I'm having a hard time getting all the rusties out. Nothing I put on paper is making me happy. So I'm trying this out.
His smile is too rich for me. Too perfect. Too bright. I don't like it. But Mother and Father do. They greet him like long lost friends would. I stare. That's all I can do. My hands are bound still and no one seems to care.
Mother pulls on my arm, and it isn't like I can't refuse her summon. "This is our Bella."
Father grunts again. He stands to the side as if afraid to touch me. "Is everything handled?"
Too-rich-too-perfect-too-bright nods his head. "Yes. We received the paperwork and the first payment yesterday."
"Good."
Mother starts sobbing again. Emmett would comfort her. He is that sort of boy. Kind and empathetic. I am cold and unfeeling. They called me Brrr Bella. But never Emmett. He knew the real me. The one deep inside. That hid from everyone else.
"Please save our child."
"We'll do our best, Mrs. Swan."
I'm led away from my parents, Mother clutching at my clothes one last time as if she doesn't want to let me go. Father forces her to. He doesn't even say goodbye. I thought it would hurt, watching them drive away, back to a home I don't know if I'll ever see again, but everything feels numb, and even the wind whipping my hair around my face, biting at my skin, can't make me feel.
That's when I see him for the first time, beyond lifeless brown strands. He's sweeping the grounds. The leaves kicking up and swirling in the gusts from the ocean. He's not cleaning anything, but he doesn't seem to mind, whisking that broom back and forth carelessly.
His eyes are so green against all the gray as he watches me carefully with a sort of clarity I didn't expect in a place like this. It's different. The judgment he casts on me. Almost like the blues of my brothers. And for one brief moment, that numb turns to hope that maybe this green-eyed man knows too.