Hi Readers! Hope you enjoy this Edward/Bella story. I'm going for a gothic romance/horror sort of vibe.
Premise: Bella is now a 38-year-old woman who has lived a relatively normal life, except for a terribly tragedy that happened when she was in college. Her mom visited her in Forks and was killed in a car crash which also horribly injured her dad.
Having spent most of her adult life caring for her now dead father, Bella is isolated, depressed, and barely going through the motions of living. One day she receives a book which seems to trigger dreams. The dreams are of her high school life, only this time there's a man named Edward there.
What's the truth about the book she received? What will Bella decide to do when she finally wakes up?
A/N: In case the premise of this story is hurtful for anyone, please note that there is nothing wrong with working at a grocery store, living in a small town, being single, etc. The point is Bella is unhappy and feels her life did not turn out the way she wanted. Since the story is from Bella's perspective, she is going to be reflecting very negatively, especially at the beginning.
A/N Note 2: I'm raising Edward's eternal age to 18 in this story, just to avoid any potential problems with his being technically 17.
The Book
The first year or two she had been convinced Charlie would recover. He would recover and she would finish college and then work on her masters.
She'd move away for a few years once he was better, but then maybe she'd move back. She loved her father. They'd gotten so close during her high school years. He'd been good to her, she wouldn't mind being close to him. She had wanted to be a writer and she could do that from anywhere.
Perhaps, she, and the husband she'd inevitably meet in grad school, they would move back here, and raise their kids close. They could grow up seeing grandpa Charlie, and she'd take them around to all of her old haunts; La Push, Forks High School, and the ancient forest.
It would be a nice life, and it was going to happen, in just a year or two, when her father got better.
When year three came around it was harder to hope for that life, and by the fifth anniversary of the accident, she no longer felt anything. The days and weeks and years went by without her noticing. She no longer marked time, she simply treaded water.
And then Charlie had died, and she had looked in the mirror and realized she was old. Had looked on social media and around her, and seen people her age with children, not just babies, but older children, big families, real jobs.
Charlie' friends were getting older, not the vibrant people they'd been as she remembered them as a college student. Friends who brought food and offered to watch him. Friends who tried to get her out of the house every so often. Friends who called and sent cards and visited.
Most of those friends were now seniors. Some of those friends were dead. In the world outside of her house, 15 years was a long time.
It was 17 now.
Time had moved. It had changed.
Without her noticing, it had changed.
Worse, without her noticing, she had changed.
People no longer treated her as they had. She was no longer the promising, pretty student. She no longer had requests from people her own age to go to movies or talk about boys. Graduate schools and scholarships were not trying to recruit her. Teachers did not ask her what she wanted to do with her life, since she could do anything. Charlie's friends did not comment on what a beautiful daughter he had.
In her mind the last 17 years had barely happened, she was still 21.
She had been 21 for 17 years.
She sighed, looking in the mirror, seeing the gray around her temple and the too lean face, the beginnings of wrinkles. Some women were still beautiful at almost 40, but she knew that she was not. She had not aged well.
She looked in the mirror again.
She was not 21.
And there was nothing for it but to pick up her worn purse, put her ugly tennis shoes on, and walk to work.
She came in just as Cheryl was closing up. She nodded at her, and moved to the back without a single word.
The owners of the grocery store had made it clear they didn't care what hours she worked or when as long as she got the job done. Dave and Cheryl had been good to her. They had come in themselves, or hired a high school boy to finish the job when she couldn't work much or at all, because of her dad. The job had always been waiting for her when he was better.
Dave and Cheryl claimed she was the best stocker that they had ever had. That they were lucky to have her. Bella knew that was likely true. Promising young people did not stay in Forks often, and if they did they did not work for just above minimum wage at the grocery store. Bella was prompt and efficient, never complained or slacked off. She had redone the entire organizational system her first year, and had kept improving it. After 17 years it was perfectly calibrated, and she could do the job without thinking of anything.
That was good, because there had been many months and years when she could barely think at all.
Bella had started the job for the money, and to get out of the house. To make it so her entire life did not revolve around her father. Sometimes he could be left alone all day, other times she had to hire one of the local teenagers, or older people to sit with him. Some of the seniors had done it for free, and there was almost always a casserole in their fridge from the neighbors when Charlie had been alive.
She knew that she was lucky to have them. She had always been polite and smiled at the neighbors and well-wishers. She knew they deserved gratitude.
But she was not grateful.
Charlie was gone now.
Bella was no longer woken up in the middle of the night to help her father to the bathroom. She no longer needed to keep an ear open when watching TV, or reading a book, or making dinner. She no longer sat by his bedside for hours, just in case he needed her.
She had dreamed of freedom once, of living her own life. Of going back to college, and then grad school. Of living somewhere else, getting married, pursuing her dreams.
Bella was free now. But it meant nothing.
She could start a new life now, but she did not want to.
She could leave, but there was nothing in the world for her but this.
She had tried once. About a year after Charlie's death, she had taken a vacation to the beach, the one she had visited with her mom so many times.
Bella had been so lonely she had driven home at night, all 14 hours in one go, after just two days there.
Somehow she had been hoping to see Renee there. At the least she was hoping to remember her. Instead everything was different. There were new faces, new buildings, even the scenery seemed different.
Her mother was dead and gone, her life seemingly evaporated like smoke. Traveler that she had been, no neighbors or friends called Bella to reminisce. Her second husband had remarried long ago. It seemed no one remembered her except for Bella.
But Bella remembered.
And so Bella would stay in the house, the one place there were memories.
Someday she would die in the house she knew, surrounded by Charlie's furniture and dated wallpaper, the framed pictures of herself growing up, the afghan her mother had knitted him during their brief marriage, the quilt she had sewn Bella for high school graduation.
There her family was beside her, even though they were ghosts. They would never speak new words, have new experiences, but the whispers in the walls and the memories in every corner were enough.
In Forks Bella was Charlie's daughter, who had taken care of him for so long. She was the stocker at Fred and Cheryl's, the one who had been with them so long. She was the woman who had lost her mother in that terrible wreck, the one they still talked about.
In any other town, she would be no one.
In any other house she would simply be alone.
She would die in that house, not soon, but one day. She was practically a phantom haunting it now.
All I need is a white nightgown and I'll be like those English stories of ghosts haunting their old manor houses. I'm sure pale enough to be the ghost of a Victorian lady.
Bella's English classes had done her no practical good, but at least she knew what she was.
A poor, still living, American ghost.
When Bella got back home from work, there was a package with the other mail on her front porch. It was in a brown envelope, like Amazon often used, but there was no branding on it.
She opened it as a matter of course, and found that it was a book.
I didn't order this. Who would send me a book?
The book looked perfectly ordinary. She did not recognize the publisher. The same name was in the official looking return address. It was addressed to her, and had been sent priority mail.
Bella thought to herself and continued to look in the envelope, seeing no notes or further details.
Maybe it's a sample copy?
Bella had been on e-mail and mailings lists for graduate programs, study groups, and anything related to writing back in college. She could have signed up to be a reviewer and forgotten about it. It had been a long, long time ago.
Maybe it took them that long to finish the book?
It was possible. Bella shrugged finally, and turned to her bills.
At one point in her life a new book arriving at her door would have been exciting. Perhaps it would become a new favorite and expand her view of the world. Like Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights had. Perhaps it would be the start of a career as a reviewer, and then an editor. The possibilities would have seemed, to college Bella, to be endless.
Conscientious, student Bella, would have felt it her duty to track down who had sent it. Just in case they had sent it to the wrong person, or needed a review at a certain time.
Adult Bella did not care.
It was just a book.