Chapter One:
The Warmth that Left
When a person turns to a body, they don't just go cold.
They turn to ice.
Warmth is reserved for the living — and in my experience, there are only two ways that warmth gets stolen.
Either you did it to yourself.
Or something… did it to you.
Natural deaths are just the body giving up. A quiet surrender.
But murder?
Murder is unforgivable. It's a theft of time. A soul halfway through its shift suddenly clocked out.
And when I hug my daughter now, I feel like I'm the one who got murdered.
Bella hasn't been killed — not technically. She visits often… ish.
But it doesn't feel like her anymore. She's all marble skin and shallow inhales, like a mannequin pretending to be my child.
God, I miss hugging my daughter. The real one.
I still do it every time. I still wait for the warmth.
It never comes.
"End of the week then?" I ask, trying not to sound like I'm begging.
I pull back from the hug. Her skin doesn't even try to pretend it's warm.
She laughs awkwardly — like she knows I noticed. "A few weeks, hopefully. Edward's got this big trip planned…"
I've interviewed liars. Hundreds. I can spot one from across the room.
Bella's not even trying to hide the cracks. But the part that breaks me is that I still want to believe her. I want to believe in the fantasy: doting husband, exciting trip, promises to call. No sickness. No danger. Just my daughter living a life.
So I smile and buy her lie like it's gospel, paying with all the belief I've got left in my gut.
Then — cue the devil — he pulls up.
Edward. Perfect, pale, silent Edward. He doesn't honk. Doesn't text. He just knows when it's time.
Bella flinches when she sees him.
And then she inhales.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three…
By the time she hits nineteen Mississippi and still hasn't exhaled, I'm done pretending.
She doesn't even realize how unnatural she's being. Or maybe she does. Maybe she's hoping I won't notice.
I walk her to the car anyway. Some reflex in me still wants to protect her, even if I think she could snap me in half now without blinking.
The back window rolls down, and it's Renesmee.
"Hey kiddo," I smile, keeping it light. "How's it going?"
"Hey, Pops. Not bad," she beams.
Her smile's too perfect. Her teeth — off. Sharper maybe? I could swear they looked different last month.
I squint. Her face looks hauntingly familiar.
It's Bella. Twelve-year-old Bella. But not exactly.
That kind of familiarity shouldn't feel like a threat.
But it does.
Back when she came inside the house — before the frost line was drawn — I mentioned once that she seemed… taller. Way taller. Like she grew five inches overnight.
Bella laughed it off. "You're being silly, Dad."
Edward grinned. "Must be those Cullen genes. We grow 'em big."
They stopped bringing her inside after that.
Now every goodbye feels like a standoff. Every smile like a mask being adjusted. Every look from them like they're trying not to say something they know would break me.
And I can't shake the feeling that I'm not supposed to be alive to see whatever's coming.
I wave as they drive off, fake grin plastered on like war paint.
Renesmee's pale face stares back at me from the rear window. Her wave is slow, deliberate. Her hand looks smaller than it did last month.
What is she?
And more importantly —
What am I to them?
"Alright then." I grab a beer from the fridge and head to the den.
Before the wedding, Bella kept a lot of the wedding stuff here.
Before that, it was my case junk. Junk files that she used to tease me about. "Conspiracy Corner," she called it. Even made a little cardboard sign one year for my birthday and taped it over my cork board like it was a badge of honor. I pretended to be annoyed, but I kept it up for a while.
The sign's long gone now. Ripped it down when I realized she wasn't teasing me anymore — she was hiding something.
The room still smells like dust, dry-erase markers, and the faint piney scent of the Christmas candle Bella gave me before she left. She said it smelled like home. I lit it once. It made the room feel lonelier.
I drop into my worn leather chair and crack open the beer, letting the fizz hiss into the silence. The TV is off. Has been for months. All I do now is look at the board.
And tonight, the board looks back.
Every note, every photo, every pin stuck into red thread — it's all there. Cullens on top of Cullens. They're smiling too hard in every picture. Edward never blinks. I checked. Not once in the last twenty-three candid shots. Carlisle's medical license looks real, but I found a blurry yearbook from 1954 where I swear to God he's in the background of the staff photo. Same face. Same smug half-smile.
I've got blurry shots of them entering the woods. Leaving in clothes they weren't wearing before. Not aging. Not even a wrinkle. And then there's Bella. The newest piece on the board. She aged in reverse. Turned to porcelain overnight. Her warmth didn't fade gradually — it vanished.
And then the phone stopped ringing.
I had a guy — a private investigator out of Spokane. Real discreet. Owed me a favor. He was watching the family for a while, tailing them when they went out of town. Last thing he sent me was a photo of Renesmee standing in a field full of snow and not sinking an inch. Then nothing. No more emails. No calls. Just silence.
The kind of silence I only hear in morgues and confession booths.
I've got a sick feeling about it. About all of it.
I stare at the photo of Renesmee for a long time. She's squinting into the snowlight, one hand raised to shield her face from the sun, except she's not squinting like a kid. She's scanning. Watching. Assessing. It's the same look Bella had the first time she caught me trying to sneak a peak at her diary in high school. That uncanny knowing. Like she's five steps ahead, and you're playing checkers on her chessboard.
Hey so I broke up with my boyfriend because he said that Feminism corrupted me. Then I was in a crying spiral on Instagram and saw a comment under a meme or Charlie almost crying when he hugs Bella and realises that she's cold and tries to warm her up, that said because he was a cop Charlie knows what a dead body feels like and I'm ill because of it. yA so I was either going to spiral or burn something so I had to start writing instead and the thought of poor Charlie Swan wondering why his daughter feels like a corpse and constantly having a bad feeling about her really burned me so I had to fix it. Also I'm trying to distract myself. Peace! As always, my plug is at the bottom:
Hi,
Welcome to my infomercial where I unnecessarily and quirkily try to sell you something in order to keep myself afloat, I'm Troy McClure. I've published a poem and page journal designed to be used as a notebook, inspired by the fact that I was running out of notebooks while writing Kneel Before You, my original story based on More Like You and available with my other works on this site and couldn't find a fat one so I made this one with like 250 pages. . . /dp/B0D3V9PB3D AND THEN my baby niece just learned to draw and write because I was wfhimg while babysitting and she saw me do it /46ROC0b
Follow .com on tumblr Justpostingavibe & 238Justknowshelate on Instagram to see more including the links and keep updated.
ANYONE WHO WANTS TO LEAVE A REVIEW OF THE BOOKs/Journals ON AMAZON WOULD BE SERIOUSLY APPRECIATED. (EVEN IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT, REVIEWS HELP BOOST THE ALGORITHM AND MAKE THE BOOK MORE NOTICEABLE TO PEOPLE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. AND ARE A FREE WAY OF HELPING ME OUT.
And now, please ignore the poor cat playing the world's smallest violin in the corner, and just know fan I will always keep you in the loop and let you know when the full book is available either on here in my A/N like a prisoner of war sneaking messages through a coffee tin in my anus, or via my tumblr and Instagram justpostingavibe and 238Justknowshelate respectively.
