Chapter Text
“Mom,” she begins, wincing as the sound reverberates much too loudly in the quiet of the living room. Her voice sounds shaky and wrong; this is the third voicemail Bella’s left for her, the other two having ended in aborted attempts to explain Charlie’s situation. She woke up early that morning just for this; she was not going to call Renee within earshot of the others, but she might as well have, because she’s going to be up past noon at the rate she’s going.
She’s been- well, not so much sulking as attempting to come to terms with the fact that there’s a serial killer living in the woods outside the Cullen’s house, even more so with the fact that Charlie might end up blind at the other end of Carlisle’s buddies’ knives next week, when the vitrectomy is scheduled to begin.
Her head aches and pounds more so than just after she’d gotten her concussion, and her throat feels perpetually dry- her eyes even more so, despite the fact that she’s been crying herself to sleep for the past two or three nights. It’s been raining nonstop, and despite herself, she can’t help but wish that she was back in Arizona- back in the constant heat, simmering off the cracked asphalt streets of her suburbs, burning the soles of her feet off as she runs across the edge of the community pool and into the shade.
She doesn’t know how to get that through to Renee- the sheer longing for home that feels as though it’s clawing its way up her throat, but she feels as though she has to try, anyway.
Try again.
“Mom,” Bella repeats, unsure what she’s going to say until the words tumble from her lips. “Do you remember that summer, when me and you and Dad went to France for break? And how I got food poisoning at that restaurant in Paris, and how I could barely keep down water, and you said that you wished it’d happened to you, and not to me, because ‘God knew how you needed to lose a few pounds?’
“Dad was so pissed with you for saying so in front of me,” she continues, twirling the cord of the landline with her forefinger. “He was worried you were going to give me, like, a complex. But it wasn’t me that developed that eating disorder afterwards. Do you remember that? It was only for a few months, but every time we’d go out with your and Dad’s friends, you’d always excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, and Dad would always have me check on you, to make sure you were okay, but it turns out you were just vomiting. Not because you had food poisoning, like I did. But because you wanted to. Or you had to.
“Dad forced you to see that doctor afterwards,” she says, pausing slightly when she hears the floorboards creak upstairs. It stops after a second, but she lowers her voice regardless. “He threatened to leave you if you didn’t. Before, you complained that he was being dramatic, that what you did with your body was none of his business, but you went to the hospital the second he told you that. I thought about it constantly, afterwards, that you went through weeks and weeks of rehabilitation, because he asked you to, and then you just left him right after that.
“But then I thought that maybe it wasn’t for him that you were doing it- that maybe it was for yourself, and as much as you griped about it, you were actually glad that he told you to do it. Because it meant that somebody cared about you enough to make you stop hurting yourself.”
Her throat clenches up at the memory. She recalls those months as being especially confusing; she must’ve been six or seven at the time, not understanding why Mommy wasn’t living at home anymore, no matter how many times Charlie tried to explain it to her. It must’ve been rough for him, but it was especially hard on her- Renee might’ve been flighty, but she had never been away from Bella longer than a day or two.
“But I never understood why you did it in the first place,” she says, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. “You, who got totally squicked out by basically any bodily function, jammed a finger down your throat and stained your teeth and lost half your weight, and I kept on thinking that it must’ve been my fault. My fault for getting the food poisoning in the first place, for getting that idea into your head. And nobody ever told me it wasn’t my fault, and I just-“
Her voice breaks off. She had meant to tell Renee about the murders in the backyard, or that Charlie was supposed have surgery the very next week, or maybe even that Bella wanted to go home, right now, and was willing to pay her and Phil off for the plane ticket for the rest of the year, but instead she couldn’t stop talking about something she knew very well that Renee didn’t need a reminder of, not in the early hours of the morning (or whenever she’d listen to this, anyway).
“I know,” Bella says, trying to get her voice back under control, “that your six-year-old kid wasn’t the root cause of your bulimia, or whatever, but I never heard it said out loud. You never told me, and neither did Dad. And by the time I wanted to talk about it, we were already in Arizona and you were already married to Phil, and you were happier than I’d ever seen you before, and I didn’t want to bring it up, but I, um, I think I need you to tell me now. That it wasn’t my fault. Because between what happened to you and what happened to Dad, I think I’m this close-“ and here she makes a pinching sign with her thumb and forefinger, though she knows that Renee can’t exactly see it- “to completely going off the deep end. I just feel like it’s all my fault, you know? I keep on thinking and thinking and thinking, and I can’t sleep at night anymore, and I can’t eat without wanting to throw up, and I feel constantly short of breath, and I think I’m really, actually going ins-“
She stops herself. She can’t send this to Renee. Quickly, she jams her thumb on the pound button on the receiver and attempts to rerecord, but before she can get another word out she hears footsteps on the staircase and immediately slams down the receiver so hard, she’s worried that she might’ve broken it. A few seconds later, and Alice comes wandering into view, spotting Bella sitting tensely on the couch.
“Bella!” Alice says, and though her voice is chipper as always, her face looks uncharacteristically pinched with worry. “What are you doing up so early?”
Bella gives a listless shrug. Most of her energy went into constructing that voicemail; she feels drained, all of a sudden, wanting nothing more than to go back upstairs and crawl back into bed.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she says shortly. Alice eyes her for a second, and though Bella’s had this revelation many times over, she thinks that Alice is so pretty right now, her slender hand placed on the side of the wall as she speaks. She can’t imagine what she looks like in contrast- probably all puffy eyes and sallow skin and tangled hair.
As if reading her thoughts, Alice asks, “Do you want me to do your hair? I didn’t think I got the chance to tell you before, but it’s so lovely. It reminds me of my own hair when I was around your age, all long and soft. I haven’t had long hair in several decades, but it compliments you.”
Bella huffs out a laugh. There’s nothing ‘lovely’ about her hair, mousy brown and so fine she’s constantly worried a hard tug with a hairbrush will render her half-bald. It’s weird to think about Alice- Alice, who has the most fascinating spiky hair that Bella’s sure would never look good on her, but goddamn if she doesn’t want to try-, having any sort of feature that would be considered unremarkable.
Still, she doesn’t want to be contrarian- especially after these past few days-, so she nods her head in acquiescence. Alice’s entire face lights up, and she doesn’t hesitate in grabbing Bella’s wrists and hoisting her off the couch in one strong tug.
“I’ll braid it and everything,” Alice tells her cheerfully as they climb the staircase. “Oh, it’ll be such fun!”
“Sure,” Bella agrees dully, and either Alice doesn’t hear the monotone sound of her voice or is ignoring it entirely, because she readjusts her grip on Bella’s wrists to grab her hand and lead her to her bedroom with a pep in her step that seems a bit much, even for Alice.
Though she’s been living with the Cullens for a while now, she’s never seen the inside of Alice’s room, and is unsurprised to see the absurd amount of fairy lights hung up around her white-oak vanity and canopy bed, wispy blue curtains hanging from the intricately detailed poles that Bella immediately feels compelled to grab in either hand and rip away.
“Let’s sit on the floor,” chirps Alice. “Like a real sleepover.”
Bella dutifully falls onto the soft white rug in the center of the room, her legs crossed criss-cross applesauce beneath her as she absently pulls tufts of fur off the rug. Alice busies herself with her brush and little jars of coconut oil and other assorted hair creams before unceremoniously dropping it on the rug in front of Bella.
“One braid or two?” asks Alice as she sits down on the rug, her back suddenly rod-straight as she reverts into what Bella monikers “professional mode”- truly the antithesis to Alice’s entire personality, but hey, whatever gets her in the hairdressing mood.
“Two,” Bella says, after a pause. Renee used to put her hair into two braids when she was younger, and she’d go around skipping everywhere just to feel the braids bouncing against her back. Alice instructs her to turn around before setting to work, her brush running through Bella’s locks effortlessly despite the many tangles in Bella’s hair, and despite herself, she feels her muscles relax as she leans back against Alice, her eyes fluttering shut. It’s been a while since anybody’s touched her hair, and the gentle, repetitive motions of the brush against her scalp is soothing enough to make her fall half-asleep.
“So,” says Alice, after a while, and though her voice is quiet, there’s an intent underlying in her tone that makes Bella snap to attention, immediately wary. “Having trouble sleeping, Bella?”
“It’s not everyday you stumble upon a scene from Saw,” Bella says, and though she’s aiming for sardonic, her tone falls just short of listless. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just- just homesick or something. I miss Arizona.”
“I’ve never been,” Alice says, her voice wistful. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could.”
“What? Why?”
“Pass me the jar of coconut oil, please,” says Alice, deftly avoiding the question. Bella frowns but follows suit, her line of questioning promptly forgotten as Alice begins to massage the oil into her scalp. “Would you describe it for me, Bella?”
“Uh, sure, I guess. What do you want to know?”
“Well, who were your friends?” Alice asks, and though the question is innocent enough, Bella blanks at any possible answer she could give. She didn’t exactly have many friends, aside from the two or three girls she sat with at lunch, and aside from them and Renee, interactions with others were avoided with the same urgency that a vampire had in avoiding the sun.
“Next question, please,” Bella mutters under her breath.
“What did you do for fun?” Alice asks, not losing her momentum.
“Pool,” is Bella’s immediate response. “Movie theater. Roller skating. I actually did, um, ballet up until a few years ago.”
“Ballet?” Alice asks, sounding vaguely shocked, and Bella huffs out a laugh at her reaction.
“My mom forced me to,” she explains. “I hated it. Mom stopped going with me after a while- the ballet studio was only a few blocks away from our house-, and I just didn’t go after that. It took months for her to realize that I wasn’t attending lessons, because I’d go home before the lessons were supposed to end and delete all the voicemails my teacher left for her. She was so pis- upset with me when she found out, but by that point, I couldn’t care less.”
“Why was she so insistent that you go to ballet lessons, when it was obvious you didn’t want to?" asks Alice, genuine curiosity in her voice, and Bella huffs out a laugh. It figures- Alice’s only reference at motherhood is Esme, who, from what Bella can see, is the type of mom to have sent all her kids off with half a dozen Cosmic Brownies in their lunch-pails and been an avid member of the PTA.
“I think she wanted me to be more feminine or something,” Bella says, shrugging her shoulders uncomfortably. “She didn’t get why I hated it so much, but I did. I don’t know why.”
“So what would you do when you were supposed to be going to ballet lessons?” is Alice’s promptly delivered question, and Bella can’t help but smile. Alice’s curiosity is flattering, though she’s probably just humoring Bella.
“I’d go to the library,” Bella says, closing her eyes. She can see the Cholla Library vividly like this, the exposed rafters above her head, air conditioning on full blast to the point where she’d have to lay down her book and go outside, basking in the heat of the sun before that became uncomfortable in its own right. “And I’d sit there until it was time to go back home.”
Alice hums her acknowledgment before they lapse into silence. It’s a comfortable silence, which makes Bella immediately wary. She hasn’t had one of those in a good, long while, and despite herself, she can’t help but blurt the first thing that comes to mind.
“Did they identify the guy yet?”
Alice pauses for a moment behind her.
“The guy?” She repeats. Bella resists the urge to roll her eyes; it’s not Alice’s fault she’s being vague, but it’s also not really her fault that the phrase “dead guy in the woods I found yesterday” isn’t something she wants to say aloud.
“From the woods,” Bella adds, when it becomes clear that Alice isn’t catching on.
“Oh, that guy,” Alice says, and it would be been funny had it not been for the mountain of gore that flashes across Bella’s eyes when she blinks. She jolts, and the movement causes Alice’s brush to accidentally tear across her scalp in a jagged movement.
Bella cries out, rubbing at the sore spot of her skull, and Alice pulls her against her chest immediately.
“I’m so sorry, Bella!” Alice gasps, and though her arms are freezing where they’re wrapped around Bella’s torso, the chill biting even through her T-shirt, she lets Alice hold her for a moment, the pain slowly receding as Alice’s clutch on her tightens. “I should’ve been more careful, are you okay? Did I make your concussion worse?”
“Fine,” Bella manages to rasp out. “I’m fine.”
Alice slowly detaches herself from Bella, who has to stop herself from doing something immensely embarrassing like leaning back into her touch.
“They’re still attempting to identify him,” Alice admits, lowering the brush beside Bella so she can begin the process of braiding. “Carlisle says they think he might be a drifter from out-of-state, though they’re looking at missing persons’ cases in Port Angeles. He could be anyone, really. It’s too early to tell.”
“If my dad wasn’t hurt, he would’ve found out by now,” Bella says, sounding more confident than she feels. Really, she can’t begin to guess whether Charlie would’ve cracked the case by now; she’d spent only a handful of hours with him this summer before the bear attack, but she feels compelled to vouch for his crime-cracking abilities regardless. “Aren’t you scared at all? That the killer’s still-“
She stops herself, but Alice picks up on her hesitation immediately.
“Still what?”
“Out there,” whispers Bella, feeling foolish even as she says it. She’s not exactly an expert on how to get away with murder, but she’s sure that sticking around the crime scene you created isn’t on a killer’s agenda. “Just- just lurking in the woods. Being sinister.”
“Well, Carlisle and Esme probably aren’t going to let you out of the house for the next several weeks,” says Alice matter-of-factly, long arm reaching out in front of Bella to grab a nearby hair tie. “At least until they have some sort of suspect list.”
“Why only me?” Bella frowns. Alice’s fingers deftly tie up the loose ends of Bella’s braid before setting to work on the next half of hair, the cold of her fingers pressing against her scalp long after they reach the end of her hair. “Why aren’t you guys disallowed from leaving the house?”
“Bella, you’re just a kid,” Alice says, grabbing another hair tie as she speaks. “If something were to happen to you, and we weren’t there to stop it…”
“If the killer’s still out there, you wouldn’t be able to lift a finger against them,” Bella says sulkily, moving away from Alice as soon as she ties up the second braid to face her. Alice bites her lip. “I don’t want to be trapped in this house for the next month doing nothing.”
“There’s plenty of things to do in this house,” Alice retaliates, leaning over to brush a stray lock of hair out of Bella’s eyes. “You said you’d go to the library to read during ballet lessons, right? Carlisle has a thousand books in his office; you could go ask him if you can take some to you room to read. Or you can read them there- I’m sure he’d love the company. The rest of us get antsy too easily, so we don’t make for very good company.”
Bella tries to imagine curling up in an armchair, reading some hundred-year-old tome as Carlisle clack-clack-clacks on his computer, and fails.
“I don’t know. Can’t I just go into the town library?”
Alice’s laugh is bell-like and sweet as it rings around the room, but Bella’s impervious to its infectiousness as she stares at Alice, arms crossed against her chest.
“Bella, it’s an hour-long walk into town from here, and your concussion isn’t going to go away if you constantly jostle your head.”
“But you and Emmett taught me how to bike just the other day,” Bella points out. Alice sucks in a breath through their teeth.
“We probably shouldn’t have, honestly,” Alice tells her. “You have to be careful, Bella. I promise I’ll go with you into town once your concussion heals, but for now I think it’d be best if you just take it easy and try not to overexert yourself.”
“Okay, cool,” Bella says, as sarcastically as she can muster, before getting to her feet. The abrupt movement does hurt her head a little, but she’ll be damned if she lets Alice see that her worries are justified. “So I guess when the murderer breaks into the house and I’m forced to run for my life, I’ll have to run really, really carefully so I can avoid ‘jostling my head.’”
“The murderer isn’t going to break into this house, Bella,” Alice says gently, reaching up to her, but Bella turns on her heel and walks out the door before she can, muttering a ‘thank you’ that sounds insincere even to her own ears. She feels like an ungrateful asshole as she trudges down the hallway, but she feels her frustration bubbling inside of her, threatening to burst forth, and she’d rather be away from Alice when the urge to punch the first thing she sees hits. She digs her nails into her palms instead as she walks downstairs, stopping just short of drawing blood, and wanders into the kitchen, where she can hear muted voices.
Esme and Carlisle are sitting at the little breakfast nook in the corner, but when they see Bella they immediately fall silent, backs straightening like little kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Bella hovers awkwardly by the doorway, until Esme finally takes pity on her and says, “Good morning, Bella. I like your braids, did Alice do them?”
“Uh, yeah,” Bella says, and they lapse into an uncomfortable silence until Esme says, “Sorry, did you want something to eat? I haven’t started breakfast yet, but I can make scrambled eggs, or-“
“No, that’s- I mean, I’m okay,” Bella tells her, rubbing the back of her neck. “Um, I thought I’d just get a granola bar or Pop-Tart or something.”
Esme blinks.
“Pop-Tart?” She repeats, the words sounding unfamiliar and strange in her mouth. Bella gives her a weird look.
“Yeah, like the ones you put in the toaster oven?” She prompts, but Esme still has that perplexed look on her face. Whatever, she can deal with Esme’s health-nuttiness interfering with common knowledge of breakfast foods later. For now-
“What were you guys talking about?” Bella asks, taking a seat in the empty chair beside them. “Alice says they still don’t know who the dead guy is; did they update you on anything?”
Esme and Carlisle share a quick, barely perceptible glance.
“They have,” says Esme, slowly. “But not on his identity.”
“What, then?” Bella asks, trying unsuccessfully to stamp down the eagerness in her voice as she leans forward. Carlisle lets out a heavy sigh.
“Apparently,” he says, “the coroner’s report states that the man had been entirely drained of blood.”
The silence that follows is deafening. Bella stares at him, but his face remains stoic and grave, perfect marble features never so inhumanly defined and shapely as they are right now.
“You’re kidding me,” Bella says finally, aiming at incredulous but falling in the definitive realm of the unsure. “Like a vampire or something?”
“Or something,” says Emmett’s voice from behind her. When she turns around, Emmett’s in the threshold of the kitchen, arms braced against the doorframe above his head. “Turns out our little serial killer likes to bleed out his victims. Who would’ve thought?”
“Emmett,” comes out, sharp as a whip, from Esme’s lips. “Don’t.”
“I’m not a kid, you know,” says Bella, the anger coming to a simmer inside her chest. “And I’m not stupid, either. I want to know what’s happening.”
“That’s all they know so far,” Carlisle says, apologetic but firm. “I’m sorry, Bella. I wish we had more to tell you.”
Bella lets out an incredulous little laugh as she slumps back in her chair.
“Figures,” She says, shaking her head, but the anger ebbs as quickly as it came. “I’m sorry, too. This isn’t your fault. I know you’re probably under a lot of pressure right now, and me being bitter and gross isn’t helping anyone.”
“It’s okay, Bella,” Esme says, leaning across the table to pat her hand. “You have more reason than the rest of us to be upset. What you saw was traumatizing.”
“Yeah, well…” Bella trails off, shrugging uncomfortably as three pairs of eyes suddenly fixate on her. Suddenly eager for a distraction, she says, “Actually, I am pretty hungry. Can I still take you up on your offer for eggs?”
Esme beams, as though nothing in this world could make her happier than pouring cracking eggs in a pan. It’s both endearing and extremely weird, Bella thinks as she watches Esme busy herself with the pan and the olive oil and the eggs.
And then, without warning, Esme lets out a little shriek.
Carlisle and Emmett are at her side before Bella can even blink, grabbing either side of her shoulder as they move her away from the pan. At first, Bella thinks she must’ve accidentally gotten some hot oil on herself, but as she gets closer, she sees what made Esme scream like that.
The eggs are fertilized.
"I'm sorry," Esme gasps, staring at the small, barely-developed chicken fetuses in her no-stick pan. "I'm sorry. That just gave me a bit of a fright. I'm afraid I'll have to make you something else, Bella- French toast, perhaps?"
"No thanks," Bella says faintly. "I'm not really hungry anymore."