The True History of the Cullen Family

Love Stinks!

Bella Swan found out that her husband, Mike Newton, had been cheating on her.

She packed up their two children, Michael junior and Alexa, and left the home that she shared with her husband. She needed to talk to someone about this immediately.

So she drove off to La Push.

Leah saw her and said, "What happened?"

"Stupid Mike," Bella snapped in anger. "Why did you have to tell me that Mike was cheating on me? Seriously, what do you have against me?" Leah ignored her. "I demand an answer from you!" Bella yelled again.

Leah sighed and walked to her car. "Yeah, just go!" Bella snapped. "Just walk away from me and not care if I am hurt or not! I'm going back to Charlie's."

And with that, Bella stormed away.

Leah turned and saw Bella leaving her house. She wanted to explain herself, but that would mean bringing up Sam and Emily and she was not about to do that at all.

She wondered if her attitude was driving away everyone who loved her. First it was Jacob, who defended from the pack her until she betrayed him. Then she alienated Seth and his children during a family gathering. Then she turned a deaf ear to Emily when she was crying. She was crying because her husband had abandoned her and their unlucky children. She became so cold and cruel that Sam refused to talk to her and even their children feared her.

Now it was Bella. Brave, clumsy, and stubborn Bella. Leah knew that Mike had been in an accident and just as he was recovering, he received word that a relative had died. That had him off in some other place helping the family in their time of grief.

Leah Clearwater was definitely the witch of La Push. One that needed to be dealt with or more people in La Push would suffer. She got into her car and headed to Sue's house.

Perhaps her mother knew the answers to her problems.

*****

Jasper frowned as he watched Jacquelyn wake up. She had been asleep nearly all day and she refused to open any curtains. Nor would she allow any light to shine on her.

She was a tortured soul.

Jasper said to her, "You are not happy."

"As long as my mother is dead, I can never be happy," Jacquelyn said as she stared at her arms.

Ever since she was eight years old, Jacquelyn had taken to carving her mother's name on her arms. She had done that on many occasions; whenever she saw a happy child and his mother, on her mother's birthday, and on the day that she died. After seven years, the name IRINA was all over her arms, from her wrists to her shoulders. It was as if Jacquelyn didn't even want to recover from her mother's death.

Jasper reached out and took her hand in his. He saw the name IRINA carved onto her hands, her palms, and every one of her fingers. He said, "Has no doctor offered to remove these welts from your hands?"

"As long as I live, these welts will NOT go away," Jacquelyn said sadly. "My mother is dead. I will never have the happy life that most people living in this world take for granted. If it were, then I would gladly die and rejoin her in Heaven. But I can't. So I resorted to the next best thing."

"What was that?" asked Gus.

"I sought my own end," said Jacquelyn. "It's so easy to die. Poison, being shot or stabbed, a head injury too severe to survive. But then I thought about being a victim of someone else's crime. Maybe I would be run over in an accident. Knowing that if I died, then at least I would die happy. But here I still am, an unhappy girl now living among vampires. Should one of them unintentionally kill me, I wouldn't mind at all."

Jasper stared at her for a long time. It was hard for this child to talk of her own demise when she survived so many years as a foster child. There was a small wonder that she turned to the Goth subculture and even to engage in risky behaviors that could mean her own death.

Minerva said, "She's just as broken as he is. We must put them back together."

"I'm not sure if being out back together is the best option for her right now," said Gus. "She'll have to suffer a bit more until she decides that she needs healing."

Jasper took her hand and led her out the door. He needed to talk to someone who understood pain. And if there were anyone in the Volturi who understood pain, it would be Marcus.

At that, a girl's life was at stake.