Thanks to everyone!
Friendly reminder this takes place in the 1940s. That's all I can say for now! :)
"Thank you…" Isabella trails off, searching for a name for the woman who helped her.
A knock at the door signals the end of their time together. The woman smiles and lets the corner of her robe slip off her shoulder. "Rosalie."
The door shuts firmly behind her, leaving Isabella with a feeling of finality as an eerie quiet surrounds her. The room is small, barren of warmth or personality. Other than a small bed frame with an even thinner mattress thrown on top of it, there isn't much else. A small bedside table with a shallow drawer and a dusty mirror nailed to the wall behind it catches her attention, and it doesn't take more than only a few steps for her to stand in front of it.
The reflection staring back at her is the most shocking thing in the entire room.
"Jesus!" She whispers loudly in horror, moving quickly to sit down in the chair in front of the little table with the mirror.
She looks exactly like her last, almost twenty-four hours have been: insane. Messy. Chaotic. One side of her hair still contains the pins she had used to hold her dark hair away from her face. However, most of her curls have fallen free from their restraints into a tangled mess, the pins doing nothing other than resting between random pieces. The other side of her head doesn't have any of them left, so her hair dangles down towards her shoulders in loose waves and dark knots. The makeup she had put on yesterday morning before her train ride into the city is now smeared down her face in exhausted streaks. There are dark circles beneath her eyes, and her once ruby-red lipstick is now rubbed off and smudged lightly into her cheeks.
"And Rosalie didn't say anything?" Isabella mutters out loud, reaching for the luggage she had placed on the floor next to her chair. Sighing, she's not sure if anything other than warm water and a prayer could wipe away the evidence of yesterday's events.
It's a trivial task, meaningless, but it's what she needs to keep herself busy and to settle her mind for a few minutes. She'll need whatever strength she can muster if she wants to make this, whatever this may be, worthwhile.
… If she wants to make this work.
She knows Edward Cullen holds more answers than what he's letting on. How could he not? The man walks like he is the center of the earth; the rest around him are merely players in his game. He had taken each challenge of the day with not only ease but also with a tangible air of entitlement.
Despite only meeting the man and spending several interrupted hours in his presence, Isabella could tell that he was not one for surprises.
So how would it be possible for her brother to be shot, murdered, right in front of his pub and him not have one idea about it? It's an event that goes against everything he portrays to everyone he knows.
A dent in his armor, Isabella thinks as she finishes wiping the makeup off her face.
She can't explain it, but she knows her brother's death wasn't for nothing. James exuded kindness, and she was sure that even the hardest criminal wouldn't take his life for no good reason. She's convinced the truth is there waiting for her to uncover; maybe a drunken misunderstanding that ended in an unspeakable tragedy—one that has torn her family, her whole life, completely apart.
She recognizes Edward knows more than what he's told her, but if she has any say at all, it will not stay that way for long. She has no experience with men like him, the kind who walk with their reputations in front of them, daring anyone to a challenge, but she knows if she's patient, time will give her what she needs.
While the building hasn't been silent, the sound of voices deeper than Rosalie's filter upstairs to her room. One at first, followed by another, and soon Isabella hears at least three or four men gathering on the first floor. Frozen where she sits at her small table, she listens as lighter, softer laughter from women soon join the others. They mingle briefly before dispersing, paired footsteps disappearing behind slammed doors on both sides of Isabella's room.
She may be a naïve, sheltered farmer's daughter, but she's not ignorant to the sounds that fill the building as realization dawns on her. Rosalie, being the woman at the pub yesterday. Emmett, knowing a place where a woman can stay. Vague comments Rosalie had made in passing when she had shown Isabella to her room. Edward's words in her ear as they looked upon Rosalie in the booth in the back of the pub.
"She's a whore."
Isabella sinks into the chair at the table, feeling foolish once again. It keeps happening, the sense of being settled in one moment to wholly inadequate and out of place the next. She had been jostled and apprehensive on the train, then laughed at when she had walked into The Lost Key for thinking she belonged there for even a second's time.
But she did it - she did it all.
She navigated her way on the train and into the city. She worked an entire shift at the ominous pub, the same pub tied to her brother's death, and was offered the position the same night. She collapsed on a stranger's bed and woke up in one piece the following morning.
But she dropped her guard when exhaustion got the best of her, and hadn't been aware of her surroundings. Now she's in a whore house full of strangers, trapped within a city that doesn't stop to allow her time to adjust to it all.
She doesn't belong here. It's so different from Forks. While Forks was gray and green and predictable, Port Angeles is metallic and dark and uncertain. No one knows her name. No one even cares.
She feels like rolling into a tiny ball on the bed beneath the covers.
She covers her ears as the sounds in the building grow louder, a painful reminder of how quickly she's going to have to grow up if she wants to stay here in both the city and Rosalie's building.
As she listens to the escalating pleasure surrounding her, she wonders if she wants to stay at all.
She'll figure it out later. For now, she does exactly what she wants to. She pulls back the thin blanket on the bed and wishes for the world to disappear.
As some of you have mentioned, she's definitely under prepared for this mission of hers. But then again, she's faring better than I would be LOL. I'd be crying in the corner.
See you soon!