Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 46 (Eclipse 5)

I called the station from my cell as I made my way back into town, letting them know I'd be heading straight home. Given the past week I'd had, they were more than happy to cover – Denise had even been insisting that I take a vacation "to recover and mourn," but I felt as though the last thing I wanted to do was sit alone at home with a case of beer or, god forbid, hit the river for some fishing.

The shades were still drawn and the lights were still off when I pulled up to the house in the late afternoon. I'd half-expected to catch Bella's red truck driving past me on my way back down the winding road that led up to the Cullen's mansion, but headache she may have been over the past few months, she did (usually) strictly abide by my rules whenever I had to ground her. She likely was just drawing out some after-school time with Edward, or had a shift at the Newton's. Either way, there was no answer when I gently knocked on her bedroom door, and though it pained me to break my daughter's trust, there were dangers far greater than she knew at stake here.

I stepped lightly into her room, and took a cursory glance around. She hadn't changed much about it since moving back. The walls were still the pale green that Renee had picked out back in the summer of '87; the bed frame, side table, and mirror were where I'd put them after I'd hauled them over here from my parent's place; and the wingback chair Bells had spent the majority of last fall sitting in, staring out her window as the world went on without her, still faced out into our front yard.

I checked the photo album I'd gifted her for her birthday. It was sparsely populated; the photos she'd taken of me and Edward before he'd left were in there, along with a photo of her and Edward that she'd, for some strange reason, folded in half in order to crop herself out. There were a few photos I hadn't seen before, as well – photos of the Cullens in what I could only assume was their mansion, likely taken during the ill-fated birthday party that Bella had come home from with fresh stitches. All just a few days before the entire clan took off. I studied the images. Behind the smiling, porcelain figures was a house in mint condition, clean, yes, but not showing any signs of a move a few days away. No moving boxes, no packing tape. Well, of course not, I thought to myself, given that the move came as a devastating surprise to Bella, and while she may not be the most perceptive person, even she would be able to tell that a home was being packed up for shipment.

It's probably different for the affluent, I reasoned. Thinking back to when I went looking for Bella at the Cullen's place after she went missing, I realized that it's not as though any furniture had been moved or sold or donated – they'd just left it all in there. Nor was a "for sale" sign posted on the front lawn by a high-profile real estate agent that you'd assume they'd hire to sell the place in a hurry. For the entire half a year that the Cullens were gone, the mansion sat there, furnished, empty, and cold, like a bug caught in amber, a glass castle suspended in time.

What kind of money does a family have to have to just abandon a home? I'd never given it much thought before, what with the mansion being so far out of the way, but looking at the images of the Cullens in their home just confirmed it – this was not the ordinary lifestyle of a doctor. Even someone coming from money and making a decent living working as a small town doctor (though not nearly multiple-mansions-kind-of-money) wouldn't just leave a place like that to the dust bunnies and spiders. Either Carlisle Cullen was the recipient of one helluva trust fund, or he was, in fact, embroiled in something far more sinister, and far more lucrative.

I put the photo album away, somewhat disgusted with myself for even going looking in the first place. Whatever Bella may be privy to by virtue of her proximity to Edward, I'd just have to hope that she trusted me enough to tell me – especially if it was something that could see her in even more danger than what she'd already been hurt by. I absentmindedly picked up the paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet sitting on her nightstand, wondering if she had yet reached the part where the two teen lovers, so enraptured with one another, too blinded by young love and hormones to realize that it was a tragedy they were written in, that I flipped to the large bookmark nestled in near the end of the novel. It was a plane ticket. One way. From Florence, Italy, to SeaTac Airport.

What the hell kind of "emergency" had Edward been in in Italy, of all places? What would require his sister and ex-girlfriend to head out there immediately, without a moment to say goodbye? I'd thought he was somewhere in South America, living on his dad's dime... But then my imagined picture of Edward galavanting around hostels, drinking on beaches, and doing party drugs in club bathrooms changed to something much more sinister; to one of him, suit-clad, shaking hands with shady men in dark sunglasses, flying from country to country, handling whatever deals his adoptive dad might need him to deal, while Carlisle put on the front of the good doctor in LA.

I'd never considered it before, and, even now, I was scared to think it remotely possible, because of just how much more dangerous that would make Edward for Bella to be around. Could a 17-year-old high school senior really be the international arm of his father's criminal enterprise? There were, admittedly, not many more outlandish options, barring the supernatural or my own psychosis, but there also wasn't exactly a laundry list of decent explanations, either. I felt the weight of the flip phone in my pocket, the one I'd charged but hadn't yet turned on, the one that, with a single phone call to a single, preprogrammed number, could perhaps offer the answer to all these questions and more.

That's right around when the sound of three solid thumps on my front door awoke me from my reverie.

I hustled downstairs, my steps in parallel urgency to the pounding at the door, and was surprised, albeit pleasantly, to see none other than Jacob Black at my front stoop, a look of guilt writ plain across his face.

"Charlie," he said, glancing back at a motorcycle I assumed he rode in on, "I've got a confession to make."