Rubicons
Charlie sits on the front step of his porch, elbows on his knees, head bowed, neck sagging between his shoulders. It's long, long past dark. Long past when he should just go inside. Or at least turn on the damn porch light. But he's in no mood for that.
He turns over the plastic bag in his hands for the umpty-umpth time. It's nothing but a plain zip-lock bag. Something he might have packed Bella's lunches in. If she'd grown up in Forks. The cedar bundle inside is stiff, and awkwardly shaped. But maybe about the same weight as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Another farewell gift. Another last gesture. Not flashy. Just deep. And final.
"Bells."
This daughter of his.
He's going to have to bring the thing back in its bag to put with the other evidence. After Billy and Jacob have seen it. But he's not losing track of it. Any more than he will lose track of her note and the crochet scrap and the rock. All of those are going back to their intended recipients, once all of this is over.
The thought of all of this being over nearly cuts him in half.
A poorly muffled engine and the sound of tires grinding over the gravel of his driveway brings his head up. It's Sue's Buick, the headlights too bright in his eyes.
The engine and headlights cut, and Jacob climbs out of the driver's seat. Billy and Harry are a little slower, but take up their stand on the other side of the car. Billy's not bothering with the wheelchair, just leaning on the door, with Harry beside him for back-up.
Billy's voice is strong and carrying in the dark. "You ready to come home now, Charlie?"
"What?"
Harry fills in, "Supper's waitin'."
"It's nine o'clock, Harry."
"It's supper."
Charlie feels the weight of the house behind him. There's not a single light on inside. Only the dark empty spaces he has known for almost all of his life. Hall, kitchen, den, stairs, bedrooms. The one bathroom. It's these things … the spaces … that make a house haunted. Not the hovering silhouette. Not the peeling paint, or the bare wood on the porch.
Jacob is standing at the bottom step, looking grown.
"Hey, Uncle," he says, and half extends a hand.
Charlie shakes his head, puts the evidence bag in his jacket pocket, and gets up with a grunt. When did his knees start going stiff like that?
They all get into Sue's car. It's late enough that there's no point leaving a light on in the house. The cruiser left sitting guard duty outside will be plenty.
Jacob pulls out onto the street, and they're gone.
Charlie leans his head back and just tries to focus on breathing. There's no headrest on the back seat, so it cricks his neck. He's too tired to care. The day's not done. Still. He has to keep himself together. Still. All the heat in his throat and behind his eyes and sinuses, has to stay where it is. Not spill out. Not yet. Not until …
No one talks, which is a mercy. Harry, beside him in the back, just puts a hand on his near knee.
Sue and Harry's house is just like it's always been. Back rooms dark. Kitchen and dining area bright, crowded, softly noisy with voices, and chairs scraping, and tableware knocking. A stray mutt or two underfoot, and of course the heavenly smells of really nourishing food. And lots of it.
Somebody's busted a side of elk out of their freezer for Sue to make one of her famous stews with wild leeks and morels. There's baked Chinook, fry bread of course, something that looks like parsnips but isn't, and a salad of nettles, fiddleheads, and some flower Charlie doesn't recognize. They're putting on the dog, heavy on First Foods, and Charlie wonders why.
The talk around the table and kitchen counters is all low voices and the weather and the season and tribal matters. People keep putting food on his plate, and Charlie tries not to dwell on other feasts he remembers. His mother's passing. Calling Bella back from her coma. He tries not to hold out some kind of insane hope that Bay is going to start signing how to call Bella back from the blood that Orrin had scraped up from the dirt in the Cullens' basement.
The eating winds down, and Leah and Rachel marshal the younger kids to clear off the finished plates. The talk settles down, too, and the quiet sits like a guest of honor at the table.
Charlie pulls out the evidence bag, puts it on the table, and slides it over in front of Billy and Jacob.
"Bella left this on the driver's seat of the truck."
Billy picks it up.
"Careful with it. I have to take it back. Evidence."
Billy shakes his head. Opens the zip-lock and sniffs at its contents. A faint whiff of peppermint and tobacco escapes from the open top, riding the breath of cedar. Billy closes his eyes and shakes his head again. "Bella."
Jacob looks at his father, and takes the bag, sniffs, feels its contents through the plastic and the cedar bark. More than his eye rims, Jacob's whole face flushes. "Damn it, Bella!" He gets up from the table, too abruptly, almost tipping over his chair. The adults make way for him so he can leave the room. Seth follows. Muffled crying, and a curse or two, comes back from the direction of the spare bedroom.
The evidence bag sits where it was left on the table. Charlie's not done pulling things from the big pocket on the inside of his police jacket. He levers out a folded up sheaf of notebook papers, opens and spreads them out on the table. Sketches of stick looms, threading diagrams, and weave patterns stare up at the ceiling.
"Found these in her room," he says. "Bunch of sticks and yarn in her closet. A hatchet."
"My knife is gone," he adds.
There's no recognition on any of the faces around the table. Only head shaking and frowning and low murmurs. The kettle in the kitchen rises to a scream that cuts quickly as Leah takes it off the heat. There's clinking of mugs on a tray, soon followed by rich and warming aromas of coffee from the drip brewer.
Charlie's voice turns sharp. "I need answers."
No one speaks.
"This is bigger than Bella, isn't it? The Cullens. The" — he makes air quotes — "bear."
A pause; then, with the full authority of his office, "I need answers."
Josh Uley speaks up. "She's gone, Charlie. Bella's gone. She's not coming back."
Sue, sitting next to him, puts a hand on Charlie's shoulder.
Charlie's miles from giving up. "She said she would."
The tribe are shaking their heads.
"She left a note," he chokes.
Sue puts her head on the table. There are sounds of crying in the room.
From across the table, Bay coughs, and Sue picks her head up. Her mother signs, and she translates. Paths we walk as children. We do not understand until we are grown.
"If she's got herself stuck somewhere I need to get her back! Help me for Christ sake!"
"We can't bring her back," Billy tells him, voice heavy as stones. "No one can."
"It is a great grief for all of us," Harry says. "You know this."
"That's no answer!"
"What will you do with an answer?" Kevin Littlesea asks.
"What?"
Harry repeats the question. "What will you do with your answer? Where will you take it? What will it bring you?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
No one speaks. Rachel and the little kids, Kai and Jean, are passing coffee around the table. None of this is going anything like Charlie thought it would. Orrin was right. He should have brought Dave with him. Followed procedure. What was he thinking?
He's out of his depth.
Cream and sugar, and the fake stuff for Billy, are getting passed around, too. Spoons are stirring in the mugs. But no one's speaking. His instincts were right, that there are answers here. Answers he won't get anywhere else. But somehow it's gotten all turned around, and now Billy and the tribe are the ones asking the questions. And they're not going to give him anything unless he agrees to leave it all here. In this room. At this table.
Conceal evidence. Tamper with the investigation.
"I swore an oath," he says at last.
Everyone nods. Rachel puts a mug in front of him, and Billy speaks. "We can't tell you who your relations are, Charlie. No one can. You have to decide that for yourself."
There is a long, long silence after that. Charlie looks at the paths before him. Is he really going to arrest all of them now? Turn them over to the state police? Because that's how it would have to go. Forks doesn't have the holding cells, nor the interrogation resources, for something like this. To force the answers out of them. If that would even work. Where will it get him? Where will you take it? What will it bring you?
He remembers how things had gone with Bay, back when he was in basic. No one had gotten anything out of her. Of course not. Deaf mute and all. That was the card she'd played. Then she'd "disappeared" out of her cell in Spokane. And no one could find her since. No one white, anyway. He'd just been a young grunt, about to get shipped out to Iraq, with a kid wife and an infant daughter waving goodbye. None of his damn business. By the time he'd gotten back, the authorities had moved on, and gossip had died a natural death.
Defeated, he mumbles into the hot cup in his hands. "I need to know what happened to my baby girl."
Billy answers. "Who else?"
"What?"
"Who else needs to know?"
That kicks Charlie into anger. Certainty flares, that it's not just some missing pieces to the puzzle, or a lead to break the case. They know EXACTLY what has happened to his daughter, but it's somehow some kind of monumental secret and they will not tell him a single word of it unless he swears himself to absolute silence.
He glares at Billy, and snarls out his wife's name in challenge. "Renee."
Heads are shaking, all around the table.
Billy answers him evenly. "Loose lips, Charlie. Sink ships."
"She has a right to know! She's Bella's mother! She raised her!"
Sue closes her eyes. "She took her away."
For the first time, Charlie understands the significance of that. His mother, the runaway, had brought him back to Forks. When he was four, and she already pushing middle age - with just enough to put down for a house, and a raising in a small town where he could make his mark. Brought him back to her coast, yet just enough inland that, after nearly three decades, no shadow would fall on him from forgotten whispers about an unhappy teen from La Push.
Harry is speaking. "She has a right to our care and support. For a loss like this. And we will give it. But Renee is not our people. She has no right to power over our fates."
Charlie's back feels like someone has just slapped a cold, rain-soaked tarp over it. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"We can't tell you who your relations are, Charlie. You have to decide that for yourself."
This again. The price of knowing is silence. Dissembling even, if it comes to it. Even to Bella's own mother.
"I'm not a liar! And I'm not about to start now."
"No lies have been spoken here," Uley says.
Jacob and Seth come back into the room.
She has no right to power over our fates. What does that mean? Charlie feels his skin prickling. Like it did that time answering a disturbance call, raising a hand to knock and identify himself. Right before a shotgun blast on the other side splintered the door in his face.
He's tired. So damn tired. And his daughter is gone. And there is no one and no thing to beat up. He takes a sip of his coffee, which he has left black as he always does. It's strong and hot and bitter. Billy's words at the beginning of the night echo back.
You ready to come home now, Charlie?
There is a path in front of him. He can keep following it straight. Or he can turn aside, cross the stream of water that runs along next to it. The house in Forks, dark like he left it tonight, wavers in his mind's eye. In the background is the station, and everything in it —- the lights, the people, the routines. Along with everything that has been anything but routine for the past 15 months. The ground swivels, and the water is in front of him and the house and the station and the path are behind. And it comes to him that Dave is a competent kid. Young to be police chief. But … so was Charlie.
He takes another drag on the coffee.
"Tell me what happened to Bella."