That Will Ache in His Thoughts From Now On
"You're going to need me with you, Charlie."
Orrin has parked himself next to the cruiser. Charlie's mouth sets.
"It's my own house, Orrin."
"I know."
Charlie's eyes close.
"You know the drill, Chief." Spoken softly. But said.
Charlie's hand rubs down his face, and he looks away. "Meet me there."
"Will do."
Charlie watches Orrin go to his truck, then climbs into the cruiser and drops his head onto hands that are white-knuckling the steering wheel. This day is not done yet. He still has to keep it together. He just needs … a moment. Needs to breathe.
In through your nose, out through your mouth.
He thinks of the chaplain who had taught him that. A chaplain; not a medic. Wonders where the man is now.
Just breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Keep the rhythm.
Orrin's a good man. But there's no way Charlie's ready to have another person present when he finds … whatever he will find … back at the house. His own house. The house he grew up in.
Mom.
Him and her against the world is what he remembers.
Four years … Is it really four years that she's been gone? No. It's five now. Half of a decade. Slipped by when he wasn't looking.
Charlie picks his head up off the backs of his hands and puts the key into the ignition. All the others have left the scene. They'll circle back to him later. Know enough to leave him space for now.
He turns the key. His foot is too heavy, and the engine starts with a roar. Orrin is right, of course. In the grotesque world they all live in, a father is potentially a person of interest in the disappearance of a daughter. Even a chief of police. Even in Forks.
They have to do this by the book. Evidence. Procedure. Witness.
Lights silent now, the cruiser bumps over the abandoned yard, and turns down the road back to town.
Orrin is waiting for him when he arrives at the house. Daylight has gone sideways behind the grey, dimming down all the familiar landmarks of the street, the driveway, the porch, the front door.
The forensics kit is out and ready.
"Hold up," Charlie says. Puts on gloves, lifts the empty flower pot by the door. The spare key is in its place on the saucer underneath. The two men glance at each other, and Orrin takes it wordlessly, drops it in a bag, then dusts the doorknob.
The door is locked. Just as Charlie had left it that morning. He pulls his keys, and they enter together and flip the lights.
Charlie's heart and feet want nothing more than to charge up the stairs to his daughter's room. His throat is clogged with what he fears to find there. But he grits his teeth and goes methodically through the ground floor with Orrin. Everything is as he had left it. Nothing out of place. Even the crawl space with its bare bulb.
Orrin stops him at the foot of the stairs. "You ok?"
Charlie eyes him sideways. "You know I'm not going to let you go up there before me"
Orrin nods. "Listen …" His brows knit. "They found something in the truck."
"The truck?"
Orrin nods. "Some kind of … package. Wrapped up in cedar bark … "
"What's your point, Orrin?"
"That used to be Billy Black's truck, didn't it?"
"Yeah. And?" Charlie feels heat rising behind his ears.
"You heading to La Push tonight?"
"You know I am."
"Take Dave with you."
"Not happening."
"Charlie — "
"I said it's not happening. You're going to have to trust me to get more out of Billy on my own than with a posse behind me."
Orrin heaves a heavy sigh. Stares at his chief for a long minute. "All right. The bundle thing is in evidence. Maybe take a look at it before you go."
One more thing to do. Charlie heaves a sigh of his own. "Fine." He glances up the stairwell, now inked in the benthic dark of evening. "You need to give me this. I'll call you in if I find anything."
Orrin nods, and they go up, single file, Orrin behind.
Vague in the shadows, Bella's room is … familiarly occupied. Something it had never been since she was a small child. Everything is … normal. The bed is made. Her desk is … like always. He thinks of the times he's been in here over the past year and more. Putting clean laundry on her bed. Fetching her notebooks. On his knees thanking God and all his angels for the miracle of the van. What was it all for?
He goes over to the desk. Turns on the light. Rifles through papers. Pulls open drawers. Diagrams and scribbles catch his eye. He pulls them out, spreads them out on the quilts on her bed, to make sense of them. Orrin is standing in the doorway with his camera.
"What the hell do you make of this?"
Orrin walks in. "Book report?" He turns the papers this way and that.
Charlie is in the closet, pulling on the lightbulb string, pushing through the handful of clothes on the hangers. He pulls out the suitcase, feels the knock of something heavy inside it. The zipper sticks, then gives, and it lies open on the floor. He takes in the sticks, the espada, the scraps of spent sandpaper. The hatchet.
"Let me get this," Orrin says, stepping over with his camera. The shutter clicks and whirrs. Charlie's heart is hammering. He sees where the sticks have been worked and whittled with a knife. His knife. He steadies himself on the frame of the closet door. What the hell have you been doing up here, Bells?
Orrin's voice comes through the fog. "Charlie. Where do you keep your guns?"
He shakes his head. "Bella doesn't know how to use a gun." It's his tackle box that he needs to check. Downstairs. In the front hall closet. But Orrin is insisting, so he numbly leads him to his own room, and squats to pull the strong box out from under his bed.
Why isn't there a note?
"Hell of a place to keep your long guns, Charlie."
Charlie ignores him, spins up the combination and opens the box. A rifle and a shotgun. Side by side. Shouldn't keep the ammo in the same place, but, whatever. It has a lock on it.
Back in Bella's room, dislodged from the nightstand by the air currents of the men's ransacking, a small, white down feather comes to rest on the floor.
Orrin stands and looks around as Charlie closes up the box and shoves it back under the bed. "What's that on your dresser?"
Charlie gets to his feet, turns, looks. Freezes.
"Bells."
There is a folded piece of paper underneath a scrap of crochet, weighted in place with a smooth, dark stone.
He knows the scrap. Had gotten her the crochet hook and the rainbow yarn. That time she had visited from Salt Lake when she was ten. Whatever she'd had in mind to make from it, she had begun too late to finish, and had left it on her night table. He'd kept it there, in case she ever wanted to return to it.
The stone is from the beach at La Push. The bonfire and the sing for his mother. Bella had been very quiet coming back from that evening. The stone had been in her pocket. Renee had to work the next day, so she and Bella had had to take the red-eye back to Santa Cruz.
"I miss Grandma," she'd whispered at the gate. The smooth stone clutched in one hand. Just big enough to fill her palm. "Is it ok for me to keep this? From the beach?"
"Sure, baby girl. Your gran would like that."
And then they were gone.
Breathe. Just breathe.
The paper is printed with a pink and violet flower design. Looks like one of the sheets from that scrap-book kit she'd bought last year. Charlie pulls it from under the yarn work and the stone and opens the single fold. Inside is white and plain, for writing.
Dear Mom, Dear Dad,
I'm not dead. Trust in me. Believe in me.
I have to go away. But if there's a way I can come back to see you, I will. I promise.
I promise.
I love you both. I came from you. You both raised me in your own way. I won't forget. You're both in my heart forever.
Love, Bella
Charlie is on his knees in front of the dresser, bent almost double over the tokens in his hand.
"Chief."
Orrin is beside him, with the plastic bag. "Let me get these, Chief." After a decent interval he prompts again. "I got these. Let me keep them safe."
Charlie surrenders the pieces to evidence, and stands, eyes red.
"My tackle box. I need to check my tackle box." He stumbles down the stairs while Orrin finishes up in his room, and checks the bathroom and medicine cabinet.
The tackle box is in its place on the closet shelf, just as it always is. Just as he left it last time he came back from fishing with Billy.
He opens it and takes out the top tray.
The big knife is gone.