the Thirties," he said. "If we stay far away from their territory, and we don't turn, drain or otherwise harm any humans, they let us stay here without revealing our secret and thereby forcing us to move on. It's worked so far."
"Why even bother?" I asked. "It can't be the cloud cover. Why didn't you just leave when you saw you weren't welcome?" It came out harsher than I intended.
"Um…" Edward began indecisively. "Well, the first time we were here, we didn't know anything about them, and we had to convince them we weren't the bad guys. But we still left soon after, because it didn't seem right to just park on their doorstep like that. But then some...some things happened when we were living in Buffalo in the Nineties, and we wanted to live somewhere we felt safe. Somewhere familiar. And we'd never even gotten to live in the house Esme built here. It seemed perfect, coming back. We were happy here. My sister—" He cut off abruptly, and I wondered, once again, what he wasn't telling me. But this time I didn't pry. It was something to do with Rosalie, I was sure. After our heart-to-heart at the baseball game, I knew it must have been serious; she didn't seem the impulsive type. I let it go.
"Well," he went on, "James and Victoria apparently figured out that we couldn't go onto the reservation, and they set up camp there. Of course the first thing we did was inform the elders, and we begged them to revoke the treaty for a little while, so we could surround James and Victoria and put an end to this, but they didn't believe we weren't secretly working with the nomads. They thought we'd broken the treaty, and they split their energy between defending themselves against James and Victoria and fending off my family. James and Victoria made a couple of killings, and at that point my family was ready to just ignore the treaty and go after them anyway. But the Quileute leaders finally determined we were working with them and not against them, so they let our people onto the reservation voluntarily. The Denalis and Laurent set up a patrol just outside of the reservation, in case James and Victoria made a run for t."
"So," I said slowly, trying to form a picture in my head, something to connect me to these people who had died so needlessly. "How many were dead, at this point?"
"Three," he said. "Catherine Fellows, and Emily and Claire Young. My family worked as fast as they could. I'm told Emmett in particular was extraordinarily resourceful. He and the others finally found James. It...wasn't pretty, I'm told."
"And Victoria?" I asked. "Is she, um...taken care of, too?"
"Victoria escaped," said Edward heavily. "We would have gone after her, but Carlisle advised against it. Alice can see any future that may be a result of Victoria's decisions, but if we try to chase her down we will almost certainly never catch her. As long as Victoria doesn't decide to return, we thought it would be best to remain together, here at home."
"How did the other two die?" I asked. "Leah's boyfriend. And...Billy."
"They were in the line of fire," said Edward tersely.
"Poor Leah," I said hollowly. I remembered her. I hadn't seen her since she was a teenager, though she must in her twenties by now. She was acerbic and cynical, and I'd usually shied away from her in social gatherings, but once as a little thing I'd scraped my leg up running around in the woods during a cookout. She'd been the one to carry me back to the house, pour hydrogen peroxide down my leg and deftly bandage it up. At the time, all I'd thought of was the pain; I'd been angry at her for dumping that smelly fizzy stuff on me and making my scrape hurt worse. And now...her boyfriend, her uncle and two cousins dead, one cousin missing.
"This is all my fault," I breathed, struggling to inhale. Edward tried to come to me, but I held up a hand to stop him. I should suffer; I could grieve all my life and I would never hurt as badly as Jake and Leah must right now. I'd never even considered that my involvement with the Cullens could hurt anyone but me. And now Jake was missing, and Billy was dead—
"How much of this did you know?" I asked. "That whole time we were on the island—did you know all of it?"
"Just bits and pieces," said Edward. "I knew the Quileutes were working against us, and then I found out when they started working with us, but I didn't get the full story until just now. I called Alice on my way over here."
"I can't believe you kept something this big from me," I moaned. "It must be a lot easier for you to keep secrets from me than it is for me—"
"It wasn't like that," pleaded Edward. "I wasn't trying to, to trick you or anything, but you had so much on your plate already, and I—"
"Oh, so I can't deal with the truth because I'm what, a girl? A human? What the hell is this, Edward?"
"Bella, you know I don't think that way! Besides, what difference does it make if you found out two weeks ago or now? What could you possibly have done about it other than worry?"
"I would have called Jake!" I exploded. I clapped my hand over my mouth, but there was no sound from Charlie's room. "I would have called and explained to him so that he didn't have to find out by having everyone around him just start dropping like flies! How traumatic do you think that must have been, Edward? No wonder he ran away!" Jake'll turn up, Jake'll turn up…
"Would knowing really have made a difference?" argued Edward. "Nothing would have changed. Billy knew about it, and he stayed put. He still would have been killed, and if he didn't see fit to tell Jake—"
"The problem with you, Edward," I said coldly, "is that you don't think about the feelings of us little people." I closed my eyes so the hurt look on his face couldn't derail me. "Maybe it wouldn't have made any material difference, maybe everything would have turned out exactly the same, but at least Jake would have known what was going on, he would have known he has one more person in his corner, he's not the only one scared. That's what friends do for each other. We could have at least talked about it."
"I'm sorry, Bella," said Edward mournfully. "I didn't think you would take it so hard."
I rolled my eyes. "That's why you need to tell me these things," I said. "Your judgment obviously can't be trusted when it comes to recognizing stuff I'm gonna care about." Even I knew this was a low blow, and also inaccurate. This was the first time since we'd been together that Edward had ever been less-than-forthcoming with me, and a little part of me acknowledged that it was an easy mistake to make. Whatever the outcome, his intentions at least had been kind. But for some reason these thoughts only made me angrier. My emotions felt totally out of whack and beyond my control. I was consumed by an instinct to protect Jake, to see him again and comfort him, which was so strong it was a little frightening. I felt like I was hanging on to my self-control for dear life, and my grip was slipping.
"I want you to go, please," I said, standing up. Edward looked at me, stricken, and my heart twisted. "Now," I added. Wordlessly he left by the window. I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through the Contacts to Jake's home phone number. He didn't have a cell phone, and I doubted he would have returned to his empty, dark house. But I called anyway. Billy's voice was still on the answering machine.
By the time he was done telling me, "You know what to do at the beep," I was crying too hard to leave a message.
I didn't fall asleep until well past three in the morning, and I slept so uneasily that I woke at seven, feeling sick to my stomach. I barely made it to the bathroom before I was heaving over the toilet, not that there was anything in my stomach to come out. Even so, I dry-heaved silently for several minutes before I heard a tentative knock on the bathroom door.
"Bells?" came my dad's hoarse voice. "You okay, kiddo? You been in there a while and I have to get ready for work..."
"Yeah, Dad," I rasped, flushing what little bile had emerged and opening the door.
"Want breakfast before I leave for work? I already started oatmeal, but I can double the batch…"
"Will you put raisins in before the milk heats up?"
"Sure thing," said Charlie. He went off to the kitchen, already dressed and ready for the day. I, on the other hand, felt pretty much like reheated crap. I wrapped myself in my coziest robe—a chenille-lined silky thing that Alice had made me for my birthday. Even in summer, Forks didn't really warm up till late afternoon, and not by much. Besides, I needed to feel something silky and comforting next to my skin. I wasn't used to sleeping without Edward.
I felt much better after eating breakfast, but as soon as Charlie left and I tried to lie down again, I felt every bite of oatmeal making the return journey up my esophagus. By the time I was done hurling all of it out, I was so shaky and tired that I just rinsed my mouth out with water and passed out.
I told you I don't like the James storyline. Done and done!
Bella and Edward aren't very good at fighting yet. They need more practice. I tend to become suspicious of love stories that rely too heavily on But we never ever fight! as a gauge of how much two people love each other or how successful their relationship is. If you live with someone long enough, you will definitely fight. The real gauge of your strength as a couple is the way you fight. Do the values and wishes of both partners receive equal consideration? Do you fight efficiently, focusing chiefly on the disagreement at hand? Do you fight with your emotions or your head? There are a lot of ways to fight constructively, of course, but the circular fighting Bella and Edward did in the book doesn't strike me as symptomatic of a strong, egalitarian relationship. Mostly it was Edward dictating Bella's life/schedule/friends, and her digging her heels in briefly before accepting his supremacy and following his wishes. He would occasionally give an inch (permitting her to continue being friends with Jake on a limited basis, their asinine "deal" concerning marriage/sex/vampirism/college) which Bella invariably and wrongly took as a sign of victory. She rarely stuck to her guns, and many things that should have been huge red flags she never objected to at all. For example, she never fought with him about the fact that he was a pervy, eavesdropping, serial murdering stalker. In a good relationship, I would have expected that to come up.
In the books, their arguments go something like this:
In New Moon, Bella wants to be with Edward in spite of the danger, but he doesn't, so they don't.
In Eclipse, Bella wants to be friends with Jake, but Edward will only allow it if he can make up a daily schedule for her, then drop her off and pick her up at the rez like she's a pre-schooler going to a playdate.
Bella doesn't want to get married, but Edward does, so they do.
Bella wants to be transformed into a vampire ASAP, but Edward disagrees with her reasoning, values and wishes for her own life and body, so it doesn't happen until she has almost died several times from "humanness", and even then only as a last resort.
And so on, and so on. I'm largely talking about this because the final three books of the series are full of Bella and Edward disagreeing with each other (or sniping, or nagging, or carping, choose your verb), and I plan to take full advantage of that. Only I plan to do it in a way that doesn't make me want to put my face through a wall. I may even go really crazy and not end every argument with "And it turned out Edward was right as usual, because his genitals are on the outside".