Fic : House of the Sun
Nobody deserves to be loved. Love just is.
- Caroline B. Cooney
zero.
The wedding is magnificently awful.
Jake’s a groomsman, Rachel’s Maid of Honour. Rebecca looks utterly gorgeous not in the typical white gown, but in a pink flowered print dress, her long black hair curled to perfection and decorated with hibiscus, her smile like fireworks going off. Her and Iosefo (whom Rebecca affectionately calls Joe) kiss against the sunset, which is dripping rose and gold like a perfect watercolour painting.
Rachel almost gags on her (pink) champagne at how cheesy it all is.
Jake grins his little boy’s grin, even though he’s all of fifteen. He loosens the (stupid) bow tie that Rebecca demanded he wear. “Well,” he says, conversationally, “it wouldn’t be Rebecca if it wasn’t ridiculously overdone.”
Rachel downs her glass of champagne, fishes for another. Tells herself that she isn’t (illegally) drowning herself in alcohol in order to overcome the feeling of unbearable loss, as if half of her heart has broken away.
It’s just that the drinks are free.
~
hey rachel, it’s your fantabulously awesome twin sister again.
so, i’m still good. with the help of this great little filipino chick named crisanta who knows everything and anything there is to know about swing, i have perfected both my charleston and lindy hop, and i am ready and raring to teach them. rejoice as my salary rises again!
joe’s still doing real good too, though how he manages to teach cocky pre-teen brats (complete with huge crushes on kate bosworth) to stay on their boards WITHOUT KILLING THEM, i will never understand.
tell me how the old man’s doing, and give that puppy-brat jake a noogie for me, in case he starts to forget what head burn feels like.
love you lots,
becks.
~
one.
So, Rachel comes home from university that July looking forward to sleeping, being able to use a washing machine that is not coin-fed, sleeping, peace and quiet, sleeping, swimming and maybe doing a little cliff diving, sleeping, reading at the beach, and, oh yes, sleeping.
Not staying up until three cramming, not running for two days straight on stale cherry Danishes and hot Starbucks, not falling asleep on couches on random couches scattered around the campus, and not waking up to find that she’d been talking about constitutional rights and different kinds of tort law in her sleep.
She also looks forward to hanging out with Jake, taking Dad off his hands once in a while, catching up with some old friends, maybe tossing around a Frisbee once in a while, going on a hike in the woods, just taking things nice and easy.
So, coming home to find Jake gone - and Dad completely tight-lipped about it - kinda puts a wrench in those plans.
“He, uh, went to California,” is what Dad says, not quite meeting her eyes. Her foot taps very slowly on the kitchen floor as she stares at him, Taptaptaptap. “Went on a little road trip.”
Her taps becoming slower, more pronounced, more ominous. Taptap. Taptap. “Went on a road trip, huh. With the Volkswagon that is currently parked outside the house.”
“Took his bike,” Dad says. “He fixed up an old motorcycle since you’ve been gone.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“So,” she says very slowly, “let me get this straight. You let Jacob. Who is a minor. And does not even own a cell phone. Go on a road trip. By himself. To somewhere in California. For an undetermined length of time. On a motorcycle.”
Rachel swears to God she can see her father back his wheelchair up from her, just a little.
“Dad,” she says, and her voice is perfectly even, “it is a very, very good thing I’m not studying Family Law, otherwise your ass would be in court faster than you could blink.”
~
two.
Then, the girl enters.
(Looking back on it, Rachel thinks that should read : Then, The Girl Enters.)
She’s slim and brown-haired and looks tiny slipping out from the cab of Dad’s old red pick up truck. She has skin like a porcelain doll and she looks like a stiff breeze could knock her right over.
Her steps are hesitant, and she calls out, uncertainly, “Is Jacob there?”
“No,” says Rachel. The who the hell are you is implied.
“Bella,” Dad says, having somehow wheeled silently behind Rachel, and Rachel does not jump.
“Bella?” Rachel says, mystified. Then, Holy shit - “Bella Swan?”
My kid brother has a crush on you, she almost blurts out but wait, that was Christmas, almost six months ago, it might’ve blown over by now. Jacob had been so cute and embarrassed - spilling his secrets over too much New Year’s champagne; she’d told him it was the non-alcoholic kind. Well, he was stupid enough to believe her and then spill his guts about some pretty senior. And it gave Rachel some excellent blackmail material for the next couple months.
The girl - Bella - gives a weak smile. “Hey, Rachel.”
“He’s not here,” Dad says.
Something seems to crumple in the girl’s face - something collapses inward, she half-turns away. “…Oh.”
“It’s probably best if you don’t come here,” Dad says, and what - what the hell is going on? Is this girl Satan reincarnated or something? Why is Dad giving off serious anti-Bella vibes?
The girl, Bella, seems to flash at that. For all she seemed sort of limp and pale before, she suddenly comes back to life - her eyes become bright and hard, her mouth sets, her cheeks flush to colour.
“I’m not… getting married… after all,” she says, slowly, raggedly, as if the words have cost her so, so much to say.
Dad is a rock, unmovable, and Rachel’s eyes flash between the old man and the young girl, back and forth, trying to understand.
“That so,” Dad says.
“Yes,” the girl says. “Yes.”
A pause. “I’ll call you if we hear word from him,” Dad says, finally. He places the very slightest emphasis on the if.
“Thank you, Billy,” the girl says, her tone formal as a starched collar. She spins stiffly on her heel, and somehow marches back to her truck.
“What the - who the - what the hell,” is all Rachel is able to sputter out, and only when the sound of the pick’s up engine is far, far off. “Is she - is she Jacob’s girlfriend, or something?”
Dad’s already turned his wheels back inside the house. “She’s the reason he left.”
~
hey rache, it’s becca again. i think my last e-mail to you may have gotten lost in cyberspace or something. joe’s always saying that all i have to do to break the computer is stare at it long enough.
so. i’m doing good, joe’s doing good. i’m getting more and more teaching gigs, especially with all these eighteen-year-old girls having their debuts. suddenly i have to teach half a dozen cotillions three or four dances EACH, and somehow NOT mix them up. pray for my sanity.
give the old man and the wee lad huge gigantic bear hugs for me and please don’t tell me jake has grown another half-foot again, or else i will be severely depressed. lie to me, if you must.
love you (as usual),
becks
~
three.
Rachel heads over to Emily’s, because Emily is a baking goddess and also because Dad has won the annual award, eighteen years running, for being Absolutely Silent on Delicate Matters. She lets Emily talk her through four raspberry jam and cream cheese muffins and some awkward small talk (So, how’s Rebecca doing?
… Fine.
Oh. That’s - nice?) before she settles down to business.
“So,” Rachel says, “I know Jake doesn’t really run with Sam’s pack that much, but I was wondering if you knew anything about him and… Bella Swan?”
Rachel has seen lots of people on the witness stand; Emily’s reaction is interesting. Emily freezes like the room temperature has just dropped twenty degrees and she says, too quickly, to fill in the sudden(ly awkward) silence, “Oh, actually Jacob spends a lot of time with Sam and the boys now.”
“That so,” says Rachel, casual’s the watchword. “So has he brought Bella by, then?”
Objection, your honour, no leading questions.
“A few times,” Emily says. Her fingers tap the rim of her green-blue mug. “Yes.”
“And?”
“… She’s a lovely girl. Quiet, but… still waters run deep.”
Oh, bloody helpful. Rachel bites her tongue, waits.
“And…” Emily’s face softens. “You should see the way her and Jacob look at each other.”
That bad, huh? No, Rachel is not bitter that another one of her siblings has taken the plunge and decided to drown themselves in the hideous ocean that is love.
“So are they going out, or - ?”
“Oh, oh no - ”
“Past tense, then? No longer going out?”
“No, they were never like that, they…” Emily clutches her mug and makes a rising motion, as if to put it in the sink. “I really shouldn’t say anything… it’s not my story to tell and privacy’s in such short supply, nowadays - ”
“She said she wasn’t getting married anymore.”
“Oh.” Emily sits down hard, coffee mug forgotten. Her voice is very, very soft. “Oh.”
~
four.
This is the story Emily tells her.
Girl is in lovelovelove with her boyfriend. He ditches, she breaks down. Jake is there, a shoulder to cry on, yaddayaddayadda. She jumps off a cliff. (What, Swan Lake much?) Her boyfriend gets wind of that, thinks she’s dead, tries to off himself. (No, seriously, the Swan Lake resemblance is getting a little freaky. Seriously.) She gets him, they come back, it’s all happily ever after, except Jake gets the “let’s stay friends” speech. Some other random stuff happens (Emily left some things pretty vague), then the girl and her boyfriend decide to get married, something something about some disastrous camping trip in the mountains, and now Jake is gone.
This would’ve been so much easier if it was just some stupid crush.
“So,” says Rachel bleakly, joking except not really, “do I kill her now, or later?”
“I phoned her,” Emily says, very quietly, “when we found out Jake was gone. She was very… torn up about it.”
“Good.”
“Rachel.”
“Now, a question of method. Should I run her over, or push her off a cliff? The cliff thing would be kind of ironic and hilarious - ”
“Rachel,” Emily says again, and Rachel has to bite down the very real anger that’s fighting to the surface, threatening to take over, at the thought of - that girl - hurting her baby brother bad enough that he felt the need to run away from home.
“She’s hurting, Rachel,” Emily says. Her voice is very gentle, because Emily has always been like that, always been gentle. Rachel is all sharp edges and unkindness and goddammit, when she gets protective, she gets mean. “Sam told me how she was the last time she talked to Jacob, and - she’s having a lot of trouble living with herself right now.”
Good, Rachel wants to whisper but can’t even because Jacob - Jacob loves this girl goddammit, and if Jacob loves her, then when she’s in pain, he’s in pain, and when could she ever say “good” to Jacob being in pain?
(Except when Rachel’s the one causing it, because really, there were just some things that Jacob needed to learn, like Don’t you ever touch my Easy Bake Oven ever again, especially not with a screw driver, or else you will suffer a slow and very painful death.)
“Emily…” And all of a sudden, Rachel feels like a child, because her throat aches and things will never be simple and easy ever again, Jacob will never be seven years old again, will never fit into her arms as easily as a present or a puppy. “I just want him to come home.”
~
rachel.
i’m worried, i haven’t heard from you in ages. are you getting buried under your workload at washington state like i predicted? even your majorly big brains can’t toil endlessly without break.
come to maui for a bit - hang out with me and joe. we’ll climb volcanoes and i’ll show you the best black sand beaches in hawaii and these crazy gardens that people have of absolutely amazing tropical flowers. i’ll teach you how to chacha, it’s the easiest move, i swear. i can even ditch the hubby for a night and we’ll go out for drinks and dancing, just us girls.
love you times a biillion,
rebecca
~
five.
She goes to the beach because she refuses to have her entire summer break ruined by thoughts of (JakeJakeJake) motorcycles and crazy cliff dives, and of course, there sitting on a driftwood log is Rachel’s own personal Anti-Christ, staring morosely out at the sea.
Bella Swan reminds her of those girls in old poems that Rachel was forced to read and secretly enjoyed in English Lit, with the dark drifting hair and the dreaming eyes, La belle dame sans merci, willow frail and haunted by loss.
This is the face my brother fell in love with, and when did Jake get to be like that? Such a freaking martyr? He should know better than to purchase damaged goods, but he’s the nice guy like that. She remembers him telling her, it might’ve been last summer, maybe, about this girl named Jenny who had a crush on him, and how he’d had to turn her down.
“You can’t be too nice to girls, Jake,” Rachel had lectured him. “I mean, being a gentleman is one thing, but sometimes you just end up hurting them more in the long run, if you let them - you know, delude themselves.”
“Sis,” he said gravely, “go comfort a crying teenage girl, and then get back to me.”
Rachel had mumbled and grumbled because frankly the idea of having to comfort a crying anybody kinda freaks the hell out of her, and let it go. She hates to admit it but Jake (and Rebecca - she feels the automatic tightening in her chest at thinking of Rebecca, but lets that go, too) are generally more graceful at social exchanges than she is.
Rachel really, really hopes that Bella Swan doesn’t start crying on her right now.
“Hey,” she says, plopping down beside the Swan girl with a sigh.
Bella doesn’t say anything, just looks at her.
“So…” Rachel says. Restraining the urge to kill isn’t as hard as she thought it would be; somehow, the idea of murdering this girl isn’t quite so appealing anymore. Maybe because this Bella looks like she’d be grateful if someone just finished her off. “I didn’t know you and Jake were that close.”
… Her laugh comes out sounding like a sob. “Who told you the story? Billy?”
“Are you kidding me? He’s shut up tighter than a clam. No, it was Emily Young.”
“Ah.” Bella pulls her navy sweater tighter around herself, resumes staring out at the sea. “Emily is… kind.”
God, woman, Rachel wants to tell her. Stop the self-pity, right now. Instead, Rachel says, impatiently, “You’re not a monster.”
Bella’s smile is bitter, and far too old for her face. “Really.”
“Really,” says Rachel. “I mean, for God’s sake, my own sister… went on some random trip to Hawaii with her friends to get over a messy break up, and bam! Six months later, she wound up married to a surfer named Iosefo, except she can’t even pronounce his name, so she calls him Joe.” Rachel sighs, squints up the (perpetually) cloudy sky. “I’m sure there are a lot dumber things you can do than want to get married at eighteen.”
Bella’s eyes are strangely, almost uncomfortably, perceptive. “And have you forgiven her yet?”
… So that’s what it feels like to be punched in the gut. “I - What.”
“For wanting to get married at eighteen.” Those eyes - where did this girl learn to stare not at people, but into them? “Have you forgiven your sister yet?”
“That’s - there’s nothing to forgive,” Rachel manages to snap. “She’s - happy - so - whatever.” Two years of law and all her eloquence fails her. She hates anger, it makes her hot and itchy and feel like she doesn’t fit her own skin, it makes her do stupid things. “And you’ve ditched your fiancé, so it’s all good for you.”
The girl flinches, those eyes break away and too late Rachel remembers Emily’s words : Everything, the Cullen boy was… everything to her. She was wrecked when he left her. When Sam found her in the woods, he was afraid that she was… dying.
“Sorry,” Rachel mutters. “Uncalled for.”
“No,” Bella says, very quietly. “I deserved that.”
Some more silence, some more looking out at the sea.
“It’s funny,” Bella says, out of nowhere, “but I really loved his family, too.” She doesn’t have to say who. “It was… hard. I mean, not only to say goodbye to him, but to them. I didn’t just walk away from one person, I walked away from a whole way of…” Her voice falters. “… life. And now I don’t know - what to do, anymore. I’ve… I’ve wrecked everything, and I don’t even know how to pick up the pieces. And Jacob - ” Her eyes close, but even that brief glimpse of pain is enough to make Rachel’s heart shudder, just one beat.
“He’ll probably forgive you,” says Rachel. Grumpily. Jake is both an annoying brat and a freaking martyr, and there is such a thing as taking this Mr. Nice Guy crap way too far.
“Doesn’t mean he should.”
“Then why are you here? Why are you here at all?”
A long sigh rattles itself out of Bella’s chest, and again, she seems - so old. Not just eighteen years old, but eighty years old at least, bloody ancient.
“On the off chance,” Bella whispers, and it’s the painfulness of the hope in her voice that’s so damn heartbreaking, “that he’ll do something that he shouldn’t.”
~
hey, rachel. i know i didn’t misspell your e-mail address last time.
talk to me, write to me, send me a messenger pigeon. call me collect long distance, i don’t care if joe complains about our staggeringly high phone bill. i just want to hear your voice.
still love you,
rebecca
~
six.
She comes home, thinks about mindlessly wasting a few hours in front of the TV, to find Billy parked in the living room, watching a strange man sleep on the couch. Billy wheels to face her, and his face is fierce and exultant, lit with an almost terrifying relief.
“Dad?” she whispers. “Who is that?”
The relief slides into surprise, and then - pity?
“Rachel,” he says, and is he being gentle with her? He’s no Emily Young. “It’s Jacob.”
~
rachel,
i miss you, sister.
please talk to me.
love you.
rebecca
~
seven.
It’s ridiculous, and impossible, and it’s true.
Rachel stands guard over this brother-stranger as he sleeps. This isn’t Jake, skinny, floppy-limbed, goofy boy-Jake with his grin spreading out like the sun. This is… some impossibly huge man with weariness and love and grief carved with hard, set angles into his face. This is the last survivor of a war that Rachel didn’t even know existed.
Did she do this to you? Rachel wants to ask. This Swan girl - did she do this to you?
The stranger sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps. The cadence of a hundred years or more hums through Rachel’s brain; she pounces on it, tries to wrestle it into silence. Rachel wonders, idly, what would be worse : to sleep through a hundred years of dreams, or to live for a hundred years and never sleep at all?
Dad remains true to his word; in a rare act of mercy, the first one he calls is Bella Swan.
She’s there in what feels like a heartbeat, stumbling through the door, and Rachel for a brief moment, is knocked out by her : this girl, this Bella, her hair in her mouth, her breath coming hard, her face blooming. Her eyes are huge and dark, swallowing all light, eyes to fall and drown in, and Rachel understands, for a brief moment, how easy it must’ve been for Jake to trip for this girl.
Bella goes to Jake’s side like she’s been there a million times before, falls to her knees, bows her dark head. She whispers his name like a prayer, her voice tortured with impossible joy.
Rachel’s mesmerized - until she starts to feel guilty, as if she’s seen something she shouldn’t have, as if she’s disturbed a holy place (the altar of memory, the temple of loss, the smell the candles that just won’t go out).
Maybe, Rachel thinks, I won’t have to kill her, after all.
Rachel hears him stirring, and decides to slip out to the beach. Give them a couple of hours. Give them the whole day, hell.
When Rachel comes back, it’s to see the two of them curled up on the loveseat, asleep.
Her brother’s face already looks younger than it did that morning. Already, he looks more like Jacob.
“Welcome home,” she says, quietly.
~
Hey, Becks.
Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply. My mind’s kinda reeling right now, but I’ll send off this super short message for now and write you a proper letter in a few minutes, when I can get my breath back.
I know it’s kinda been forever, but Jesus, you know what? No matter what the hell else goes down in life, you’re still my twin. Not even an ocean could stand between us.
Love you always (and always, and always)
Rachel
~
eight.
The next morning, it is Dad and Rachel and Jake and Bella at the breakfast table, and the strangest thing of all isn’t, really, how her kid brother possesses saint-like powers of forgiveness and this amazing capacity to love, but how all of this feels so perfectly ordinary.
end.