"The Indies First Time Writer Challenge" One-Shot Contest

Title: Setting her free
Pen name: bendingmirrors
Primary Players: Renee/Charlie
Rating: M
Word Count: 5237
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or it's characters.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were. ~Khalil Gibran

The airport lounge is crowded and cold, as I watch the plane carrying my daughter take off. I don't want to turn away, gripped by a stupid superstition that I must keep watching the plane until it is out of my sight or it will crash. My baby is on her way to live with her father in Forks. I'm not sure she really knows what she's getting herself into — we've never lived in a small town before, and she has never known the claustrophobia that waits in a town where everyone knows you and your business.

It's been almost seventeen years since I lived in Forks, longer since I lived there happily. That rush of first love, the eagerness of sight, touch, and taste. Charlie was completely different from the other boys that I'd dated: he really listened to me. He seemed interested in all the anti-establishment theories I had, but, most importantly, he was just interested in me. The intense quietness and solitude of that boy I knew was a contrast to the noise and distractions of the city in which I had grown up.

Forks had seemed like a punishment to me when I arrived in the summer of '73, chastened and smarting from the reprimands that had put me on a bus across the country to live with a relative I barely knew. Even the weather seemed to agree with my exile; it was constantly cold, and wet.

"If you don't start behaving like a responsible young lady you'll never make anything decent of yourself. We'll see if your Aunt Lucy can't straighten you out. There will be no coming home, at least until you graduate." My father's words bounced around the interior of the car, his voice as loud as he could make it without us being overheard by the others at the bus station.

"What you really mean is that I can't come home until I've promised to stop smoking and going to rallies, and that you don't want me anywhere near David and the rest of my friends." I tried to bite my tongue. I knew I was only making things worse for myself, but I just couldn't stand that they were trying to pretty it all up. Dad simply didn't know what to do with his hippie daughter. I may not have ridden on the first wave of the hippie movement, but I certainly understood them a lot more than I did the disco divas. They could see the system just wasn't working and that we needed to do something other than just go dancing.

Arriving in the stifling town at my maiden aunt's house felt like the end of my world, until the moment I noticed the boy living across the street. I'm not sure he could still be called a boy though; even then he appeared much older than his years — straddling the great divide between adolescence and adulthood in a way that I just couldn't fathom at the time. He was effortlessly cool, immensely loyal to his family and friends and the most level-headed, responsible boy I'd ever met.

Every time I stepped outside the confines of Aunt Lucy's house to shop or go to school, there was at least one of the old gossiping women with an eye on me taking careful notes to pass along the grapevine. It seemed that my reputation as a bit of a loose cannon had preceded me into the small town, and they were all just waiting for me to slip up. When Charlie started to take more notice of me outside of school, the gossips had a field day with speculation that "the wild Higginbotham girl would be Charlie Swan's downfall." That dark-haired, dark-eyed boy across the street became the bright spot of my time in Forks.

Inside school I barely paid attention; I didn't need to. I did exactly what was needed to keep Aunt Lucy off my back and enjoyed the rest of my time precisely the way that I wanted to. The extent of my interactions with the aunt who was supposed to 'straighten me out' consisted of:

"Homework done?" usually accompanied with a quick glance at me to ensure that I was answering truthfully.

"How's school going?" again followed up with a fast peek at me.

"Feel like cooking? I need a break from all that food tonight." This one was normally uttered as she walked past me on her way to the bottle hidden in her bedroom closet.

Turned out Aunt Lucy was spectacularly uninterested in disciplining an unruly teen. She was busily nursing her own problems with her beloved scotch. In any event, that usually meant that I could get out of the house without having to try to sneak around. Aunt Lucy wouldn't have been woken by an A-bomb. Charlie and I quickly learnt to take advantage of Lucy's affair with the bottle. I would quietly let myself out of the house to throw pebbles at his window and Charlie would come down to me so we could walk and talk, or just get in his car and drive.

Driving around in Charlie's car soon became one of our favorite pastimes. We could listen to the radio in his car and sing along or just turn it down low and talk. Well, I talked, occasionally ranted and generally unloaded all of my teenage angst and unruly theories into a sympathetic pair of ears.

"Honestly, any society that can go to war as we have and can have so much corruption at the highest levels of government is a mess. We need to take some sort of action, I don't know what sort of action, but we have to take some. They can't just get away with it, keep the status quo..." I realized that my gesturing was getting quite wild along with my raising voice, but this was a frequent topic of my conversation, and having Charlie as a rapt audience made it hard to contain my enthusiasm.

"Sure, I agree," was the typical response Charlie would give me. Occasionally he would just grunt his response, but it was always with that glimmer in his eye that said that no matter what it was I wanted to say, he would agree with me. He would vehemently defend my point of view to all comers.

I had never had such attention in my life, and I have to admit that it went straight to my head. Charlie enveloped me in comfort and strength. His deep voice was often relegated to delivering grunts of approval rather than actual words, but it still made me quiver just to hear it. Sitting in the backseat of his dad's Pinto, wrapped up in his arms, I felt like I finally knew what home meant, what they meant when they sang those songs about love.

Those nights lounging across the backseat of the car in the lot down at First Beach felt like they'd never end. I understood what it meant to be loved for who I was for the first time in my life. In the beginning Charlie didn't want anything more than for me to be who I was and to love him in return. And at the time I didn't have a problem with either of those. I enjoyed his company and appreciated him listening to my endless tirades about government and anarchy.

I loved him enough to spend a few Saturdays in our early relationship sitting in a little boat with him, pretending to fish while he actually did. It was spectacularly lucky that one Saturday while I contemplated yelling at him for dragging me away from my books to just watch him fish that he met Billy Black — a man very similar to my Charlie; laconic, and insanely devoted to fishing in nice weather. I learned to appreciate that he was capable of occupying himself with fishing with Billy giving me much needed time to relax with a book. When their devotion to weekends of fishing and grunting started to become a priority rather than a fair weather pastime I should have realized that he was definitely a man who would never want to leave his life and friends, even for me.

I had started the year with thoughts that I would just quietly go about the business of graduating, and then get the hell out of the small town and run back to Phoenix with my diploma and never look back. Now my considerations all revolved around a man, and I can't begin to tell you how that frightened me. I had ideals to live up to: I wanted to go to college and find myself a career. I wanted to travel, and immerse myself in different cultures.

"Wherever you want to apply, then I'll apply too. I want you to be happy, we'll make it work together," were Charlie's exact words. Even then he was trying to live his life just to make me happy, and that was a scary place for a girl like me to live. How do you ever live up to those expectations? How can anyone live as the center of another person's universe? After all, we do make mistakes, and I have probably made more than my fair share.

I could have gone to school anywhere I wanted, I had decent grades, I definitely had the smarts to apply for some of the big scholarships. But I didn't have the drive for that sort of thing. All I really wanted was to be happy, and Charlie, for all his expectations of me, made me happy. So I looked at the schools that Charlie would really consider. His grades weren't terrible, but they weren't as good as mine, either. He also had to consider his mother; she was now trying to keep their home together after his father had passed the year before I arrived in Forks. So we both applied to Peninsula College; I had decided that I would like to teach, and Charlie was still undecided, so he was just going to start with general courses and decide later.

On a particularly boring Saturday night in January, Charlie took me out driving. Our intention was to have some quiet time away from everyone and listen to the radio broadcast of the Washington State University Cougars game. We'd dressed warmly for the weather and had packed a bunch of blankets to snuggle under in the car. Charlie drove us to one of his favorite look out spots and we settled in for the next few hours. We cuddled in the backseat while half listening to the commentary and sharing some quiet time. Our actions quickly heated up the interior of that old car. Enough so that when the half time entertainment came on, we were on top of all those damn blankets and making our own half time entertainment.

Looking into his deep brown eyes, I knew that he would love me forever, not just as the first girl he had ever loved, but as the girl who owned his heart and soul. It was in that moment, while lost in his eyes, that I decided we had waited long enough and it was time for us to take the next step. The gossips had us pegged all wrong, we had only been sneaking away for a bit of privacy until that night. Under the light of a nearly full moon, while the WSU band was entertaining spectators, Charlie and I finally went all the way, although even that wasn't managed without some form of drama.

We had just limply fallen into each other, coming down from the heights we had climbed when a bright light, exactly like a camera flash, illuminated the night around us. Realizing that the flash had come from behind him Charlie turned around quickly and caught sight of one of the town kids running for his life. He'd just taken a picture of the full moon, and his camera most definitely wasn't pointed at the sky. Our giggles were uncontainable, and descended into guffaws and belly laughs. To this day I can't listen to the radio broadcast of an athletic event without thinking fondly of the bright red shade of Charlie's face, flushed with exertion and embarrassment, dissolving into giggles right along with me. It reminds me of just how young we really were.

The rest of the school year seemed to fly by, with exams, papers, and each other. Our little group of two at lunch excluded everything that may have been happening in the cafeteria around us. Charlie listened while I mouthed off about whatever was my cause of the week, nodding when appropriate, and agreeing with me as much as possible. Occasionally we would argue about some point, but for the most part, Charlie was content to let me have my say and would simply agree.

Graduation was a little uncomfortable. My parents arrived with the expectation that I would cave and go back to Phoenix with them and put in late applications for some of the scholarships they felt I was eligible for. Surprisingly, it was my mother who advised my father to back off.

"Renee always was stubborn; we can't push her into this, Jack. She'll have to make the decision for herself if it's to work at all. Let her have her little experiments at Peninsula; she'll be home soon enough." For some reason the smug air that crept into her tone while she was speaking enraged me further, and I decided that there was no way on this earth that I would ever give them what they were after. I would make it my own way, on my own terms.

In some ways my mother was right though: Charlie and I only made it through the first six months of college before I found myself pregnant. At first I was terrified; I knew what Charlie's response would be. He would want to get married right away and find something to do to provide for our family. I just didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew that no matter what, I was going to have the baby, and I knew that I wanted to raise my baby myself, adoption was not an option.

I found myself floundering on the exact details of how to accomplish this, though. Would it be best to just quietly leave Charlie to his own devices now, or should I succumb to what would inevitably be huge amounts of pressure to marry him and 'make it right?' We were both so young, and I truly did not want to get married simply because we were going to have a baby together. I was half convinced that maybe going back to my parents in Phoenix and having the baby there while living with them would be the right thing to do, but the thought of my mother's last words to my face were still ringing in my ears — so I went and told Charlie that he was going to be a daddy.

"Ren, we have to get married, we can do it quickly and quietly. We love each other, and we'll love this baby. We just need to work out a way to support our little family and we'll be alright."

Charlie sounded so sure of himself, so happy about the baby, and really, I had already made my decision before I told him. Don't get me wrong, I would have told him either way, but I had to be able to make my own decision. I wanted to know that at the end of the day my decision had been my own, I had not been coerced, and the blame or praise resulting from my actions would be entirely mine. I was fully expecting that we'd last forever; I knew that Charlie loved me more than anything in this world and that he'd do anything to make me happy. I just never counted on how Charlie would try to achieve this feat.

When he first told me that he had decided to join up as a police recruit I almost had a fit. It was only a few weeks after I had discovered I was pregnant. I was sick and disoriented most of the time, and still panicked at the thought of bringing a person into this world who would be entirely dependent on me for everything. I was also still very anti-establishment and couldn't understand how Charlie could so suddenly disagree with all of the ideals I had been spouting. How he could betray those ideals by going to work for 'the man.'

"What do you mean, 'change my tune,' Ren? I never actually spouted any of your 'Damn the Man' speeches, I just agreed with you while you were off on your tangents. It doesn't mean that I don't, or won't, ever want to join the police. Really, what is it exactly you have against them?" Charlie spat at me; it was the closest I'd ever seen him come to completely losing his cool.

"I don't have anything in particular against them, except they are employed a system that doesn't work. Why go and be a cog in the machine? I thought we were going to try to be a part of the people who want to change things, not just accept everything as it stands. Don't you want the world to be a better place for this baby to live in?" I knew that my highly emotional argument wasn't likely to sway Charlie. He was remarkably obstinate once he got a notion into his head, and he had decided that the best way to provide for his family was as an officer of the law.

"I think the kid would like to eat, have a roof over his or her head, and possibly some health and dental insurance. We need this. I want to help make this little corner of the world safer for our baby to grow up in. It's a responsible, respectable position, and it's something that you are just going to have to get used to." I could hear Charlie's proverbial foot hit the floor at that last statement and chose to stop fighting a losing battle. I may not have mentioned it again, but that didn't mean that I never thought about it again.

In the end we were quietly married in front of a judge. The only witnesses were his friend Billy and his wife Sarah, my Aunt Lucy, who seemed sober, and Charlie's mother. I moved into the Swan house, which necessitated a shuffle of the house. Mama Swan moved from the big bedroom into one of the smaller rooms at the front of the house, leaving the master bedroom for Charlie and me. No sooner was I settled into the house, than Charlie was busy with the police academy. While he may have been home during the week he never made it before I went to sleep, and he was gone by the time I awoke. He was always either in physical training or studying to be the best officer that he could be. The weekends became our only time together and in some ways he became more and more of a stranger to me. We shared the same bed, but the man who slept at my side, while he resembled my Charlie was less and less like him.

Before he had become a recruit, there was not much innocence left in Charlie; he had become a man early, living in a household with an ill father, then learning to cope with his loss. Whatever he went through in the training wiped the last of the innocence from the man I now called my husband. I understood in some way that the training to prepare him for a life as an officer of the law would necessitate some changes in the way that he thought and acted. After all, you can't have a police officer reacting emotionally to a situation. Prior to his training, when we argued, Charlie would react passionately, he would argue back with me. I could see that he cared. Week by week of the training wiped that caring from his eyes. He would react to almost anything dispassionately; an eerie calm engulfed him while I flew off the handle. While it may be valuable for a police officer to show no emotion in a conflict situation, for a pregnant 19 year old it felt as though my Charlie was slipping away from me. In some ways, the changes in him were just as terrifying as the changes I was experiencing in my own body. I felt like an alien living in the house that had been decorated by his mother and father when they were first married, not even my body was mine alone anymore.

I finished out my first year of college with much opposition from Mama Swan. She wanted me to just concentrate on making a home for the 'little one', but I just couldn't spend all of my time in that house with her; I had to hope that I could finish my courses and become a teacher. I had to set an example for my child — I wanted this baby to learn the value of a good education. Charlie was a little more understanding. He was so busy with all of his training that he didn't mind that I was occupying my time with school work; I was taking a fairly heavy load knowing that it might be a while before I could go back to finish my courses — I tried to cram in as many credits as I could.

Finishing up that year was truly frightening; it meant that I was reaching that milestone of the third trimester. The familiar panic that gripped me was echoed in Charlie's face whenever we managed to be in the same room for more than five minutes, awake, at the same time. I never actually asked Charlie what dreams he was giving up in favor of the family that we were starting; I was so young and caught up in the dreams that I had to leave behind myself. In a fit of pique over the summer I painted all of the cabinets in the kitchen yellow. I missed the sun, and I wanted to bring some of that bright cheeriness into a house that was quickly becoming a tomb to our dreams and love.

That summer was so emotionally charged for me. Charlie was finishing up his training, and I was preparing for the baby, but also trying to cope with the town gossips who by now understood that ours had been a shotgun wedding. The talk echoed around the town endlessly, following me from the bank to the post office and the market.

I would hear people faux whispering to each other: "That hippie trash thinks she's too good for life around here" usually followed by agreement from one of the other gossiping women who would add "Stopping that poor Swan boy from finishing his college education, I hope she knows the sacrifices that boy is making for her!" What those old ladies never understood was that I had never asked Charlie to make any sacrifices for me, and he was really just as much at fault as I was.

There was nowhere I could escape from it now that I was no longer in college. Instead of calming down as time went on, the gossip only seemed to get louder as I still refused to conform to their expectations of dress and speech. I stubbornly remained in my 'hippie uniform' as they called it, long skirts with flowing tops, or jeans with my favorite brightly colored crocheted tops. I was comfortable in my clothes, the only real expression of myself left to me.

When I mentioned to Charlie that I would like to go back to college and finish up my degree, after the baby was no longer an infant, he more or less put his foot down again. A career for me was not necessary; given that we could continue to live in the house with his mother, we could afford to live on one wage, but most of all, Charlie wanted me home to look after the baby and the house. I would simply be a wife and mother, and for me that was not enough. I wanted to have something else in the world that was mine alone; that I had worked to attain. Up until then I had mostly agreed with him, but as much as Charlie loved me, he simply didn't understand this need of mine. He wanted me to be the wife and mother that his own mother had been.

Bringing Bella into this world was simultaneously the most amazing, disturbing, and joyful moment of my life. Charlie's expression as he laid eyes on his daughter for the first time brought me to tears. I could see that in his arms he was holding the moon, the stars, and the sun. He would neither need nor want for anything else as long as Bella was his. Her name had been his idea: Isabella Marie Swan, Isabella for my mother and Marie for his. Although from the very first, she was Bella to me and Bells to Charlie. No matter what has happened in our lives, I have never doubted the depth of Charlie's love for our daughter.

After Bella was home I tried so hard to make myself into the kind of mother that I wanted to be for her. I bent over backwards to try to be a good wife for Charlie. In the beginning, he had only wanted to make me happy, but now he had new expectations of who I would be as a wife and mother. I tried hard to be a perfect daughter-in-law to Mama Swan, but even there I felt like a failure. Where she had the magic touch in the kitchen, cooking simply bored me, and to combat the boredom I took to experimenting with recipes with disastrous results. Charlie would arrive home from work to find Bella and me crying in that damn rocking chair, and he wouldn't know which one of us was crying hardest or how to comfort us.

Charlie just didn't realize how much I had been demonized by the town gossips, how few places I could go without the echo of some mean remark reaching me. I was suffocating in this town with what felt like no support and more expectations than I knew what to do with. When I approached him about my problems with the size of the town and my inability to fit in, Charlie was adamant that I just needed to ignore them — they would find another target for their spite if I could follow his advice. I was a new mother with a husband who had started a new job, a mother-in-law who despite her best intentions was making me feel even more inadequate, and what felt like a mountain of failure riding high on my shoulders.

My breaking point was reached when Bella was about 6 months old. It wasn't even a big issue; I had called Charlie at the station and asked him to pick up some milk on the way home. When Charlie arrived at home without the milk I lost my temper and my mouth ran without any input from my brain about how much I hated small town life. I pleaded with him to give up and just let me leave. I will never forget how defeated he looked as he turned away.

In the end, I left for Bella. How could I ever be a good mother for her when I wasn't even a good wife? I had to make some changes for myself in order to be there for her as her mom. I took Bella and we moved to California where I finished studying and became a teacher. We stayed there, in the sun, for a while before moving back home to Phoenix to be near family when my father died. I tried out different 'mom' hobbies, I tried out all sorts of religions and sports, but none of them seemed to be the sort of thing that I was looking for. I found myself enjoying the anonymity of life in a city, where no one knew my business, other than those with whom I chose to share my story.

When I met Phil, I realized why exactly I had never been able to make it work with Charlie. Love had never been the problem; it had been there right from the beginning. Our problem was simply that with Charlie I knew I could never measure up to the woman that he believed me to be. Phil simply loved me as I was faults and all. He couldn't care less that I can't stick to a recipe, and that I have absolutely no sense of direction. He finds those faults endearing. That is what I wish for Bella.

I know that Charlie will take great care of our little girl. He will shield her from all the harm that he is capable of protecting her from; I've tried to warn him that there is simply no safeguarding a teenage girl from matters of the heart though. I'm not sure that he believes me; that may be a lesson that he has to learn on his own. In any case, he will do his very best to provide and care for my baby.

From the moment she had told me she wanted to go to live with Charlie for a while, I knew why she was going; she's really not as subtle as she believes. I knew better than to argue though; she is just as obstinate as Charlie ever was. When she makes a decision she will stick with it to the bitter end. I simply helped her to pack and talked with Charlie about her moving, what I could do to help and what he could expect.

The plane is finally gone completely from my sight. I turn around and make my way through the crowds back to my car. I will go on the road with Phil as she has cleared the way for me to do, and I will hope in a small corner of my heart that she changes her mind and comes back to us soon. Not that I begrudge Charlie the time with her, but it will be harder than anything I've ever attempted before — to simply go on without her here where I can keep an eye on her. She's reaching the age Charlie and I were when we both fell in love for the first time, and I hope that she will still be able to confide in me from across the country. My hope for Bella is that she meets her Phil first; she is so like Charlie in her constancy. I hope she will look for a love that instead of holding her back and tying her down, lifts her up to reach for the stars.

A/N - I have to thank two very special people so much: Miztrezboo and Nostalgicmiss. Without them I would never have written this, let alone posted it. They both have some fantastic stories posted in particular Miztrezboo is currently writing Where The Road Meets The Sun and Nostalgicmiss is writing The Girl Under The Bed, go check them out, they are both listed under my Favorites.