Falling for a Dark Soul Teaser

“Are we there yet, Bella?” whined my four-year-old sister, Katie. “I want to play. I gotta go potty, too.”

“Ten minutes, Kit Kat,” I responded, following the directions provided by my navigation system. “Can you hold it?”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Mommy would have stopped. I want Mommy.”

“Me, too, kiddo,” I said under my breath. I was grieving, lost at what to do with my sister and my life. I’d just finished my MBA, and was looking forward to making a new life for myself in Seattle, working for an advertising agency. But that changed with a phone call from the Chief of Police from Forks.

My mother, along with my stepfather, Phil, had died in a car crash. They were driving back from a date night and were hit by a log truck on the road back to the small town where I’d grown up, Forks. The truck driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, trying to get back to his family. In reality, he’d pushed himself too far and took away mine, except for my baby sister, Katherine Marie Dwyer, who had been with a babysitter while they were out. I’d lost my father, Charlie Swan, before I could even remember. He’d died in a domestic violence call when I was a baby. He was shot to death by the man while my father tried to protect the wife, who died, as well. .

“Bella,” Katie cried.

“We’re here,” I said, pulling up to the brownstone I’d purchased with the life insurance money from my mother’s death. I’d tried to stay in Forks to keep things normal for Katie, but living in that house was like living with one foot in the grave. I couldn’t stay there. I also was floundering, personally and professionally. Working at Newton’s Sporting Goods brought back too many memories from when I worked there in high school, none of them pleasant. I was dodging Mike’s constant flirtations, despite the fact he was married to Jessica Newton, née Stanley.

The man was a walking, talking sexual harassment suit.

I needed to start fresh. I needed to get away from the place where I’d lost both of my parents and my stepfather who’d loved me like his own daughter. My position at the advertising firm in Seattle had been filled, but the woman who’d hired me had passed my name along to a college friend, to another company in Chicago. I was offered a position at Masen Advertising Corporation as a junior advertising executive. It paid more than I was offered in Seattle, but I learned why when I went to look at real estate. 

It was expensive in Chicago.

“Bella, there’s no green. I miss green,” Katie grumped. “It’s all cars and buildings. Can we go back to Forks? I want more green.”

Bella Swan

Katie Dwyer

Bella and Katie's new home in Chicago