Chapter Text
All the breath left my lungs as I locked eyes with the prettiest of the new family, her name a whisper on my breath...
My name...
"Rosalie..."
Suddenly five sets of golden eyes landed on me, confusion evident on them all. I blink and shake my head, sure I must be dreaming. There's no way those five teenagers are the same as the ones my mother once knew, and yet... I turn on my heels, the weight of those gazes on my back as I walk away, completly mistified.
THREE DAYS EARLIER
"MUUUUMMMMM! I'm home! And I have some gossip!"
Mum pokes her head around the wall between the kitchen and dining room as I kick my shoes off into the messy shoe rack.
"What's up, Rosie?"
I bound into the kitchen, chasing the smell of vegetables roasting away, filling my nose.
“Rumour has it, we have a family of five moving to our school next week, The Platt’s. Their mum is said to be some big time interior designer or something.”
I look at mum and she seems to be lost in her own thoughts for a moment. Before I say anything, she looks at me again.
“That’s lovely, Rosie darling. I bet that’s going to be the main conversation point for a while. Brunswick could do with some fresh blood.”
Mum laughs at herself like she made a funny joke.
“Am I missing something?”
Mum looks up at me, my wider frame dwarfing her these days, and I’m sure to keep growing still. She flicks my chin.
“Don’t worry, Rosie. I’m just being weird… forget I laughed, okay?”
I roll my eyes at her, backing away.
“Yeah, sure mum. Do I need to call gramps? Tell him that Isabella Marie Swan finally went insane?”
Mum throws some flour toward me but misses by a long shot, before she tips out a bowl revealing dough.
“I’m sure Charlie would be delighted… he thought I cracked years ago.”
She chuckles, and I can’t help but laugh too.
“I’m gonna go and do some homework, and maybe give Gramps a call. I haven’t heard from him in a while.”
Mum has raised me by herself my entire life, moving around a bit when I was young, but thankfully settling down before I hit puberty. While we’ve had our struggles, I know that I’m lucky to have had a mum like her.
We haven’t always had much money, but for a joint trip in honour of mums fourthyieth and my thirtheenth, we went to Italy together, and she told me all about a festival we attened, and she told me she'd been to it when she was eighteen.
It’s honestly one of my favourite memories I have with her, as we sat wearing red hooded robes near a water fountain, eating propper gelato, watching a procession of joy pass us by.
That was the day I learned a lot more about her, like her rich ex boyfriend, the brother of the woman she named me after.
I remember when I was about ten years old and she’d told me she’d named me after a girl I’d taken to calling The Princess. Based on how close they appeared, it hadn’t occurred to me that she was essentially an inlaw.
To this day, however, mum hasn’t told me what The Princess stopped her from doing, but I can only assume it’s connected to mums ex boyfriend.
Unfortunatly for me, mum doesn’t often seem inclined to tell me about her youth often.
Gramps hasn’t divulged much either, respecting mums privacy, but he has told me that it’s best I don’t know.
Lucky for me, I’m not studying mum for my modern history project.
I look over my history assignment and groan in frustration, regretting my choice of topic from ‘modern history’.
I shake my arm and my phone screen projects in front of me. I scroll through my screens, finding my Gramps contact, a slight burst of happiness in my chest as I look at the photo of us holding a big fish, along with his best friend, Uncle Billy.
Gramps answers almost right away, his face flooding the projection in front of me. I adjust where it’s sitting, and wave at him.
“Hey kiddo! How ya doing?”
I spend an hour catching up with Gramps, and I even get to say hi to Uncle Billy, the old man wheeling past on his way to some activity in the home their in together.
Mum calling to me, letting me know dinner is ready, has me sighing, but before I say goodbye to gramps, I remember something useful.
“Hey, gramps. Mum just said dinners ready, but before you go, can I ask you something for my history project?”
His grey, bushy eyebrows rise slightly.
“You calling me old, kiddo?”
“What? You? Old! Never!”
I pause a second, relishing in the sound of gramps hearty chuckle.
“It’s just… you were Police Chief during the great Seattle disappearance of two-thousand and six, right? Anything you can tell me about that?”
Gramps looks lost for a moment, but his focus quickly returns to me.
“It was a long time ago, kiddo, and it was a scary time, especially for your mum. I think, for your sake, it’s best you choose something else if you can.”
“Oh…”
“Don’t get down about that, Rosie. A lot of messy stuff happened around then for us all, and I’d hate for your project to cause your mum pain. If you’re really set on it, send me a list of questions over the next few days and I’ll do my best, okay? Send your mum my love and enjoy dinner, alright?”
I nod at him, waving bye.
Like usual, dinner is a fairly silent affair, the daily news podcast we love playing in the background. We comment on things occasionally, but mostly we just dig into the food mum prepared. I srunch my nose up as I pick up a charred asparagus.
“I’m all for supporting your vegetarian diet, mum, but must you make me eat this during meals where I don’t get any kind of meat?”
Mum spikes some off her own plate, waving it at me.
“This is what you get for swapping our cooking night last minute. Don’t want veggies you detest, cook when your supposed to.”
I stick up the rude finger at her, but position the asparagus in front of it, getting a laugh out of her. I grab the jug of white sauce from the middlle of the tabke and drown the asparagus in it. But I know nothing will make that slightly metallic taste of the asparagus go away.
Mum laughs at me as she clears her plate and I’m still grumbling.