Chapter Text
Winter in Phoenix was one of the times that Bella Swan liked the best. While the summers were, admittedly, so hot that it was hard not to want to just sit inside the house and huddle around the air conditioner, Phoenix winters were different. You could sit outside, go to shops, and enjoy the snow from a nice safe distance on the mountains. Then the desert, flat and brown as it was, seemed a little livelier without the constant sun.
It was completely different than winter in Washington. Grant it, Bella had never been in Forks during the winter. Even when she had gone up to see her father there, before her mother had fussed about the ‘dreary place’ and insisted that her father visit her in California, she’d only seen Forks in the summer. Some part of her thought dully that it didn’t look all that different in the winter. Other than a little grayer.
She remembered the rain, and how cold it had been, even in the summer. Now, that was essentially what she was going to be dealing with for the next year or so. Still, it was her decision.
It was obvious what was going to happen when Renee brought Phil home for the first time. Her mother never brought her boyfriends home. Oh, she would gossip to Bella about them, but somehow, the fact that Phil was the only one of them who Bella had ever seen as he was someone real. At first, Bella hadn’t really believed it. She’d seen her mother’s phases before, and there was no reason to believe that Phil wasn’t one of them. Then came the marriage, and then, Phil was on the road again, and Renee was, while pretending that it didn’t bother her, devastated.
Bella was used to being the one who ended up helping to solve Renee’s problems. Not being the problem herself. The fact was that Renee wanted to be with her husband, and the only reason that she wasn’t was because of Bella. If Bella wasn’t there…
What else was there to do?
Bella clutched her bag harder to herself. The plane would be landing soon, and she wanted to be ready. Her father would be waiting to pick her up and take her to the place she’d call home for the next year. Half of that being ready was preparing a big smile for Charlie.
He didn’t deserve to suffer just because she was having second thoughts. He’d been nothing but happy to have her there, and even though she didn’t like Forks. She didn’t like the rain; she didn’t like how nothing changed; and she didn’t like the fact that the only interesting shops were in Port Angeles which you couldn’t get to without a car.
She wasn’t going to think about it.
“So, Steve, what do you think about the murder upstate?”
The sudden question broke Bella out of her thoughts. Two men in the rows in front of her were talking softly. The plane was pretty small, and it didn’t have many people who were going to Port Angeles. (Forks was too small, and too isolated, to have an airport nearby.)
“What?”
“It’s got the police freaked. Some hikers went missing for like…fifteen minutes, when their friend found them, they looked like some wild animal had gotten to them. They can’t identify it.”
“Geez, Fred, can’t we talk about something else?”
“But that’s not all, they say that they looked like they had been drained of all blood!”
“…Fred, stop waving your hands like that. You look like you’re trying to tell a campfire story or something. The attendant's going to come.”
“You wouldn’t mind that, would you?”
“S-shut up!”
Bella looked around, trying to block out the conversation from her mind. The last thing that she wanted was to think about that. Particularly after how difficult it had been to get her mother to agree with this move.
Renee had been uncomfortable enough with her going to live with Charlie. At first, when Bella had announced the idea in September, Renee had objected about how little Bella liked the rain, but then the days had worn on, and Renee’s talk started getting less negative. Conversation slowly moved to how Charlie would love to have her there, and how it would only be a little while, since Phil was going to eventually get into the big leagues, and maybe they would be able to have a nice house in Florida that she’d been looking at… And how, really it would be fun. Meeting new people and trying new things.
Even though little in Forks was really ‘new’.
The worst realization was just how much of her things were just things that Renee had bought her. The magazines that she never read, the make-up she rarely wore, and fluffy, lacy things that were just like Renee’s. Most of those shirts weren’t really appropriate for Washington weather, so Bella had packed the things that could stand the cold, and said that they could keep the rest, and let it wait for her when she came back.
Renee had liked that, and she’d chatted about how this would be like a Christmas vacation. Only…after Christmas.
A bump caused Bella to look out the window. They were starting to descend. She’d forgotten just how green everything was below the clouds. She hated to sound immature, even in her own head, but childish or not, the amount of trees, and the lack of open space was a little claustrophobic when she was younger. She was being silly, Bella told herself. She’d lived in a huge city with hemmed in buildings and a neighborhood with postage stamp sized lots where she couldn’t so much as go out and get the paper without at least ten people being able to see her without needing to bother to step outside.
Compared to that, at least she’d get a little privacy.
Yes, that was how she was going to look at this. She’d decided; she wasn’t going to whine; and she was certainly not going to make Charlie miserable.
Speaking of Charlie… The captain announced their landing, and Bella braced herself.
Welcome to the first day of the next two years, Bella.
Because, after all, she knew perfectly well that she wasn’t going to Florida.
No. She wasn’t going to think about that.
Carefully, she stepped out of the plane, making sure to note the uneven point where the ramp ended. She refused to let her first steps be ones where she stumbled. Even since eighth grade, when her mother had signed her up for the school soccer team, and Bella had gotten a ball to the face, she’d seemed to have problems with tripping.
She made her way through the airport, which was smaller than Phoenix’s but still enough for her to get lost once in, looking for the familiar face of her father.
“Bella!” someone called, and she stopped.
A mustached man that she didn’t recognize at first was waving to her. For a moment, she still was confused, but then she gave a relieved smile, and summoning a touch of the bright persona that she tended to have around, Renee, went to greet her father.
“C-Dad,” she said, “You grew a mustache!”
Charlie didn’t like it when she called him by his first name. She was going to have to be careful of that. Renee had always hated it when she called her ‘mom’ and said that it made her feel old, so it had turned into a habit with Bella.
Charlie smiled but looked a little embarrassed.
“You think it’s too much?” he asked. “You didn’t even recognize me.”
“No,” she laughed. “It looks great.”
And her laughter was real.
“How’s your mother?” Charlie asked, leading her towards the pick-up.
It was the ritual. When she saw him, every year, he asked about Renee.
“She’s doing fine. She’s really happy with Phil, and they were talking about getting a place in Florida last I heard. Maybe Phil will hit the big leagues,” Bella shrugged.
She kind of doubted it, statistically speaking.
“Good to know that she’s found someone who makes her happy,” Charlie said, there was a softness to it that Bella always hated. She always wanted to tell him not to worry about her anymore. Particularly not that Renee had decided to ride off into the sunset with a man who was closer to Bella’s age than her own, but she controlled herself, and Charlie shook himself out of whatever he had been thinking. “Anyway, let’s pick up your luggage and head back.”
Bella nodded. The nice thing about her and Charlie is that they matched one another’s temperaments enough so that both were perfectly happy to sit in a car for a long drive in companionable silence.
It was the biggest way that anyone could tell that they were related. In appearance Bella more strongly resembled Renee. Both of them had the same brown hair and eyes, though hers was straighter. Only Renee’s skin could be called ‘ivory’ while Bella’s would have been better called ‘pasty’, and while Renee was tall and slender, Bella was shorter and well…a little bottom heavy.
“I didn’t bring the cruiser, so I think that they’ll be room for everything,” Charlie said.
“Heh, well, it is a pain when I have to sit in the back.”
It was illegal for her, being that she wasn’t a police officer or a ride along, to be in the front. The drives in Charlie’s cruiser had always been the closest that Bella ever wanted to be to getting arrested. Charlie even had to open the doors for her.
They didn’t talk much more as Bella got her luggage and they headed for the car. This was usual too. It was hard to think of anything to say after a year apart. Usually, when they saw one another in California, it had only been about the third or fourth day when they really started to have anything to talk about.
“You’ll probably be coming to Port Angeles a lot,” Charlie broke the silence. “I know that there’s not much in Forks, but there’s a mall here, and some bookstore. There are even a few little ones like the one in San Diego that you spent so much time in.”
“You looked?” Bella knew that the surprise was leaking into her voice, and she didn’t care.
Charlie looked a little embarrassed but kept his eye on the road.
“There was a little time to kill while I waited for your flight.”
Still. The traitorous thought that Renee wouldn’t have done that flitted through her mind, but she shoved it down. Renee didn’t need to do anything for her.
“I hope we’ll be able to go down there on some weekends,” Bella said, trying to make herself look even slightly less like the little ninny that she felt like she was being.
Charlie didn’t answer, but he was smiling. She hoped that that was a good sign. Bella didn’t read much. There wasn’t all that much time, but she enjoyed it when she had it. Unfortunately, when it wasn’t school, Renee usually wanted Bella to do something with her. Like, lately, go to Phil’s games. The hotdogs had been good, but she’d spent more time worrying if she was going to get hit in the head with a baseball than enjoying the show.
Charlie wasn’t much for that kind of thing, so this might be his way to giving her something to do. Still, she appreciated it.
They drove in silence until there was a sudden rush of motion, and commerce center and a familiar green sign came into view. It almost blended into the rest of the environment around it, and looked like it had probably been constructed in the seventies. On one side there was a picture of what looked like a large truck, driving across a snowy, mountainous landscape past a pine tree. Beneath the truck, cracks, or small rivers all united to form a larger body with a single white fish. Next to the picture, large, white letters jetted out from it.
The City of Forks Welcomes You
Maybe she was biased, but ‘city’ was a little generous for a town with a population of thirty-three hundred people. She’d looked. As pathetic as that was. Studying impulsively and categorizing information were kind of normal for her. She had to be organized. She usually had to know everything.
Something moved in the bushes past the sign, and Bella squinted to get a good look at it. Maybe it was a deer or something. She didn’t usually see a lot of wildlife.
“Are there lots of animals here?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Billy and I used to go hunting, but that was before he ended up in a wheelchair.”
“Billy’s in a wheelchair??” Bella asked, turning to look at him. “What happened?”
Billy Black was Charlie’s old friend from the Quileute reservation in La Push. Every year that she’d been in Forks before this, she’d seen him and his family. She’d usually ended up playing with his son Jacob, since Rachel and Rebecca considered themselves far to ‘mature’ to hang around them.
“Oh, it was his diabetes,” Charlie said, looking ahead, but he didn’t seem to be seeing it. “He’s in a wheelchair now. We mostly just end up fishing these days. But, anyways, there’s plenty of things living here. I expect you’ll grow to hate the deer if you try planting anything.”
“I’m really sorry to hear about Billy,” Bella said. “…maybe we’ll visit?”
She wasn’t sure what that visit would imply, only that she should visit.
Charlie smiled again, but he didn’t answer as the car pulled through the town.
Forks didn’t look all that different from how she remembered it. Particularly with the rain. A lot of Forks was constructed along Forks Ave, but once he got further in, the main street moved into smaller suburbs and branching streets. If she ignored the trees and the lack of chain restaurants, it wasn’t all that different from Phoenix. Still the fact that they were the same stores, the same restaurants, and even the same weather was disheartening.
Bella huffed and shook her head. What was she expecting? And she’d agreed to do this after all.
“That’s where you’re going to be going to school,” Charlie said, pointing to a small road that turned sharply away from them.
She couldn’t see Forks High, but the thought of it made her blanch slightly. She wasn’t looking forwards to that.
It didn’t take too long for Charlie to pull into one of the many side streets to a familiar small two story white house. It looked just the same as when she was a child. Charlie had never repainted what her mother had done and hadn’t added much in the way of flowers, but that was probably more because he was busy. Still, it seemed…cozier than it had when she was there last.
Maybe it was just the fact that she was going to be living there now. Maybe it was because she was finally going to be out of the rain.
Charlie already had her bags when she’d stepped out. She shivered a little bit as the wind hit her, even though she was wearing one of her heavier coats (she needed a new one), and followed her father into her new home. One look around told her that, like the outside of the house, Charlie hadn’t changed anything. The walls were the same colors that Renee had painted, the curtains were what she had chosen. The only difference was that the old TV that she’d seen in the summers had been replaced.
Otherwise, the house felt like it was silently waiting for Renee to come back, bring along with her Baby Bella, so that they could start out the promise of a life that had never happened.
The worst part was the wedding picture on the mantle in the living room. He and Renee stood, smiling in a small church. Charlie looking young and shy and a little shocked by his own luck. Renee looked pretty and innocent and excited for all the possibilities that the future was holding for her. Her hair was dyed blonde in that picture.
The marriage didn’t even last a year, but Charlie kept that picture up. Just like he still wore the wedding ring.
It was surrounded by what she could only call the Shelf of Bella. She blinked and stepped back in surprise. Every single school picture ever taken of her, including a particularly hideous one when she was in braces and her hair looked like a frizz ball, graced the mantel around the picture. For a moment, she paused, then she turned back to talk to Charlie, but he was already going up the stairs.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said, as Bella followed, only pausing once to look back at all the Bellas smiling awkwardly back at her. Renee hadn’t ever kept one picture of her. Bella had never overly cared. She hated pictures of herself. She was always too fat, too plain, and her smile was wrong. She’d never thought that Renee had been sending them to Charlie. It felt…weird, so she pushed it away from her and followed her father.
The upstairs was small, with only two bedrooms and a shared bathroom between them. When she was younger, she’d slept in her babyroom. It had been a small, pleasant room in its way, with blue walls, a little white bed, and lacy curtains that were probably Renee’s choice. Charlie was leading her back into that room now. She wondered if, it to, was going to be waiting for the Bella that could have been, but the moment that Charlie opened the door, she realized that she was wrong.
Charlie had painted the old blue walls a soft yellow, and while the lace was there still, it had been freshly cleaned. Where the small twin had been, there was a comfortable looking double bed with a quilt laid across it. In one corner was a small, white desk with a light and (she almost giggled) a cactus sitting on it. Across from it was a white bookshelf, empty and waiting for her, with a white, wicker chair by the window for her to read. A floor lamp stood by the bed, again white with a yellow shade. The whole thing seemed like a bright little ray of sunshine in this house. It was new, vibrant.
Maybe it wasn’t the biggest gesture in the world, but she knew how hard a police chief worked, and…
“I wasn’t sure what kind of bedspread that you’d like,” Charlie said, looking away. “If you want a different one…”
“Dad, this…this looks amazing,” she said, turning to him, a lightness in her stomach that hadn’t been there a little while ago. “I love it.”
Charlie seemed to slowly relax, and a smile spread across his face. He…really wanted her there…didn’t he?
Before she could fully digest that thought, there was a sudden honking car horn outside in the yard, and Charlie’s smile got a little mysterious.
“Well, that should be the other part of your welcome present,” he said.
“There’s more?”
This was plenty.
Charlie didn’t respond, but rather headed downstairs. Bella hesitated again. She didn’t know how to respond to this. She…
The horn honked again, and she turned away from the gift to head downstairs. Charlie was waiting for her, with the door open facing the yard. The horn was coming from a large red pick-up that was parked in the drive way. A young man with reddish skin was honking on the horn as loud as he could, grinning. He waved at her from the car and honked again. He was about her age, maybe a little younger. His long hair was tied back into a ponytail, and while there was something familiar about him, for a moment, she had trouble placing him.
“Ja-”
“Enough already,” the door to the smaller, tan car hooked up behind the trunk opened and the man inside opened the door. “They hear you. Along with any of the neighbors who aren’t deaf yet!”
The boy just grinned, opened the door, and jumped out himself. On his feet, he was a good deal taller than Bella, though that wasn’t much of a feat. Bella had always been short.
“Jacob, good to see you,” Charlie smiled. “This is Bella. Bella, this is Jacob Black, and that is your welcome to Forks present.”
Bella froze, eyes moving from Jacob to the truck. She hadn’t really paid too much attention to it, other than registering that it was large, it was a truck, and it was older. It also looked like it was about ready to total anything that happened to get in its way. She didn’t know much about cars, but her mother had had a classic car phase for about a week, and she’d mentioned how good the old Chevys were.
She’d been thinking about getting a car, probably an old beater given the amount of money that she had saved up, but this…
“Really?” she asked, looking around from between them, and she’d immediate stepped up, looking at the thing.
“Yup,” Jacob said, grinning. “I’ve been keeping her going for the last couple years, so if you need help, just call. The engine’s a little loud, just to tell you, but that’s normal.”
“I’ll remember that…” she said, stepping up so she could sit in the driver’s seat. It felt like a tank.
Not that that was a bad thing. Given her luck, her first car being a tank was probably a very, very good thing.
“See,” Billy Black said, as Charlie helped him into his wheelchair. “I told you she’d like it. What teenager doesn’t want a car?”
“I want a bike!” Jacob piped up.
“No.”
Bella laughed a little, looking to her father.
“This is so great,” she said. “Really. I love it.”
She was blushing, the way that she tended to do when she didn’t know what to say or do, but she wanted to say it. Charlie was trying so hard to make her feel welcome there. She opened her mouth to say more, but Billy was talking.
“Charlie, I hate to interrupt your daughter’s homecoming but…have you heard anything more about what happened up state?”
Maybe it was better that way. She wasn’t sure. Bella wasn’t used to being the center of attention like this.
“Nice to see you again,” Jacob said, cutting into her thoughts.
Bella almost jumped, but looked over, smiling and trying not to look like she was an idiot.
“It’s been forever,” Bella nodded. “How are your sisters?”
The last time she’d seen Jacob was when she was thirteen and he was eleven. They’d tried to write, but Jacob didn’t have the patience, and Bella didn’t have the stories. It was funny, looking back to those summers. This awkwardness didn’t exist then.
“College, if that's a status,” Jacob said. “All I really hear from them is how hard it is. They left about a week ago, it’s too bad, they would have loved to see you again.”
Bella smirked, jumping down from the car. She stopped as she noticed Jacob’s grin.
“What?” she asked.
“You haven’t grown at all,” he grinned.
“Well, excuse me for not turning into a mountain!” Bella said in mock annoyance, but he was still grinning. “Are you guys sure about this car? It seems so nice, and…it would be my first and…”
Bella had terrible luck.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s been Dad’s for…ever…but he’s not really interested in it anymore. Honestly, I’m just glad that this baby isn’t getting scrapped. It’s a great car!”
She paused, looking around her.
“It looks like I’ve never left,” she said softly.
“Yeah. Those were pretty good times. Remember when we tried to find Daskiya’s house?” Jacob asked.
It had been the last summer that she’d seen Jacob. They hadn’t been all that close, but there were times when the other two boys that he had played with weren’t there, and Charlie and Billy seemed to plan it that way.
“Yeah, we ended up lost and rained on,” Bella shook her head. “You were furious that we didn’t find anything. You’d even insisted that we paint ourselves for the occasion.”
Jacob groaned.
“I was hoping you forgot that,” he said.
Bella smiled. “I have a distinct memory of your saying that we both needed warpaint for the occasion, but all we had was Rachel’s make-up.”
The memory was quickly coming back. Bella hadn’t really been very enthusiastic, but she’d gone along with it, attempting to make himself up into the more attractive looking warrior to ever hunt monsters, while Jacob had ended up making a lipstick stripe along his nose.
“Do me a favor and never tell Quil or Embry about that. Still, it was kind of fun. Particularly when we accidentally found the cliffs.”
Bella smiled at the memory. They’d been so lost that it hadn’t been funny. It had only been sheer luck that Harry Clearwater had been driving by in time to see the two confused looking children wandering around, with running make-up. That had led to an uncomfortable ride back, as well as Renee’s banning Bella from being allowed to come back.
“Those cliffs were really amazing. I kind of wish we’d found them when we weren’t being rained on though,” Bella said. The realization came that there was no reason why she shouldn’t see the cliffs and La Push. After all, she lived here now, and her father had just made sure that she had the means to get around…
He hadn’t wanted her to be bored.
Bella glanced over at Charlie, who was talking quietly to Billy. There had to be something that she could do…
“Hey, if you’re ever in La Push, we sometimes go cliff diving over there. It’s great, you should try it one day!” Jacob said.
“No!” Charlie called. “Bella is not going cliff diving without supervision!”
“You shouldn’t be doing it either!” Billy growled.
Jacob laughed.
Bella wrapped her arms around herself, watching, but she was smiling, she realized, and not because she felt that she needed to.
She needed to do…something…
Billy and Jacob ended up staying for the evening. Charlie looked a little unsure of if Bella was going to be alright with it, at first, but honestly, Bella was more than happy to have people there. For one thing, it was nice to catch up with the few people that she could actually remember from Forks, and for another, it was a nice distraction from the thing that was really nagging at her: school
“So, Jacob, you’re in highschool now, right?” Bella asked, after dinner when they had ended up sitting in front of the fireplace. Bella was still avoiding the made gazes of her pictured selves.
“Yeah,” Jacob said, “Freshman.”
“So, I guess that means that we’ll be seeing one another.
A slight hope was starting to appear in Bella’s mind. At least she might have someone that she could sit with.
“Er…no…” Jacob said. “I’m going to the Tribal School.”
“Oh…” Bella said. Well, there went that.
“But we can still meet up,” Jacob said. “Quil and Embry would glad to have someone else to play games with. Quil particularly. If he flirts too much with you, smack him.”
Bella fixed a smile on her face and nodded. While that did make her feel that at least she might have someone her age to talk with, it didn’t stop the thing that was bothering her.
She didn’t want to admit it, but the idea of going to a new school worried her. It wasn’t that she was nervous about making friends. She hadn’t had any friends in Phoenix, and she didn’t think that she’d have any in Forks. It was the simple fact that, while in Phoenix, she was just another face in a very large crowd. People came and went all the time as families moved. Here, the kids had likely all grown up together. Cliques would be well established.
And while it was one thing to be the outlier in a huge population, it was something else to be one in a place like this.
But she wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, and she certainly wasn’t going to be the mood killer in a party meant for her.
“By the way,” Jacob asked. “What’s all this junk about a murder?”
“I heard about that on the plane here. Something happened upstate?” Bella asked. It was coming up so often, that she was starting to wonder.
Charlie sighed, leaning forward so that his elbow were on his knees.
“It’s making a lot of people nervous. This isn’t the first time that there have been some strange things happening in the woods, but the fact that it happened so fast is making people nervous. Three hikers went out, apparently looking for Bigfoot. They split up briefly to set up a camera before returning to a campsite, but then, when they didn’t come back out, their friend got nervous and went looking for them, camera in hand. They found the two bodies. It looked like something attacked them, going for the throat, but whatever it was, happened fast and without a sound.”
“The ugly thing is that when they did an autopsy, the bite makes were made by a person,” Charlie shook his head. “There’s a hunt going on for the killer, but so far, no one’s found anything. Police in towns like this are being asked to keep an eye out. They might have already left.”
“Creepy…” Jacob muttered.
Billy didn’t say anything. He was staring into the fire, his eyes reflecting the odd light. He looked...pensive…as if he was remembering something.
“Well, let’s hope that the nut gets found,” Billy said.
Bella nodded. The whole thing was creepy. She supposed though, that an area without the quantity of murders that Phoenix had would need to make up that with quality. Fun times.
“Well, on that happy note,” Billy said, straightening, “Jacob is going to need to get to bed. After all, there’s school tomorrow. Welcome back to Forks, Bella.”
And, with a warm smile at her, Billy started motioning Jacob to help him out of the house. Jacob groaned, rolling his eyes.
“Well, maybe we’ll see you around,” he said. “Judging by how much Charlie and Billy go fishing, we might want to start up a video game night or something. I just got a game cube, so we could play Super Smash Brothers!”
Bella fixed a smile on her face. She’d never played one in her life. When she’d asked for a Playstation when she was ten, her mother told her point blank that she wouldn’t like it, and they didn’t have games for girls.
“It could be fun,” Charlie looked at her hopefully.
“Ah…sure…” Bella said.
“Great! Maybe I can Embry and Quil and maybe Leah to come too…”
He was muttering about the party he was going to set up as she helped his father out the door and they said their goodnights, and Bella repeated her thanks for the car. When she could hear the sounds of the Billy’s car leaving, Charlie turned again to her.
“That was fun,” Bella said, and it was, though the idea of a big video game party wasn’t something that she was sure about.
Tentatively, Charlie had put a hand on her shoulder. For a moment neither of them said anything.
“You’d better get to bed. You’ve got a big day ahead of you. I’ve already called the school and enrolled you so…”
“Thanks, Dad. For everything,” she seemed to be saying that a lot today.
After a final moment, Charlie let go and said his goodnights, leaving Bella to get a drink of water and head back to her room, where the lamp was on, and her bags were sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting for her. Bella sat down on the bed, looking at the room around her.
It wasn’t home. The mattress was wrong, and she missed Renee, but it wasn’t going to be too bad. She’d be fine. She’d been welcomed with open arms. Charlie was almost painfully happy to have her there. All the room needed was some pictures…and some lights, and maybe…
She’d be fine.
Bella sighed, moving her luggage onto the bed to get ready to unpack. There wasn’t too much there, so she’d send an email to Renee that she probably wouldn’t read until the next day and head to bed.
There was a noise outside that she didn’t recognize, and she stood up, moving to the window to look out at her new home. She could see her new car, waiting patiently for the next morning when she’d was going to drive it to school, and there were the lights of the neighbors’ houses, for once a respectable distance away.
Maybe it had been the wind? Or the rain. It was still pattering gently on the roof, so maybe a branch had fallen or something. It was probably going to take a while to get used to this…
She’d be fine.
Something move in the yard, and Bella jumped back automatically.
Whatever it was, it had been big. A deer? A bear? That sounded so stupid, but bears lived in Washington, right? And Forks was small enough…
Bella refused to go running to her father like a paranoid little five-year-old and tell him that she thought that she’d seen a stinking bear.
Probably just a deer. Hadn’t Billy or Charlie or Jacob mentioned them?
That didn’t stop her from closing the curtains and locking her window.