Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 49 (Eclipse 8)

I was having a hard time not dwelling on what Dr. Thompson and I had talked about. All the while, Bella continued to be her anxious self between the hours of 9:30pm and 7pm the next day, while being completely absorbed into Edward during those two and a half hours. It wasn't quite the same autopilot she'd been on last fall, but it was scarily close.

By the middle of May I'd had enough. She'd been on "house arrest," as we'd been calling it, for just over a month at that point, and I had to admit, she was abiding by the rules. I just hated that she'd seemingly left the rest of her friends by the wayside.

She was trying to mend things with Jake, at least. She had given me a note to pass to Billy to pass to Jake a few days prior, and I'd picked up the returned correspondence from the Black household earlier in the day. The kids had me running around like a courier pigeon, but I was at least glad to see that Bells still wanted to keep in touch with someone other than Edward. It was largely for that reason that I determined I could, tentatively, ease up on the grounding.

I figured I'd handle dinner before letting her know, but I was so caught up in what I was going to say to her – or, well, more concerned with the how, more than anything – that I accidentally put the entire jar of pasta sauce, metal lid and all, into the microwave without realizing.

Bells promptly ran down the stairs in a huff and pulled open the microwave door. It was only then that I started to smell the burning.

"What did I do wrong?" I asked.

"You're supposed to take the lid off first, Dad. Metal's bad for microwaves." she swiftly removed the lid as she spoke, poured half the sauce into a bowl, and then put the bowl inside the microwave and the jar back in the fridge.

"Did I get the noodles right?" I asked. I was used to the boxed mac and cheese stuff, but Bells had stocked our pantry full of all sorts of different shapes and lengths of pasta.

She looked into the pan. "Stirring helps," she said. I took a glance in myself, and realized that the thin strands of spaghettini noodles had clumped into each other. Well, I never claimed to be a gourmet chef.

"So what's all this about?" Bells asked, an eyebrow arched.

I was exactly ready to get into it all – hell, I hadn't even properly thought out what I was going to say, so I looked out the kitchen window instead. "Don't know what you're talking about," I grumbled.

"Did I miss something? Since when do you make dinner?" she asked. "Or try to make dinner, I should say."

I merely shrugged. "There's no law that says I can't cook in my own house."

"You would know," she replied with a smile and a look at my badge. I hadn't realized I'd left my work jacket on.

"Ha. Good one," I genuinely chuckled, shrugging off the jacket. It had been a busier few weeks at the station than usual, though not nearly as crazy as it had been two months prior when Smith had arrived, cronies in tow. His little going away present still sat in my jacket pocket, fully charged, but neither of us had so far deemed it necessary to make any use of it.

No, the station was busy with the regular reports we'd usually be getting; murders out in the big cities, bear sightings, and the occasional missing hiker. Thankfully, over the past few weeks, each of those missing hikers had been found, and there were no more reports of huge, bear-sized wolves, for all the trouble they'd caused us.

We sat down for dinner, and I could see Bella distractedly glancing at the clock every few seconds as she was wont to do – as though willing the hour hand to move quicker towards 7pm.

I busied myself with the paper, rereading the news about the latest disappearances out in Seattle. It was always troubling to hear of people going missing, but I was blessing my lucky stars that whatever trouble it was seemed to have moved on from our little corner of Washington. I also figured that, if Forks fell into trouble again, Smith would be quick with a phone call.