CHAPTER THREE
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ'ᴅ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ɢᴏ?

One thing I'd noticed about Alice, was her inability to stay still. It was so unlike the rest of us. While the rest of the Cullens, with their effortless beauty and grace, could sit for hours, calm and unblinking, Alice could not last a minute. As I lay beside her on the bed, her head resting against my stomach, she played with my hands, moving between fingers as if inspecting the most interesting thing in the world. She hummed out a song- something I might've heard coming from Rose's radio- and tapped a bare foot against the metal bar of the railing.

It was this excitability that meant I wasn't surprised when she eventually shot up from the bed, stopping to beckon to me for a moment at her bedroom door before she sprinted downstairs. For a moment, I knew she must have seen something, to take her to the front door. But then in the past weeks, it was rather her inability to see anything that often spurred her movements. Jacob's presence often had that effect.

When I finally made my way down the hall, Alice's high voice was already filling the room. Everyone was listening. Edward shared the same grave look that was plastered on her face. When she saw me again, eyes squeezed shut, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose, she strode across the room and there her head down onto my shoulder as if it could block anything that was in her mind.

"What is he doing? What is Jacob doing that has erased my schedule for the entire day? I can't see anything!" She groaned, only pulling her head up again when her brother spoke.

His words came out as an angry growl. "He talked to Charlie. He thinks Charlie is following after him, coming here."

"Told Charlie? Told him what?" Bella echoed, her red eyes piercing into him.

"What else could he have told him to send him racing here?" Alice said, arms folded petulantly over her chest.

"Edward?" Bella glanced over to him, seeing his nod confirm her scared suspicions. She let out a brief shriek of frustration. "Doesn't he understand? How could he do that? Charlie can't know about me! About vampires! That would put him on a hit list that even the Cullens couldn't save him from."

I didn't voice the fact that my own fears mimicked that of Bella's. She didn't need any more pessimism surrounding the fate of her father. Nor did I voice the fact that this scene here was likely to have always happened, no matter the circumstances. Bella had been set on her changing since the moment she'd found out about us all- Charlie was always going to be the compromise.

But Charlie knowing about why her eyes were red and why she'd been on the brink of death didn't need to be a bad thing. In a way, he was the most laid-back man I'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, along with Carlise. Though looking back, my track run with men had never been very positive. I could have sworn I saw Edward nodding along with my thoughts.

"Jacob's on his way in now."

The group didn't give him time to reach the door. Alice pushed the front door open, readying to shout at him, but Jacob glided straight past, brushing her slightly with his shoulder as he strode straight through into the living room. She glared after him, mouth opening and closing again, for once speechless.

"Hey, guys," he said, cheerily, grinning from ear to ear. "Charlie'll be here soon. Just a heads up, I assume Alice is getting you sunglasses or something?"

"You assume way too much. What have you done?"

Jake shrugged and threw himself against the settee, leaning back on his arms. "Blondie and Emmett woke me up this morning going on and on about you all moving cross country. Like I could let you leave. Charlie was the biggest issue there, right? Problem solved."

Edward only took a second to compose himself before he went to throw back a shout, but Bella stopped him easily with a hand on his shoulder. There was a scowl on her face, directed at her best friend.

"Do you even realise the danger you've put him in?"

"There's no danger. Except from you. But you've got a type of supernatural self-control, or am I wrong? Much less exciting."

After that comment, though, not even Bella could stop Edward's anger.

"It's a working theory and you think the test subject should be Charlie? Did you even consider the pain you're putting her through? I suppose what happens to Bella no longer concerns you," he said, watching as Jacobs's face fell ever so slightly.

He might've smirked, at the sight of Jake's confidence faltering, had it not been at Bella's expense. At his side, she tried to calm herself, eyes closed, blocking her crimson gaze from Jake's pleading eyes.

The swallowing of his throat was audible. "Pain?"

Edward's response was relentless. "Like a white-hot branding iron down her throat."

The air was still for a moment, as his words settled. We all remembered the feeling of thirst. How hard it had been to resist. Bella was feeling it now. The acknowledgement only must have made it worse. But in a way, Jacob had been right. Bella's control of her new-born self was extraordinarily unheard of.

"I didn't know that," Jacob insisted, his voice lowered slightly.

"Then maybe you should have asked before you went and risked everything."

"You would have stopped me!"

"Rightly so," Alice growled, eyes narrowing, her grip on my wrist tightening.

"This isn't about me, Jacob. This is about Charlie. How could you put him in danger like this? Didn't you think?"

Jacob shook off the prior sense of guilt and pulled on his usual arrogant smirk. 

"Relax, I didn't tell him anything you weren't planning on telling him."

"But he's coming here," Bella stated, posing it as a question.

Jake shrugged again as if the answer was obvious. He pulled his arms from behind his head and folded them across his chest, flexing the muscles jarringly. "Wasn't the whole plan to let him make his own assumptions? I think I provided a pretty nice red herring."

"I don't have the patience for this, Jacob. Tell us straight," Bella snapped.

"I didn't tell him anything about you, Bella. Not really. I told him about me."

I could imagine it, the look of pure shock on Charlie's face, seeing the very same large wolf he'd talked about only a year prior. The same wolf that was drawn on the front of posters that were pinned from the centre of the small town to the very furthest outskirts.

The revving of his cruiser filled the air, along with the slightly sent of burning oil. The car door slammed shut and the room was silent as his footsteps tracked his motion up the stairs and to the front door. Bella looked as if she was about to murder Jacob. Edward looked as if he would happily let her. The doorbell rang. Even when angry- because Charlie was angry, the emotion betrayed by his rapid breathing- he remained polite.  Carlisle moved first, after a slight pause, and opened the door, revealing the man's flushed face and dishevelled hair.

"Hello, Charlie."

"Carlise," he said, nodding slightly, not looking him directly in the eye. "Where's Bella?"

Bella slipped into the doorway of the living room, moving slightly, head inclined downwards. The brown contacts looked odd over her blood-red eyes, but to Charlie's human eyes, they would look normal enough.

"Right here, dad."

Charlie paused at the sound of her voice. His narrowed eyes slid carefully over the Cullens, stopping finally on Bella. As if he couldn't allow himself to believe she was standing in front of him, Charlie slid his eyes across his face, taking in every small detail that he might've once remembered, stopping lastingly on her own, dark eyes.

"Is that you, Bella?"

"Yes," she said. Her voice came out as a whisper. "Hi."

"Hey, Charlie. How're things?"

Charlie ignored Jacob's sudden greeting. "Bella."

"I'm sorry, dad."

He was silent for a moment more, suspicious of her well being.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm great dad, really," she said, relaxing slightly at the clear releasing of the tension in his shoulders. "Healthy as can be."

"Jake said this was necessary. That you were dying." Charlie struggled to get the words out.

"He's telling the truth."

"Makes one of you," Charlie said, lips thinning. Then his eyes moved to Renesmee and he nodded toward her. "This is the orphan you're adopting."

"My niece," Edward said, speaking for the first time.

Rose passed the young girl to Bella, letting her sit lightly in her arms. Her hands grabbed for her dark hair, hiding behind it as Charlie peered down at her.

"She's... she's, well, a beauty."

"She is," Edward agreed.

"A bit of a big responsibility, though. You two are still so young."

We could all see the doubt on his face and not one of us could blame him. He was looking closely at the young child, eyes peering down solemnly. Bella tried not to shy away at the closeness, afraid he'd realise the truth.

"What else could we do? Would you have refused her?"

"Hm, well. Jake says you call her Nessie."

"No," Bella snapped without meaning to, glaring at Jacob. "Her name is Renesmee."

"How do you feel about this? Maybe Carlisle and Esme could-"

"No. She's mine."

Charlie seemed somewhat startled at the fierceness of her response. Bella held a little tighter to her daughter, a response that only made Charlie look harder.

"You gonna make me a grandpa so young?"

"Carlisle is a grandfather too."

He looked back at the man, at his blond hair and young features and found something that left him nodding.

"I guess that does make me feel better."

Charlie bent down further, looking at the child in his daughter's arms. We all watched the moment of realisation in slow motion. Only a fool could deny the resemblance the girl had to Bella and Edward. She had Bella's dark eyes, Edwards's soft nose. Charlie, even in his blissful ignorance, was no fool. He batted his eyes down at the girl, taking in her brown curls and pale skin, and tried not to panic.

"Need to know Charlie. It's okay. I promise," Jacob said, glancing between Renesmee and Bella.

"I don't want to know everything," Charlie said, gulping back air, his voice loud. "But I'm done with the lies."

Edward held out a hand to calm him. "I'm sorry. But you need to know the public story more than the truth. If you're going to be a part of the secret, the public story is the one that really counts. It's to protect Bella and Renesmee. It's to protect us all. Can you go along with the lies for them?"

Charlie considered his words and glanced around the room again at the friendly faces.

"You might've given me some warning, kid."

"Would it have really made this easier?" Bella said, offering a small smile.

His lack of response was a good enough answer.

"How old is she?"

"Three months. Rather, she's the size of a three-month-old, more or less. She's younger in some ways, more mature in others," Edward explained.

Jake grinned from behind Bella. "Told you she was special, didn't I?"

Charlie came to see how special his granddaughter was. His eyes rarely left her, the smile on his lips everpresent. It seemed to calm everyone, watching as he asked questions and Bella skirted around the answers with Renesmee giggling on her lap. It was amazing too, just to see Bella holding up so strongly. With the ease at which she was acting, it was hard to remember that there were red eyes hiding behind those brown contacts.

"I don't know how much of this we should tell Renee," Charlie said as he finally stood up, readying to leave. It was almost dark out and he confessed to being late to dinner at Sue Clearwaters.

"I know. I don't want to freak her out. Better to protect her. This stuff isn't for the fainthearted."

"I would have tried to protect you too if I'd known how. But I guess you've never fit into the fainthearted category, have you?" Charlie said with a sigh, absentmindedly patting his stomach. "I'll think of something. We've got time to discuss this, right?"

Bella led her father out with Renesmee in her arms. After a few minutes, Jacob quickly followed. The whole room seemed to let out a breath.

Charlie had taken well to Renesmee, though that had never been a doubt. She was a charming young girl, her features perfectly sweet. He had asked her age politely without questioning it. But in the coming weeks, the rate at which she was growing become increasingly hard to ignore.

Soon enough, she was shouting mamma to Bella from across the room, asking for grandpa when Charlie hadn't visited. She was walking after Alice three weeks later, leaving Bella to stare after her in surprise. While Alice and I would read to her in our room, she would echo the words back at us, giggling lightly afterwards, clapping her small hands.

The fear was evident on Bella's face at most moments of the day. She tried to ignore it, to stay happy for Renesmee, but it was hard to do when it seemed as if she would be old age by the time she would be fifteen. She no longer needed to worry about her thirst. That was the last thing on her mind. All she could think about, all any of us could think of, really- was Renesmee. And we would all do anything we could to help her.

☾

Not my best, but we're back!
Sorry about the wait, I hit a bit of a writers block with this book, I confess! I've replanned the next few chapters so I'll be back on track with updates that are a bit more exciting and better written!
Thanks for sticking with me <3