Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 10 (Twilight 10/11)

I eventually hauled myself up from the kitchen floor. Wallowing didn't help nothin'; an important lesson I'd learned in the years after Renee left.

I'd also learned that trying to drown out the sad with a few too many Rainiers was a recipe for disaster (and for one hell of a hangover) but against my better instincts I grabbed what was left of the six-pack from the fridge and settled down to finish out what was left of the game. The nerves about Ren's news must've hit deep, though, because I'd finished off four more beers before I even realized, and I hadn't a clue who won the game.

The words I had said to Ren echoed through my skull, damning themselves in their own inauthenticity. "She has a life here," I'd said. But did she? Sure, Bells had a few friends, but she just shut herself up in her room, for the most part. I hadn't exactly been all that much fun to be around, either, and I wondered whether or not the boundaries I'd kept for her had been a mistake. Maybe if we'd gone fishing together, or camping, or just gone for a few walks to show her some of my favourite things about the town, she'd have more of an appreciation for Forks. Maybe I'd been so damn worried about coming on too strong that she'd felt begun to feel lonely all the way out here.

Well, she did have a boyfriend now, and though I wasn't about to let her fall into the same spot her mother'd been in, I was reassured that Edward was another point in favour of Bells staying in Forks.

That is, until the front door burst open.

"Go away, Edward!" Bella screamed out the front door. Her voice was panicked, desperate. I shot to my feet, the few extra beers causing the room to tilt ever so slightly.

"Bella?" I called as she fled up the stairs.

"Leave me alone!" she screamed, slamming the door. I took a look outside; Edward must've taken off. I closed the door and hurried up the stairs. I hadn't seen my daughter this distressed since she was a baby.

To hell with boundaries. I knocked on the door. "Bella, are you okay? What's going on?"

"I'm going home," she shouted through the door. I could hear the sounds of movement on the other side, packing. 'Home' didn't mean here, apparently. My heart began to break.

Just a few hours earlier, I was joking around with her and her new boyfriend. Something serious must've happened for that to all fall apart so devastatingly quickly.

"Did he hurt you?" I asked. My time on the force gave me a hint of an understanding of what all women know; men are dangerous.

"No!" She screamed.

"Did he break up with you?" I asked, trying to understand.

"No!"

"What happened, Bella?" I knocked on the door, harder. If I could just get in there, if I could just talk to her, I could convince her not to leave, I could do better, this time.

"I broke up with him!"

She opened the door with strength I didn't know she had, and fled down the stairs, duffel bag in hand.

"What happened? I thought you liked him," I asked, chasing after her. We needed to stop, we needed to talk about this, we needed to say all the things that Renee and I never said before my life had been unconditionally and irrevocably destroyed.

I grabbed her arm. It sickened me to lay any sort of a hand on my daughter without her consent, but I couldn't just let her run out into the night, into the storm, without an actual conversation. When she turned around, I saw that she was crying, that she was scared. Whether she was scared of me, or of Edward, or of something else entirely, I didn't know.

"I do like him - that's the problem. I can't do this anymore! I can't put down any more roots here! I don't want to end up trapped in this stupid, boring town like Mom! I'm not going to make the same dumb mistake she did. I hate it -- I can't stay here another minute!"

I let go of her arm. It was as though all my worries, all my fears, all the insecurities that I'd had ever since Bells had arrived at that airport had come true. Was this a nightmare? Or was I truly -- like in my dreams -- being forced to relive the worst day of my life all over again.

"Bells, you can't leave now. It's nighttime," I whispered, trying desperately to overcome my stunned inaction as I'd failed to do the first time.

"I'll sleep in the truck if I get tired," she said. The picture of Renee, curled around a baby in the backseat of a rain-drenched SUV, flashed before my eyes. Renee.

"Just wait another week. "Renee will be back by then," I said, remembering the phone call mere hours earlier that had heralded the disaster to come.

"What?" she asked, thankfully stopping in her track on the way out the front door. Maybe she would stay for at least another week if she knew. I could use that time to convince her. Things could be different, this time.

"She called while you were out. Things aren't going so well in Florida, and if Phil doesn't get signed by the end of the week, they're going back to Arizona. The assistant coach of the Sidewinders said they might have a spot for another shortstop."

She stopped. She considered. She shook her head and turned the knob on the front door. "I have a key," she said.

I put my arm out to keep the door shut, and my eyes met my daughters there in that hallway. While they were the same bland brown as my own, the emotions contained within them were the exact same as Renee's had been when she'd last stood just on the other side of that door. Sadness. Worry. Panic. And, above all, decision. We both froze for a moment. Then Bella spoke.

"Just let me go, Charlie." She wrenched open the door, revealing the same rainy scene that had haunted my dreams for years on end. "It didn't work out, okay? I really, really hate Forks!"

Her mother's words, combined with a last, fatal admission that everything I'd dreaded had been true, struck a blow so devastating against my half-healed heart that I was pushed backwards by the power of it. My daughter fled into the cold, rainy night, and I didn't have any life left in me to go after her.

Through the crashing of thunder and pounding of rain, I heard Bella shout one last thing before her engine roared to life: "I'll call you tomorrow!"

I slumped to the floor of the house's entryway, and stared out into the empty abyss of night as the twin tail-lights of the truck I'd gifted her faded from view.

I had never, in all my sad, secluded life, felt more alone. 

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