Chapter One. Bella

            I stood next to my step-dad, Phil, staring at our house. Well what used to be our house. I didn’t want to leave, not ever, but I couldn’t stay here anymore knowing what went on in this house. Not after…two months ago. I had finally locked the memory up and I promised myself that I wouldn’t slip up and think about it. I clenched my eyes shut to try and get rid of the tears which were forming in my eyes. I had to forget everything, not that I wanted to, it was just something I had to do so I could continue to live. I would live for her. I would live for Renee, but not here. I couldn’t live in Phoenix anymore. It wouldn’t help Phil to have me living with him, pestering him. He wasn’t my real dad and I couldn’t burden him with having to look after me, not that I needed being looked after anyway. Well that’s why I was going. I was going so that Phil could get over Renee and find someone he loved just as much as he loved my mum. I know she would want him to be happy. The only way I could think of making him happy was to move in with my dad and leave Phil to live his own life.

            I wouldn’t have ever dreamed about living with Charlie. I had Renee. She was my rock, my mum, my best friend. Now she was gone.

            I sat on the steps on the porch, tears streaming down my face as the paramedics carted off a body bag on a gurney. There were police everywhere. They were talking to neighbours, passers by and Phil. Not that he had been there. I had avoided being questioned so far. I looked up and saw a woman walking towards me. A police woman. She sat down next to me and tried to make me feel comfortable by smiling, as if that would make me feel comfortable.

            “Would you be able to tell me what happened?” I sat there staring down the road my mum had just been taken down. She was gone and nothing I said would bring her back and make things better. “If you tell us what you know we will be able to get the person who did this to her.” I doubt it. I wasn’t going to talk to this woman, not now. I just wasn’t ready. I continued staring ahead of me. “When you feel like you are ready to talk you know where to find me.” I nodded, knowing that if I did she would leave me alone.

            I flinched as the memory I had worked so hard to lock up had managed to work its way into my mind. I fought hard to force the thought back into the locked box it had come from.

            Living with Charlie meant living in Forks. I hated Forks. I’d lived there when I was a baby, not that I remembered it but I did spend a month every summer there until I was fourteen. It wasn’t much of a summer. Summer was meant to be sunny not raining all day everyday, so I put my foot down and Charlie and I spent two weeks in California instead. It was what summer was meant to be, hot and sunny.

            I loved living in Phoenix, mainly because I love the heat and sun. Yet here I am moving to the one place where it never stops raining. It will be hell on earth.

            “Are you alright Bella?” Phil asked, looking at me lovingly. Even though he wasn’t my biological father, he treated me like I was his own daughter. He had only known me for two years. I was grateful. I wouldn’t have been able to cope through all of this without him. I nodded as I wiped away the traitor tears which had leaked from my eyes. I never imagined I would cry leaving the house I grew up in. I would miss it. I took a deep breath taking in the house one last time. I took in the smell of the air, the colour of the grass, the detail on the railings on the porch, the colour of the walls, the décor on the front door, everything. I turned and hopped into the car with Phil.

He was taking me to the airport where I would get on a four hour plane to Seattle and then another hour in a small plane to Port Angeles. Charlie would then pick me up from the airport and we would travel for an hour to get to Forks.