AN: Three years since my last story wrapped up and I'm finally back, making my fourth foray into Twilight fanfiction. This little story started out as a particular scene in my head that wouldn't go away. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. As always, contructive criticism is welcomed and appreciated.

Disclaimer: I'm not Stephanie Meyer. I do not own Twilight.

She could feel her heart thrumming in her ears as her feet pounded the pavement. She wanted to be anywhere but that place, anywhere that wasn't that musty room filled with the smell of sex and a betrayal of the worst kind, and so she ran.

She was great at running, metaphorically at least. And just when she gathered the courage to stop and enjoy what life seemed to be offering, it blew up in her face. It was inevitable, she figured. Derrick Jenkins had offered her a comfortable, promising life to go along with the shiny diamond that sat atop her left ring finger, which Claire mused now felt more like an anchor to the past than a symbol of a bright future.

Pausing two blocks from the building she'd just fled, she paused and gasped for a shaky, burning breath, hunching over a bench that sat at the entrance to one of the city's small greenways. She was a metaphorical runner, after all, not a literal one.

It was the middle of the day in this bustling urban spread. Businessmen walked to and from wherever businessmen always seem to be going. Mothers with children strolled casually past her on the sidewalk engrossed in whatever little Abigail or Logan or Paige or whomever was screaming about. A group of students from the technical college leaving the popular bistro across the street laughed at each other while looking down at something a classmate had just posted on some social media site or another. None of them seemed to notice an undistinguishable woman experiencing her quarter-life crisis while panting and rubbing an aching calf muscle, college softball days seeming much longer than three years behind her as she cursed her out of shaped-ness.

A faceless blond moaning under her now ex-fiance flashed in the forefront of her mind and Claire heaved up from where she was squatted down, stumbling to the other side of the bench to plop down and pull out her cell phone. Clicking on the home button with a groan at the loser with impeccable teeth staring back at her, a picture taken when they were first starting out, her first mission was to change everything that immediately reminded her of what had been flushed down the toilet not five minutes ago. A changed home screen picture here, a Facebook relationship status update there, and besides the ring on her finger it was almost like Derrick Jenkins and Claire Walker had never met. Aside from her name on their rental agreement and the belongings she'd abandoned not ten minutes ago, of course.

Her phone rang about a minute later. Her school-teacher mother had nothing better to do on a sunny summer afternoon, she realized belatedly, than scroll through social media for recipes and cute videos of baby animals and updates about her daughters' love lives. A phone call from her sister soon followed, as did one from her best friend, and she declined all of them. Her mother, Tallin, and Jules would have to wait. It was a time for introspection.

Claire Aiyanna Walker had moved, or rather, had been moved three thousand miles from her origins at the tender age of three by her parents after her mother had a falling out with her family. That was the explanation Claire had been given at any rate. No one ever brought it up because it made her mother cry and her father angry, so she and her older sister had learned at an early age to avoid the topic. Sure, she was always curious about exactly what they had left behind, but she'd never wanted for love or friendship, had been successful in school and sports, and lived a typical middle-America childhood. She looked somewhat different than her friends, with obvious Native American bone structure and dark features, and had experienced some taunts from ignorant children when she was young and sensitive, but as she grew out of early childhood and into her blossoming self-esteem the whispers behind her back about looking weird had faded away. A little heavy-set with deep-set dark eyes and pin-straight dark brown hair, Claire was a tomboy, an introvert, a bookworm, and she'd left the fashion and dating and popularity to her older socialite of a sister. A nurturer at heart, Claire had pursued a nursing degree in college and had graduated with honors, securing a position with the city's top hospital after volunteering in its pediatric unit all four years of school.

There was a boyfriend here and there, brief stints of romance that didn't last because none of it felt right. Her mother told her she was being melodramatic, but Claire always felt like there was a piece of her that was missing. She was happy, yes, maintained a positive outlook on life and didn't look past herself for validation, but no matter where she looked there was a sort of lack of fulfillment in her life.

She wasn't where she was supposed to be.

They moved around a lot when Claire was younger. Odd phone calls in the night and shouting matches between her parents always prefaced a hurried packing job and a change in location. Tallin had suggested their parents were top secret agents or on the run from the law or something equally as imaginative and fanciful, but Claire didn't speculate. It sounded ridiculous to her, even at 5, 6, 7, years old. They finally picked a place and stayed when Claire started high school, but not one single place ever truly felt like home.

It was a deep-seated feeling that had become firmly planted in the pit of her stomach after Tommy Pritchard kissed her during the last song of the Halloween dance in fifth grade. Nothing in her life after that seemed the same. Yeah, it seems kind of odd for a ten year old to have a life changing epiphany, but Claire swore by it. She threw herself into books and softball and extracurriculars to fill the void in her heart, but nothing and no one seemed to scratch the itch.

Fourteen years later and it was still there. Tommy Pritchard had started something that Derrick Jenkins certainly hadn't been able to stamp out.

Maybe that was why Claire was strangely not that upset about finding him in bed with the barista from the coffee shop in the ground floor of their building.

Plucking up the courage to call her mother after thirty minutes of staring into space and hundreds of curious looks from passersby, it unsurprisingly took half a ring before Dena Walker's voice burst out of the speaker.

"That rat bastard."

Claire answered with a chuckle. Trust her uninformed mother to jump to the correct conclusions. With a voice more steady than she felt, she said, "I'm not all the concerned, Mom. Dodged a bullet. I'm okay with it."

"Claire, what did he do? Wait till I tell your father. He'll kill him."

"Mom, you don't even know what's going on." Turning and laying down on the bench, not caring how grimy it was, Claire flopped her head back over the arm rest and put a forearm over her eyes.

"Well then, please enlighten me so that I can justify having your dad beat his ass."

Laughing, Claire crossed her feet at the ankles and absentmindedly tapped a toe to calm her nerves as she responded to her mother. "I'd really rather not talk about it right now. Just…I hate to even ask this, but could I come stay at home for a few days? Just until I figure out what I'm going to do, of course."

"Claire, honey, you know you can. Your father will love it, I think he gets tired of only having me here to talk to." Her mother went on a tangent about her father's increasing inattentiveness, which Claire, as usual, tuned out.

"Claire? Claire, are you listening? I swear, you and your sister-"

"Yes, yes, I was listening. Look, I don't think I can go back to work today. I'll be there in an hour. Love you. Bye." Digging her thumbs into her eyes and feeling slightly-but-not-really remorseful for her tone with her mother, Claire let out a huff of air and allowed herself one minute to sulk. One minute to feel sorry for herself and curse Derrick Jenkins into oblivion.

Three weeks had passed and Claire found herself still holed up in her childhood room. She and her sister had finally gone back to the scene of the crime a few days ago to gather all of her stuff, leave her ring in the toilet, and talk to the building supervisor about releasing her from her contract. Their next task was to find a place for Claire far away from Derrick Jenkins or anywhere she might run in to him, but apartments at a good price near downtown were hard to come by, so she decided she would brave the forty-five minute commute to and from work until she could find something suitable and vowed to find a way to repay her parents, who so far hadn't been nosey and hadn't sought out and killed the "rat bastard." They were currently out on a date night after Claire handed them a hundred dollar bill and told them to go enjoy themselves, needing some time to herself to process what her life had come to. If this mostly involved a Friends binge on Netflix and devouring a tub of chocolate ice cream, at least no one was there to witness her spiral.

Halfway in to "The One Where Everybody Finds Out," the phone rang. Claire hurriedly sat her ice cream on the coffee table in front of her and, still wrapped like a burrito in the ratty microfiber blanket her father refused to part with, shuffled to the phone mounted on the wall in the kitchen.

"Hello, Walker residence."

A throat cleared on the other end and the deep baritone voice of a middle-aged man filled her right ear where the phone was propped in between her shoulder and face. "Yes, my name is Chief Charlie Swan from the Forks, Washington Police Department. I'm trying to get in touch with Todd or Dena Walker."

"I'm sorry, but they're out at the moment. I'm their daughter, though. Is there something I can do for you? Or could I take a message?" Claire's brows knit in concern at the thought of what a police officer from her parents' hometown could need with them.

"Well, first I'm trying to make sure I have the right folks. I've called about seventy-five Todd or Dena Walker's so far and I haven't had any luck."

This was odd. If someone from back in Washington needed to get in touch with us couldn't they just get our information from my grandparents or my aunt? "What kind of information could verify the identity for you?"

"Uh, well, do you know their birthplace? Or a birthday would do."

"My dad Todd was born on May 9th, 1980, and my mom was born on April 17th, 1981. They were both born on the Macah Reservation in Washington State."

In a shocked tone he replied, "Those dates actually match up! They have two daughters, too. Is this Tallin by any chance?"

"No sir, that's my older sister. I'm Claire."

"Wait…this is Claire? Are you sure about that, young lady?" She heard a commotion on the other end of the phone, papers shuffling, voices murmuring, and a muffled "Get Clearwater on the phone, immediately."

Claire, a bit miffed, bit out a response. "I sure hope so. Otherwise I've been under some kind of delusion for the past 24 years."

He cleared his throat again and continued in a more reserved manner. "I haven't really been authorized to give this information to anyone else, but I don't guess Emily would mind too much if I talked to you."

"Hold on, Aunt Emily? Emily Young? Why? Is something wrong?"

"It's Emily Uley now actually, but yeah, she asked me to find you. This isn't too easy to say, kiddo, but it's about your grandmother. She's…she's dying."

The phone slid down to rest on her jaw as a lump formed in Claire's throat for the grandmother she didn't know but had always wished she did. A moment later, before Claire could stop her head from reeling at these new developments, the front door banged open to her left and her mother stumbled in giggling, her father hot on her heels. Her mom stopped abruptly as she took in the look on her youngest daughter's face, and her dad plowed into her from behind.

Her mother pitched forward. "Claire, what's wrong?"

"Who's on the phone, Claire-bear?" Her dad moved around her mother to take the phone out of her hand, putting it to his own ear. "Who is this?" He paused as he listened to what Claire assumed was the speech she'd just received from whatever his name was. Ten seconds in to the conversation, though, her father turned red and bellowed in to the phone, "How did you get this number?! I thought we made ourselves perfectly clear. We told them not to contact us for any reason, ever. That hasn't changed." With a look of disbelief, she watched her father slam the phone back on to the receiver and pace back and forth in the foyer.

"Todd, what the hell is going on? Who-"

"It's your damned sister, that's what." He interrupted her mother, whose face had gone ashen.

"How did they find us?" Claire had never seen her parents ruffled like this. She felt like she was in a haze, watching some surreal scene play out through a fog. What the hell was going on? What did they mean, 'find us?' Were her parents in hiding? Was some criminal hunting them?

"Dena, he said it was your mom. She's sick." They stared at one another for what seemed like hours. Claire swiveled her head gaze and forth between them, waiting for some kind of resolution or explanation.

When none came, she drew the blanket tighter around herself and inhaled then blew out a shallow breath. Biting her lip, trying to figure out how to proceed, she decided to ask the first question that came to mind.

"What the hell have you not been telling me?"