Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 9 (Twilight 9/11)

I settled in for the game after the kids drove off, cracking a Rainier on the way to the couch. A part of me was still worried about them being out there in the coming storm, but the thought of Carlisle chaperoning put me at ease.

The Mariners were heading into the eight inning when I got a call, and I hauled myself over to the kitchen phone, fearing the worst might have happened to Bells. The voice on the other line wasn't Bella, or Edward, or Carlisle for that matter, thought it was eerily similar to my daughter's; it was her mother.

"Yello?" I said, leaning against the faded yellow wallpaper of the kitchen.

"Charlie?" Renee's voice caught me off guard, as it always does.

"Ren? Hey, uh, sorry, Bell's not in right now."

"Oh shoot. I was hoping to catch her. No bother, I was actually meaning to chat with you too, Charlie. Some things have... changed."

"Oh yeah? How so?" I asked, feeling the first kindling of worry spark in my chest.

"Well things haven't exactly been working out so well for Phil here in Florida, so unless he lands a spot on the team by Friday we'll likely be heading back home to Phoenix. He thinks that he can work something out with the Sidewinders after chatting with the assistant co-"

I cut her off.

"So you're calling to tell Bells to come back now, is that it?" I couldn't control the panic that dripped off the words. "Now that you're home there's no reason for her to be stuck out in Forks too, huh?"

"No, Charlie, god no. I just wanted to let Bella know what our plans are, and that the option is always there for if she wants to come back."

"Damnit Ren, she's got a life here now!" I was shouting. It was something I hadn't done in, well, in about 17 years. "She's got friends, school, hell she's even got a boyfriend. She can't just uproot herself every time you decide to take off, that ain't healthy for anybody."

"I really can't get into this with you again, Charlie," Renee sighed, exasperated. "Just let Bella know that I called, and that we'll likely be back in Phoenix by the end of next week."

"I just got her ba-" I began to say, though was cut off by the static nothingness of an empty line.

"I just got her back," I whispered to myself instead, slumping down onto the cold tiles of the kitchen floor. Bells had crawled across this very floor back when Renee was still my wife, Bella was still our daughter, and life was still full of possibility. Even back then, she'd had my two-footedness. As Bells stumbled her way from Renee to me to Renee again, the woman who was my wife would laugh and say that at least Bella didn't have my moustache. That always got me chuckling, which got Bella laughing the sweet, innocent, unashamed laughter only babies are capable of making. It became part of the soundtrack to our fleeting year together as a family in this little house, when the yellow walls were still bright and the flower beds were colourful and the compulsory thought of Renee upon returning home was a blessing rather than a curse.

But even the best days could be overshadowed by the stormy skies of Forks, and as I sat on the bleak floor of my only-recently-less-lonely kitchen, I heard the first echo of thunder in the distance, just as I'd heard it on that day so long ago.

17 years earlier

"Mom, dad, ya'll will be alright now, right?" I said to my parents as they lay side by side on their bed. The sound of a second thunderclap was loud enough that it felt as though the whole house shook.

"Is Rocky alright? He's always been afraid of the storms," my mom said, sitting up and trying to look around the floor of the bedroom. Rocky had died a few years earlier, back in '85, but the Alzheimers had wiped that little bit of Swan history clear from her brain. I was just glad she still remembered me and dad, and, on occasion, Renee.

"Yeah, he's going to be okay," I said. "Dad, you doing alright?"

Geoffrey Swan had always been larger than life, and though his arthritis had worsened over the years -- badly enough that he'd needed more and more of my help with mom -- he winked at me in the conspiratorial way he always did. "We'll be alright, Charles, you just go make sure those girls of yours are warm and dry now, y'hear?"

I nodded and left the room, hustling down the stairs three at a time the way I'd always done as a kid. My parents lived just a few streets away from Ren and I's little home, which made it easier to check in on them as the years took their toll. My parents had me in their mid-forties, which was, as my mom put it, "a miraculous blessing," but it also meant that they'd become seniors by the time I entered my twenties. I loved them, but occasionally the weight of responsibility on my shoulders of making sure they were doing alright and raising my newborn daughter felt like more of a mountain than a molehill. I was just glad that Ren and I had Bells young, so that we'd get to spend the best years of our young adult lives raising her together as best we could.

I really don't know how much longer my parents have, I thought bleakly as I made the brisk jog  back to me and Ren's own little nest. I didn't like to think about it too much, but both of their conditions had worsened by quite a bit over the past year. Seeing their granddaughter, little Isabella, seemed to have breathed new life into both of them for some time; I'd even begun to consider Ren's ever-increasing suggestions that we move somewhere sunnier, but then things took a turn and any plans of leaving Forks were put on hold indefinitely.

I understood Renee's drive to leave, I really did. She'd only even come to Forks in the first place as one stop among many on a whirlwind road trip, and while our romance burned hot enough to mean marriage after just a few weeks and a pregnancy a few after that, I couldn't help but worry that the rains of Forks were dousing that fire. Of course, there was no thought of moving when she was pregnant, or when Bells was a newborn, but Renee's wanderlust seemed to be coming back with a vengeance after spending so long in this one rainy place. I'd never been out of Forks for longer than a week in my life, but I'd played around with the idea in my head many a restless night and decided that, if my parents started feeling a bit better (or if the worst should happen, god forbid) we might well move on south -- if that's what Ren really needed.

When I got home, I saw that Renee was waiting in the doorway for me. A flash of lighting lit the skies, and in that brief illumination I saw that my wife was drenched, as though she'd been out in the rain for some time.

"Ren! What are you doin' out here? Let's get inside, get warm. Where's Bells?" Ducking under the cover of the front porch, I could see that it wasn't just drops of rain under Renee's eyes. "Is Bells okay? Are you okay?"

"No Charlie! I'm not okay! I've told you for months I'm not okay... I can't do this, I can't live like this," she said, her voice cutting through the pounding of rain and booming of thunder like its very own force of nature. I heard the sound of a child, our child, crying from inside Renee's SUV. I realized what this finally was.

"No, no no no no no. Ren. Please. Just give it some more time, okay? Just wait, just wait. It'll get better here, okay, or if it doesn't, we'll figure it out. We can figure it out, Ren, please."

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness underneath our little white house's overhang, I could see the look on my wife's face. There was sorrow, and some anger, but no uncertainty. The decision had already been made. She began backing her way towards the driveway. Towards Bella. Towards her escape from Forks. Tears began to blur my vision, mixing with the damningly constant rain.

"Ren. Please," was all I managed to say. She stopped, a few feet away, standing underneath the onslaught of water.

"If you truly do love me..." she said in a voice that had already begun to seem distant, yet still held the warmth that had filled our home and my life over the past year, "...you'll just let me go, Charlie."

And so I did.