Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 39 (New Moon 28/30)

Alice was awake when I trudged my way down to the kitchen in the early hours of morning. We exchanged a few hollow pleasantries, me too exhausted to ask all that much about how her family had been getting along, her seemingly understanding the emotional toll I'd been through. She was always good, in that way. She always seemed older, more mature than the ditzy teenager that the town might have seen her to be.

I was just putting some sausage and eggs on the stove when she finally asked about Bella.

"How bad was it, Charlie?" Alice asked softly.

"Real bad," was all I could think to reply. I really didn't know how else to put words to the pain Bella had been through over the past few months. A pain that had been caused by Alice's own adoptive brother.

"Tell me about it. I want to know exactly what happened when we left."

"I've never felt so helpless," I began slowly. "I didn't know what to do. That first week—I thought I was going to have to hospitalize her. She wouldn't eat or drink, she wouldn't move. Dr. Gerandy was throwing around words like 'catatonic,' but I didn't let him up to see her. I was afraid it would scare her."

"She snapped out of it though?"

"I had Renee come to take her to Florida. I just didn't want to be the one... if she had to go to a hospital or something. I hoped being with her mother would help. But when we started packing her clothes, she woke up with a vengeance. I've never seen Bella throw a fit like that. She was never one for the tantrums, but, boy, did she fly into a fury. She threw her clothes everywhere and screamed that we couldn't make her leave—and then she finally started crying. I thought that would be the turning point. I didn't argue when she insisted on staying here... and she did seem to get better at first..." It felt good to let all of it out, not to a therapist as I'd done with Rose but to someone who was part of the entire messy situation. Someone who knew Bella, who knew Edward, who could see for herself just how tough it all had been.

"But?" Alice prompted.

"She went back to school and work, she ate and slept and did her homework. She answered when someone asked her a direct question. But she was... empty. Her eyes were blank. There were lots of little things—she wouldn't listen to music anymore; I found a bunch of CDs broken in the trash. She didn't read; she wouldn't be in the same room when the TV was on, not that she watched it so much before. I finally figured it out—she was avoiding everything that might remind her of... him.

"We could hardly talk; I was so worried about saying something that would upset her—the littlest things would make her flinch—and she never volunteered anything. She would just answer if I asked her something."

Reflecting back on those darkest of days really did bring into light just how much of a shift I'd been seeing in Bella over the past while. It gave me hope not just for her, but for myself in the hole left behind by Harry.

"She was alone all the time. She didn't call her friends back, and after a while, they stopped calling. It was night of the living dead around here. I still hear her screaming in her sleep..."

"I'm so sorry, Charlie," Alice said, her voice glum.

"It's not your fault," I assured her. It was pointed, sure, but in my eyes Edward deserved the lion's share of the blame. "You were always a good friend to her."

"She seems better now, though."

"Yeah. Ever since she started hanging out with Jacob Black, I've noticed a real improvement. She has some color in her cheeks when she comes home, some light in her eyes. She's happier." I still wasn't entirely sure what Alice was doing back in Forks, though I had my suspicions. Was she here as something of an envoy for Edward? Were the Cullens thinking of moving back? I didn't think that was something that Bella would be able to handle. I didn't think that was something I would be able to handle.

"He's a year or so younger than her, and I know she used to think of him as a friend, but I think maybe it's something more now, or headed that direction, anyway. Jake's old for his years."

"He's taken care of his father physically the way Bella took care of her mother emotionally. It matured him. He's a good-looking kid, too—takes after his mom's side. He's good for Bella, you know."

"Then it's good she has him," Alice said. I nodded. It was clear she was picking up what I was putting down, but I had to drill the point home.

"Okay, so I guess that's overstating things. I don't know... even with Jacob, now and then I see something in her eyes, and I wonder if I've ever grasped how much pain she's really in. It's not normal, Alice, and it... it frightens me. Not normal at all. Not like someone... left her, but like someone died." I realized then that the grief I was feeling for Harry, the grief I'd felt for my parents after they'd gone, the way I was prone to put up my walls, retreat into myself... they were all being reflected right back at me by my own daughter. That all the ways that her poor teenage heart was trying to protect itself were what I had always done in the face of devastation. That to truly be there for her, to help her through this, I needed to be there for myself, as well. Especially now.

"I don't know if she's going to get over it—I'm not sure if it's in her nature to heal from something like this. She's always been such a constant little thing. She doesn't get past things, change her mind."

"She's one of a kind," Alice agreed.

"And Alice..." It was now or never. "Now, you know how fond I am of you, and I can tell that she's happy to see you, but... I'm a little worried about what your visit will do to her."

"So am I, Charlie, so am I. I wouldn't have come if I'd had any idea. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, honey. Who knows? Maybe it will be good for her."

"I hope you're right."

I chewed at my sausage. Alice seemed not to have much of an appetite. I had to just come out with it.

"Alice, I have to ask you something," I finally said.

Alice was calm. "Go ahead."

"He's not coming back to visit, too, is he?" It was hard to keep my voice level, even at the mention of the boy who had done such irreparable harm, physically and mentally, to my own daughter.

But Alice's answer was soft, reassuring. "He doesn't even know I'm here. The last time I spoke with him, he was in South America."

Vacationing on his rich dad's dime while Bells wastes away in torment. Par for the course for Edward it would seem.

"That's something, at least. Well, I hope he's enjoying himself."

"I wouldn't make assumptions, Charlie," she bit back. I obviously had touched on something of a nerve, and I realized how stupid I'd been to think that Alice, even after telling her all that Bella had been through, would side against her own family. So be it.

I ended the conversation as politely as possible, excusing myself from the table, and tidied up my dishes. I had done what I'd hoped to do; let Alice know as clearly as possible that Edward was a danger to Bella, that he was not welcome back here–in my home or in this town–and that Bella was finally recovering from the suffering he had put her through. I figured that she would leave soon enough, that the information would eventually get back to Edward, and that the Cullens would leave us alone for good.

I wished that I could have stayed at home long enough to see Bella, but there was about a week's worth of logistics that needed to be ironed out over the next 24 hours for Harry's funeral, and the damn wolves, and everything else that was falling apart all around me. I figured that Alice would be gone soon enough, and as I walked out the door into the crisp morning air of another rainy day in Forks, I resolved to have a long, hard conversation with Bella once it was just the two of us again.