Midday Clouds - The Charlie Swan Story

Chapter 21 (New Moon 10)

Bella was sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window and mechanically spooning cereal into her mouth.

"Hey, Bells," I said, sitting down beside her. She glanced my way. It was her form of saying "Hello," as I'd come to learn over the past four months.

"Look, I was hoping that we could talk about how you've been feeling lately," I started, and her gaze went back out the window. It was like I wasn't even there. "It's been tough to see you letting time pass you by like this, and I know you don't want to talk about it, but we need to talk about it. Bells? Can you look at me?"

Her eyes never moved back to mine. It was like she was frozen, cursed to stare forever out the window for a boy who would never return. A boy who had hurt my daughter, emotionally and, likely, physically. The thought of Edward somehow coming back to Forks made me so angry that, before I knew I'd done it, I had slapped my hand down on the table. That seemed to have gotten her attention, at least.

"That's it, Bella! I'm sending you home," I said, not really meaning it but just trying to get some sort of reaction out of her. It actually did the trick.

"I am home," she said. The sentiment both warmed and broke my heart all at once.

"I'm sending you to Renee, to Jacksonville," I said, trying to keep her present in the conversation.

"What did I do?" she asked.

"You didn't do anything. That's the problem. You never do anything." The truths were flooding out of me faster than I could stop them. I felt terrible to be so blunt with my daughter, but it seemed that bluntness was what it would take to actually keep her focus. This felt like the first actual conversation we'd had in the past 4 months -- ever since that night we'd found her cold and alone in the woods.

"You want me to get into trouble?" Bells asked.

"Trouble would be better than this... this moping around all the time!"

"I am not moping around."

"Wrong word," I conceded. "Moping would be better – that would be doing something. You're just... lifeless, Bella. I think that's the word I want." I could tell that the accusation struck home. It was just what I'd needed from my friends all those long years ago to get me out of my stupor. Maybe the same could work for my daughter.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she said.

"I don't want you to apologize."

"Then tell me what you want me to do."

Finally, an opening to bring up Dr. Thompson. Finally, the progress I'd been hoping for after all these months.

"Bella... Honey, you're not the first person to go through this kind of thing, you know." I was ready to tell her everything. The darkness I'd fallen into. The depression I'd battled ever since. How I'd found my way out of it all, before it was too late, and how worthwhile it was, seeing as I could now be a better father for her.

"I know, Dad," was all she said.

"Listen, honey. I think that – that maybe you need some help."

"Help?"

"When your mother left and took you with her-" I paused, fighting back the tears that were welling up in my eyes, "--well, that was a really bad time for me."

"I know, Dad," she said, but there was no way that she could ever really know. Even going through this highschool breakup, there was no way that Bella could ever understand the true, gut-wrenching finality of losing not just a single loved one, but four over the course of as many months. I hoped to hell that she never would know what that kind of true loss felt like.