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Charlie leaned his head back against the seat of his police cruiser, sighing a cloud of mist into the early morning air. Another 5am start. Like every weekday for the past 18 years. But his sense of dread was new—and growing.
Forks had always been a quiet, gloomy ghost town. The locals were too sedated by the near-constant rain and cold to get up to much trouble. Most weeks, the high point of Charlie’s job as police chief was writing a speeding ticket for the occasional out of towner or throwing a small party for one of the squad’s birthday. He had signed up for the police force to do some good but the reality of his job here was simply maintaining order. The monotony of his life acted like a security blanket, muffling the sounds of any possible lurking doubts about his choices or whether he was actually making a difference at all.
For the past few weeks, he had begun to actually feel like a policeman, and he didn’t like it as much as he had imagined. Dealing with real problems felt too…real. Too dangerous. Bella moving back in with him had been enough to upset the balance of his carefully maintained rituals. His life as a hermit didn’t prepare him to be the kind of father to Bella that he would have liked, but he was trying, dammit, and he would do anything he could to keep her happy and safe.
It had never been very hard to be safe in Forks until a few weeks ago when the attacks started happening. The first had been down in Mason county and he had gone down to help with the resulting bear hunt. The attack site was downright horrific.
A gruesome animal attack two counties away was enough to make Charlie worry about Bella’s safety here. Now his buddy Waylon had been killed, and they no longer suspected animals.
And Bella seemed to be finding danger in the strangest places. It was like she was some sort of magnet, attracting all sorts of strange accidents around her. He knew she was clumsy, but how could anything explain the number of narrow misses—the latest being an out of control truck in the school parking lot—besides some sort of hex?
The accidents were one thing—no one could deny that they had actually happened—but there were some things Charlie worried about that he couldn’t be sure weren’t just new overprotective dad instincts. Regardless of the reason, that Cullen boy gave him the creeps.
The Cullens had been nothing but nice and respectful ever since they moved to Forks. Dr. Cullen was an outstanding addition to the local medical team, his wife was active in the PTA, and their adopted children were polite and never caused any trouble. Charlie had defended them in conversation may times in the past on this basis. Why was it that now, he felt like there was something deeply wrong—even sinister—about them?
It probably had something to do with Edward taking an interest in Bella and proceeding to follow her around everywhere.
Charlie had bristled even when that dopey Newton boy starting sniffing around and just “happened” to bump into them at the diner every few days. Not to mention all the other parents with kids in high school, all the teachers, and all the other observers tipping him off about it. Forks was too small for any semblance of privacy.
Mike Newton was irritating, but harmless—pretty much just a standard teenage boy. Charlie assumed Bella’s mom had taken care of all the requisite awkward conversations concerning dating.
This Edward kid, though, was clearly something else. And something else to Bella, too. The various Forks gossip circles had conflicting views on their budding relationship. To some, limited interactions with the Cullens gave them a particularly positive impression, and they saw the youngest—Edward—as a real catch. Others (mostly the dads) felt like there was something off about him, about all of them. Were they really in high school? And in Forks, of all places? They looked like catalogue models in their 30s.
Charlie knew that he wasn’t really a parent to Bella. He could hear her slip occasionally and start to call him “Charlie” instead of “Dad.” And that was only fair, he supposed. Now he had the opportunity to be a real part of her life and build a relationship with her. He didn’t want to screw that up by sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.
But Edward had the smug, pinched facial features of someone who was dangerous and knew it. He was too polite, too collected—he had none of the fidgety, awkward, bashful behaviors of a normal teenage boy meeting his girlfriend’s father. Or any of the blushing, either. He looked… cold.
Charlie pictured Edward’s pale, freakishly beautiful face as his muscle-memory steered the cruiser toward the station.
Maybe it’s too late for me to have a say in how she lives her life. Maybe I should call her mother? Maybe I should just stay out of it.
As he pulled into his parking spot in front of the station, the sight of his fellow officers trickling into work reminded him once again of the night they found Waylon’s body. The whole squad was still mired in that pain. It was as if they were physically carrying it, weighing down their shoulders, etching new lines into their faces.
Maybe the panic of the recent murders and his new position as Bella’s live-in guardian were just messing with his head a bit. Edward had never been a bad kid, and it was probably unfair of Charlie to judge him so harshly. Edward wasn’t the one who killed his friend, after all. He was just the unfortunate mental punching bag of Charlie’s anguish.
But a small part of Charlie still felt that, somehow, in some way, Edward was tied up in all of this.
He wasn’t proud to shackle that kind of blame on a teenager, but he couldn’t help but see him as a threat.
Charlie sighed again, grunting a bit as he pulled his tired limbs out of the police cruiser.
Was this all in his head, or was there truly trouble afoot?
His newfound sense of dread surged. Guess it’s only a matter of time before we find out.