This is not actually a new chapter, Dollybigmomma is just doing some housekeeping on my older stories to polish them up. If you've read this story already, nothing really has changed, but feel free to enjoy the cleaned up version again! If this is your first time to get an update notification for this story and you haven't read it, well, what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

Chapter 45 - Not So Bad

EDWARD

Going to stay with Demetri was not my idea, but when Bella suggested it, she was already picking up the phone and calling him. In the end, we needed somewhere to stay, and it would be best if it was in Seattle, so we could actually look for a place of our own there.

When we arrived, D helped me bring the suitcases in and set them by our bedroom door. I kind of smiled at the fact that he wasn't going in. I picked up my girl and carried her up the stairs. She needed to be taking it easy, and when she protested, I insisted that I needed to carry my bride over a threshold. Thankfully, she found it endearing.

Bella was to stay in bed and rest for a few days. The doctor didn't want her up and about, as he was worried too much exposure to the outside would cause pneumonia to flare up in her lungs. That would be really bad, as her body was already fighting to heal itself from her C-section.

It turned out living with Demetri wasn't so bad. Apparently, there was some unwritten rule he had about never entering a married couple's bedroom, and since Bella was stuck in bed, he did most of his interacting with me.

Demetri actually wasn't a bad guy at all. He was happy that we were married and always called himself Uncle D. He helped out with Elizabeth a lot, but he always let me take the lead. It was great, like having a live-in nanny. A townhouse two doors down from him became available, and we decided to rent it. He was thrilled, and so "Uncle D" as he proclaimed himself, was our official babysitter.

When the time came for us to register for classes, Elizabeth was about six months old. We decided to stagger our classes, so one of us could always be with her. That was until Bella found out that her husband having a trust fund made it impossible for her to get grants. Well, at least not the grants and funding she'd had before; she no longer qualified for them, and unfortunately, the trust payout was only enough for one person to go to school and cover our living expenses. I ended up convincing her that she should be the one to go, as she actually had a career goal, and my career goal had been shot to hell by my recklessness. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do anymore, and so Bella went to school, and I stayed home with our daughter.

Needless to say, Carlisle had a shit fit when he found out I was putting my wife through school. Esme, on the other hand, moved into the townhouse between Demetri and us. After the paternity test had come back proving Elizabeth was mine, she had called Carlisle a few choice words and thrown herself into helping me care for our little girl. Momma D also came to visit Demetri, and she and Esme hit it off instantly. What I didn't realize was that Momma D kept Demetri's father on a tightly-controlled leash, and she gave Esme a few valuable pointers on how to handle her man.

It was at our daughter's first birthday that we started to see a change in Carlisle Cullen. He showed up unannounced and uninvited, carrying a huge pink rocking horse with wings. It had Elizabeth's name painted on the side. I was about to throw him out, when Esme interrupted my descent upon him. "Did you make this?" she asked in awe, and I suddenly wondered if he could make something like this. I found myself looking a little closer at the fine workmanship.

"Yes," Carlisle said sheepishly.

I looked up at him surprised. "I didn't know you did woodworking."

He frowned. "I haven't in a very long time."

"Oh, Carlisle," Esme said hugging him. He put the horse down and hugged her tightly. They were both crying. I wasn't sure why, but Bella smiled and helped Elizabeth take a few shaky steps to the horse. She patted it excitedly.

I later found out that the last thing he'd made was a cradle that he and Esme had never gotten to use. He'd lost the comfort he got from woodworking after that. That was until he made this winged horse for my daughter.

He secured the safety guard and belt around my little girl and smiled at her for the second time in his life, as she jabbered excitedly at him. She kicked wildly, as she squealed and rocked the sparkly horse.

It was two months later that he moved in with Esme and became our neighbor and a doting grandpa.

Alice finally came around with the help of Jasper. Much to his parent's dismay, they ended up moving to Paris for her "career." In the end, though, she wasn't happy. They finally moved back to Texas, where they settled down and had a little boy named Nathan. She visited Carlisle and Esme for the holidays, and she finally cracked under pressure, forgiving me for ruining her life in New York in a hormonal mess of tears. She found out a week after they had left that she was pregnant with their second child, which would be a girl named Emily.

Charlie was a more difficult matter to solve. Bella had told me that it was Renee who really had always tempered his tough exterior, and with her gone, she didn't know how to approach him. She missed her father, but she couldn't in good conscience expose our daughter to such animosity. She finally told me what he had said that had set her off, and I agreed with her abrupt departure that day. I concluded that Charles Swan was just a bitter, angry old man.

What surprised me was the sudden appearance of a birthday card from Mr. Grump himself. It was for Bella and came two days before her birthday. I looked at it worried, hoping it wouldn't upset her. Of course, all my worrying was very anticlimactic. It was just a normal birthday card that he had written no message in, no nothing; just Love, Dad.

In response to her birthday card, Bella sent him one when his birthday came the following month. Just two short months later, we received another one. This one was for Elizabeth's second birthday. It was a pink sparkly castle and had a savings bond in it. It simply said Love, Grandpa Charlie in it.

This reduced my Bella to tears. She quickly wrote him a letter and sent pictures of our daughter in return. It was slow going, but by her third birthday, Grandpa Charlie was present with a smile and holding something behind his back. He was looking oddly mischievous at Carlisle, but it all made sense, when they brought out their gifts together. Carlisle had made her a wooden doll house, and Charlie had gotten her the family and furniture to go in it. Elizabeth absolutely adored it.

Bella was in her last year of school, when Charlie asked me what I wanted to do for a living. I had told him that I wanted to go into law enforcement on the legal side of things, but my instincts weren't that good, so I was at a loss. Charlie suggested I go into the police academy. Turned out he had a couple of deputies retiring soon. He had already hired Emmett, who had married Rosalie Hale and had ended up graduating from the police academy as well, and he could use another man to fill the other position. He thought my instincts were good enough for Forks.

Bella was halfway through her last year in school, when she told me something exciting and scary all at the same time. She was pregnant again. We were having another baby, and this time I would be around for it. She still planned on going to school and finishing off her degree. She was thankfully due a month after graduation, so her goal would be met. I had talked to her about what her father had suggested, and she surprised me by kissing me and telling me that it was a great idea. Apparently, some of her favorite animal patients were in Forks, and the vet she used to work with there had offered her a place in her practice.

I was nervous about telling Esme and Carlisle about us moving again, but they just smirked, and Esme said, "See, I told you the house didn't sell for a reason."

Carlisle had retired, so moving back to Forks after I finished at the police academy was easy for them. Uncle D was sorry to see us go, but his new bride, Jane, was filling the void. They were expecting their first baby. D was insisting it was a girl. It would be interesting to see if he was right again.

He also was predicting that Bella would have a boy, and she did. I wondered if D was into fortune telling. Our son, Edward Cullen III, was named after my dad. He looked a lot like my father as well, meaning he looked a lot like me. Bella would strap him to her back, as she worked at the vet's office. Elizabeth was already in pre-K, and I was sitting outside the school in a patrol car, just because I could.

Charlie smirked the first time he caught me doing it and told me he used to do the same thing all the time. He also introduced me to several elderly folks in Forks who lived alone. He never outright said it to them, but he checked on them every week, and you could tell they both looked forward to it. He told me once that it was important to look in on them, because otherwise, something bad could happen. He spoke of finding some of them having fallen or in trouble, and no one came to help. It was his instincts that made him visit them that day and find them before they were too far gone to be helped.

I told him that I didn't think I had very good instincts, and like he always did when I told him that, he just patted my shoulder and said I had enough for Forks.

My little salary and Bella's vet work had us living comfortably in a little three-bedroom house. We weren't rich like Carlisle. I was not what you would even consider "successful," but I was definitely happy. I was married to the most beautiful, loving woman in the world. I had two close-to-perfect kids, and I had a family who loved me. I looked over at an old picture of my parents and smiled. I got it now. I had finally gotten what my parents had known all along; that success, money and status didn't equal happiness. It was love and family, and being content with what we had that really mattered.

And what we had was truly beautiful.