Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 57 (Eclipse 16)

I awoke the next morning to a silent home. I'd gotten too used to the sound of Bella in her room, the gentle snoring, the hushed conversations she'd have late at night on the phone (or perhaps in her own head) with what I could only assume was Edward. I was just brewing a pot of coffee when the landline voiced its shrill alarm.

"Yello?" I asked into the ether.

"Charlie, hey," Jake's voice seemed urgent. I was surprised the kid was awake this early, let alone this excited.

"Hey Jake, what can I do ya for?"

"I was just hoping to speak to Bella, if possible. Is she home yet?"

I glanced at my watch. 6:30 am.

"Well, no, not yet. She'd scheduled to land sometime this afternoon. I can relay a message to her if...?"

"No, no. That's okay. I'll just call back around then. Thanks Charlie!" He abruptly hung up the phone before I could ask about the change of heart, or what he was doing up so early. Bella had been in a tizzy for weeks about him not answering her calls, or was it her not answering his? It was hard to keep the emotionally volatile state of these teenagers straight. I remembered just earlier this week, when Bells had planned to go visit Jake, only to be stymied by Edward taking the battery out of her truck. I sure as shit hoped that Renee may have picked up on his particular brand of toxicity during their trip and maybe even managed to talk some sense into Bella. I also knew better than to believe in such miracles.

It was a rare, clear May morning. I took my coffee out to the porch, and sat back in my dad's old wicker rocking chair. The birds were singing their morning song, and the grass was wet with morning dew. The air was cold and crisp and clean. Renee, Bella, and Edward were waking up in the hot, soggy heat of Florida, likely quite different from the dry desert of Arizona.

Renee had always been one to go wherever the breeze took her. A vagabond. I'd been so enthralled by the romance of it all, when she had gusted into town, wild-haired and tattooed, I think I managed to convince even myself that I could learn to love that kind of life. But I was young and stupid and stupidly in love. I didn't know who I was, or who I wanted to be. I'd spent the past nearly two decades of my life beating myself up over my stagnency, my inability to follow Ren and Bells when they flew the coop, to California, then Arizona, and now Florida. I guess I'd always thought it was to my own detriment, that something was inherently wrong with me, that I was too scared, or complacent, or, as Renee once so aptly put it in a particularly meanspirited fight, "bland."

The old chair creaked under my weight. The sun, so infrequent a visitor, shone through the tops of the pinetrees as it crept its way through the sky. I love it here, I thought. Is that so wrong? I was born here, and I plan to die here, and maybe that doesn't have to translate to blandness or being boring or lacking "an adventurous spirit." Maybe it just means that there was nothing that I felt the need to run from.

Renee had been running all her life. She once confessed, back in those early days, that part of her adventuring around was in the hopes of running into her old man who'd taken off when she was young, leaving her in the stern and bitter care of her mother, Marie. She'd moved out as soon as she was able, and took off from their little Californian town soon after that. Now she was on the other side of the continent, following a semi-pro baseball player who couldn't have too many good years left in his arm. I'd let the words of a scared, pissed off 20-year-old Renee echo in my skull for 18 more long years after that, convincing myself that I was solely to blame for losing my wife and my child because there was something wrong with me. Something missing in me.

But that just wasn't true. I'd made mistakes in how I'd communicated with Renee, sure, but there was simply no keeping her here. Not in that state, not at that time. She was always going to leave, one way or another. And I finally was starting to realize that it wasn't the Great Mistake of my life to have been left behind. That I wasn't wrong for remaining in the place I'd always known and loved.

I waved at Will from down the road, off on his Sunday morning walk. My coffee was empty. Bella would be home in a handful of hours, and I wanted to make sure the place was tidied up before she got back. How strange, I thought, shuffling my slippered feet back through the threshold, for Bella to be returning home to me from a visit with her mother. How many times Renee must have experienced the exact feeling, expecting her daughter returned home from a trip away to visit her wayward parent. Wondering what new ideologies or identities or cavities had formed in the brief time apart.

I also wondered if Renee had sensed over this weekend the same feeling I'd had creeping in over the past few months, ever since Bella had turned 18; that she was beginning to see herself as an adult, a woman grown, and with the departure of childhood so too shifts the relationship between parent and child, father and daughter. Bells had been independent and headstrong since the moment she landed in Forks just over a year ago, but it was in these last few months that it felt like she was truly pulling away. I'd chalked it up to her unhealthy obsession with Edward, but perhaps mixed in there was a natural tendency for a young adult to drift away from her parents. The second great leap from the nest, so to speak. Had Renee noticed that as well? Or was Bella's childhood, in her eyes, already long gone. Maybe their relationship had inalterably severed the moment she dropped her off at the Phoenix airport last January. Or was that goodbye happening right now, on some tarmac under a Florida sun? I decided I should probably get on the horn with Renee while Bella was in the air.

I was halfway through a lunch of leftovers from Billy's potluck when the phone rang again. I was thinking perhaps it was Renee letting me know that Bella and Edward had been dropped off, but it turned out to be Jake again.

"Hey Charlie, sorry to bother you again," he said, still with that tone of urgency I wasn't used to hearing in his voice.

"No worries at all Jake. What's up?"

"Well I know you said that Bella wasn't home yet, or wouldn't be home, I mean, for a while. But do you know exactly when she's planning on landing and getting back home?"

"The plane's expected to land at 1:30. Whether they're planning on coming straight home, or going for lunch in the city, or going to the Cullen's first, I'm not sure. They'll probably be around here just before dinner time. Bella has her cell phone, though, so you could try her on that after she lands."

There was nothing but silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Jake said, "Okay, thanks. I doubt she'll want to answer the call while in the car..." I knew he meant while she's sitting right beside Edward, "... but I'll try again later today."

"Tell you what – I'll let Bella know to call you the moment she gets home, alright? I'm glad to hear that you two are talking again, Jake. I'm sorry she couldn't make it to Billy's party. I want you to know that she didn't go to Florida just to avoid that, alright? The plane tickets were apparently expiring." I wasn't entirely sure how much of that story I believed myself, but whatever I could do to mend the bridge between Bella and Jake, I'd try my damndest to do.

"Yeah, I know. I figured as much. Thanks though, Charlie. That means a lot.I'll be waiting for her call. Speaking of Billy's, did I see you and S-"

"Sorry, Jake, lunch is getting cold!" And I hung up the phone before he could get another word in.