Moonlight in Forks
Disclaimer: all characters and copyright belong to SM.
Hypothesis
Charlie looked dubiously down at his plate. Renee had been experimenting with food again, something she had done in the early days of their marriage, with mainly unsuccessful results. She wasn't skilled like their daughter was in the kitchen. Bella was a self-taught cook, and could whip up a tasty meal with even the most frugal of ingredients. Renee not so much.
"What is it?" He asked suspiciously as he looked down at the yellow glob congealing on the plate.
"Lemon Curd." Renee announced proudly. "Its an old English recipe."
"English, huh?" Charlie poked at the yellowy mass gingerly with his fork. "What is in it exactly?"
Renee slid into the seat opposite him, trying not to laugh at his dour expression. With Bella so preoccupied with Jacob, it had taken a lot of persuasion on her part to get Charlie to be her guinea pig.
"I made it the traditional English way - with lots of fruit, eggs, egg yolks and butter. Don't worry I didn't add any thickeners like many others do."
"Right." Charlie prodded the jelly like mass again. He carefully balanced some on the end of his fork, grimacing as he shoved it into his mouth quickly and began to chew.
Renee watched him like a hawk, observing his every reaction. She saw his expression change from one of reluctance, before slowly morphing into one of pleasure as the zesty taste kicked in. "Well?" She demanded when he finally swallowed.
"You know this isn't half bad." Charlie conceded as he shoveled more of the congealed mass into his mouth.
"So, you like it?"
"Its not up to Bells' standards…but, yes, its edible."
"Edible? I suppose that's high praise coming from you." Renee whipped his plate away before he had finished.
"Hey!" Charlie protested.
"I'm saving the rest for Bella." Renee said haughtily as she covered the plate with some foil.
Charlie lapsed into silence. When Renee had first come to stay, he thought he would have difficulty being around her so much. It had turned out to be the opposite. They had fallen into an easy routine, much like the early days of their marriage, before everything went south. He imagined, if Renee had never left, if she hadn't found it so depressing to live in a small town under a rainy climate, it might have always been like this. Easy. Companionable. With a sprinkling of shared banter to keep things lively.
It had been weeks since Bella had her cast removed and the temporary job that Renee had taken in the local kindergarten was coming to an end. Soon there would be no reason for her to stay. Charlie didn't want to bring the subject up, afraid to jinx things, anxious that she might see this as his excuse to send her on her way back to Florida and the young husband she no longer seemed to mention.
Unfortunately, as much as he was enjoying his ex-wife's company again after all these years, Charlie knew he couldn't put it off any longer. He needed answers. He needed to prepare himself for the moment she left again and took the sunshine with her.
"Ren, we should talk."
Renee immediately tensed, knowing exactly what his serious tone meant. She kept her back to him so he couldn't see her anxious expression. "About?"
"About how much longer you are intending to stay."
"I can give you more money for my keep if that's a problem." Renee said quickly.
"Its not about the money, Ren." Charlie was quite insulted that she had jumped to that conclusion. He had refused to take any money from her in the beginning as he assumed she was only staying for a couple of weeks until Bella was back on her feet again. Then, as time went on and she found the temporary job, he had agreed to take a small amount from her to go toward groceries and stuff like that.
"You feel like I'm in the way. Is that it?"
"No."
"Just give me a couple more weeks and I'll find somewhere to stay – "
"So, you are intending on staying around?" Charlie cut in. "I mean long term?" He was frustrated that he couldn't see her face as she still had her back to him.
Renee gripped the counter, taking his frustrated tone to mean something else entirely. "I never meant to outstay my welcome. I thought we were getting along okay. I forgot you're used to the bachelor life."
"I never asked for the bachelor life." Charlie couldn't hide the bitterness in his tone as old memories of the day she left came back to haunt him. "You made that decision for me when you took off with our daughter. I thought you hated Forks."
Renee winced as if he had stabbed her. She bowed her head, eyes closing in anguish. "Are we really going to rehash the past, Charlie? I am not the same person I was back then."
"But what person are you now, Renee?" Charlie just couldn't leave it alone. Now he had started the difficult conversation, he wanted answers. Not just for himself, but Bella too.
Renee opened her eyes again, slowly turning around to face Charlie. She expected to see anger, but instead all she saw was a deep yearning to understand in his dark brown eyes. Eyes that were so much like Bella's.
"You may have difficulty believing it, but I like to think I've matured a little bit since we last shared the same living space."
As she spoke, Renee began dwelling on her own childhood. Her parents divorced when she was still a child, and she never had much contact with her father. Her mother, Marie, was a difficult and bitter woman, but also hardworking and loyal. Renée had a very different personality: fun-loving, creative, and artistic, but flighty and inconsistent. She did not do well in school, even though she tested well. During her teenage years she was unable to hold onto a job for long, though she always interviewed very well.
The first year after high school, Renée, who could no longer take living with her pessimistic mother, had moved in with a friend who had space available in her small apartment, working several temporary jobs to pay for it. The next summer, one of her girlfriends decided to take a month off and travel the length of the Pacific coast, camping along the way. This was exactly the kind of adventure that she loved. She went on the trip with a few other girls, having no idea where she would live when she got back, if her roommate rented the space to someone else.
It was on First Beach, Renée met Charlie Swan. She was instantly attracted to him because of his difference from her ex-boyfriends: serious and responsible, yet funny and kind. They spent a few days together before she departed, but not before promising Charlie that she would visit on her way back. Renée missed Charlie for the rest of the trip, and when she returned to Forks, she was easily convinced to stay for a little while longer.
Renée loved being in love, and she loved feeling like she was living an adventure. When Charlie proposed, getting married sounded like the perfect cap to the whirlwind romance. They were married by a justice of the peace, with only Charlie's parents and three best friends in attendance. Renée sent her mother a picture of the wedding, but she didn't respond.
At first, Renée enjoyed the novelty of being married. Charlie was easier to live with than her mother, and his passionate adoration of her was quite pleasant. She had a great deal of fun decorating their little house and loved his quiet and kind parents. While living in Forks, she worked as a waitress, where she loved meeting new people.
Renée was excited when she found out that she was pregnant, and learned to knit and decorate the nursery. She wrote to her mother again, and this time Marie sent a gift: her own mother's handmade quilt. Renée was touched. However, after a few months, everything started to get stale. The constant covering of clouds and rain depressed her, and Charlie's busy time at work and caring for his parents left her unhappy and trapped. Though she loved Charlie, there was no adventure left in their now staid relationship.
After Bella was born, she became more responsible in her ways around the house. Her unhappy time did not brighten up, though. She hated the thought of letting Bella grow up in the gloomy town and begged Charlie to leave with her, though she knew that was not a kind thing to ask. Finally, she decided to leave on her own and get her life in order, for Bella's sake. She realized that she had made some life-altering decisions without much thought, and she wanted to start over and proceed more carefully.
Renee had never really forgiven herself on how this selfish and abrupt decision had affected Charlie. He had been devastated, but had not tried to stop her, or keep her trapped like some men would have done. He had always supported her from afar, maintaining a cordial relationship for Bella's sake.
Even after leaving him Renee had continued to live a chaotic life, getting herself entangled in some pretty heavy situations. As Bella grew, she began to assume many of the adult responsibilities in the home, simply because she was better suited to them than Renée was. When she took over the bookkeeping at age 10, their lives became much easier.
Making her daughter assume such adult responsibilities at such a young age just added to the tally of Renee's regrets. As she looked at Charlie now, she was filled with self-loathing. She had married a much younger man in order to recapture a youth that was long past. The early days of her marriage to Phil had been bliss, but once Bella left to go and live with Charlie, without her as a buffer, the age gap between them became insurmountable.
So, here she was, in her forties, squatting in the home of her ex-husband, trying to make sense of her life, trying to find the words to apologize for all the pain she had caused him.
In the end she didn't need to. One look into his warm brown eyes showed that he had already forgiven her long ago. Renee felt Charlie's hands close over her own in understanding.
"Its okay, Ren." He said softly. "You can stay as long as you want. I've enjoyed having you here. And Bella has too."
Renee felt a lone tear dribble out of the corner of one eye. She didn't wipe it away as she was still holding fast to Charlie's hands. "You're a good man, Charlie Swan." She said with a grateful smile.
"When you put it like that…." Jacob's voice tailed off as he pondered Bella's question.
Bella saw his brow pucker which meant he was thinking hard. She shifted against him, so she was perched in his lap, then reached up to smooth away the fine lines. "Maybe I'm just overthinking things." She admitted.
"No, you're right, honey. Ever since the pack split things have been changing. It seems to have had a knock-on effect on all the imprinted couples-although Sam and Emily were already having issues before it happened."
Jacob felt a stab of guilt, wondering if the pressure of the sudden change in leadership had escalated the demise of Sam and Emily's relationship, or whether it would have happened at all if he hadn't initiated the changes in the pack dynamic by taking up his birthright.
"And don't you think its strange that all the ones who chose to follow you were not imprinted?" Bella added as an afterthought. "And all the ones that stayed with Sam were?"
"I never considered that before."
Jacob deliberated for a few more minutes in silence. Turning over in his mind the old legends that had been ingrained in his memory by Billy practically since birth, he sifted through each one, finding no answers in the old stories. None of the old packs had ever been as large as this one-consisting of maybe three or four wolves at the most.
"Is it worth consulting the elders?" Bella asked.
"That's one option." Jacob agreed. "But I don't think they would have any better theories than we could come up with ourselves. As far as I'm aware breaking an imprint is unheard of."
"Yes." Bella murmured. She felt a faint stirring of an idea in the back of her mind as she listened to Jacob work through the facts.
"We know very little about imprinting as a whole." Jacob continued thoughtfully. "Even the elders acknowledge there have been very few imprinting's. We know of only of a handful: Taha Aki and his third wife, Sam and Emily, Jared and Kim, Paul and Rachel, Quil and Claire. That's it." He began to play with the ends of Bella's hair absently as he spoke, twirling the soft strands around his fingers. "In the old stories the belief was that it was a relatively new and rather uncommon process. Not everyone did it. And quite frankly, until Quil and Claire, no one had ever imprinted on someone so young before- that was what made it so controversial, even among our community."
"So, really, what you're saying is, until this pack, the imprinting phenomenon had been considered so rare, that when it happened to so many more this time, it was seen as an anomaly?" Bella questioned.
"Yes." Jacob nodded. Something in her voice made him scrutinize her carefully. He knew her well enough to know that she had come up with her own theory. Her chocolate brown eyes were overbright, her pale cheeks slightly flushed with excitement. She was so beautiful; it took his breath away. "Hit me with it, honey." He said huskily to cover up his exposed feelings. "What are you thinking?"
Bella tapped her chin (just another adorable trait in Jacob's eyes) as she slowly divulged what was on her mind. "The one common denominator that links it all together is you, Jacob."
"What do you mean?"
"Put it this way." Bella explained. "In the original La Push pack, Ephraim Black was the Alpha. As the great-grandson of Ephraim Black, it was your birthright to lead this generation's wolf pack and become its alpha. At the time you first phased you didn't have any interest in that responsibility, though, so passed the title of Alpha over to Sam Uley. Sam had already settled into the role since he was the first to phase. I think that was the point where everyone's fates shifted and where destiny tried to correct the wrong. It had never happened before, an assumed Alpha passing on the responsibility to another who wasn't born to lead. Sam was never meant to take charge, it wasn't in his genes, as a consequence of this, everything changed."
Jacob stared at Bella in wonder as he listened to her analysis.
"If we are to believe as some of the elders do, that imprinting is to make the wolves stronger, than maybe so many of this generations pack imprinting was to try and correct that mistake somehow. Maybe the imprints happened because it was the only way to make sure the pack remained cohesive enough to work under Sam's leadership. I assume each imprint offered the said wolf something in return. I don't know. I'm hypothesizing here. And now you have taken up your natural birthright, everything is in flux again, the imprints that developed in order to tape over the cracks are not working anymore now that there is the potential for all the wolves to be united again under their rightful leader. They are stronger now without the imprints. And as you also disapprove of imprinting as a concept, then maybe it is your will, now that you have accepted your birthright, that has escalated them into breaking down as they now only make the pack weaker."
A/N-thanks for reading!