Ben answered the door before I could finish knocking, like he’d been standing right behind it.
“Hey, Bella!” he said, surprised.
“Hi, Ben. Er, is Angela here?” I wondered if Angela had forgotten our plans, and cringed at the thought of going home early.
“Sure,” Ben said just as Angela called, “Bella!” and appeared at the top of the stairs.
Ben peered around me as we both heard the sound of a car on the road; the sound didn’t scare me — this engine stuttered to a stop, followed by the loud pop of a backfire. Nothing like the purr of the Volvo. This must be the visitor Ben had been waiting for.
“Austin’s here,” Ben said as Angela reached his side.
A horn honked on the street.
“I’ll see you later,” Ben promised. “Miss you already.”
He threw his arm around Angela’s neck and pulled her face down to his height so that he could kiss her enthusiastically. After a second of this, Austin honked again.
“’Bye, Ang! Love you!” Ben shouted as he dashed past me.
Angela swayed, her face slightly pink, then recovered herself and waved until Ben and Austin were out of sight. Then she turned to me and grinned ruefully.
“Thank you for doing this, Bella,” she said. “From the bottom of my heart. Not only are you saving my hands from permanent injury, you also just spared me two long hours of a plot-less, badly dubbed martial arts film.” She sighed in relief.
“Happy to be of service.” I was feeling a bit less panicked, able to breathe a little more evenly. It felt so ordinary here. Angela’s easy human dramas were oddly reassuring. It was nice to know that life was normal somewhere.
I followed Angela up the stairs to her room. She kicked toys out of the way as she went. The house was unusually quiet.
“Where’s your family?”
“My parents took the twins to a birthday party in Port Angeles. I can’t believe you’re really going to help me with this. Ben’s pretending he has tendonitis.” She made a face.
“I don’t mind at all,” I said, and then I walked into Angela’s room and saw the stacks of waiting envelopes.
“Oh!” I gasped. Angela turned to look at me, apologies in her eyes. I could see why she’d been putting this off, and why Ben had weaseled out.
“I thought you were exaggerating,” I admitted.
“I wish. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Put me to work. I’ve got all day.”
Angela divided a pile in half and put her mother’s address book between us on her desk. For a while we concentrated, and there was just the sound of our pens scratching quietly across the paper.
“What’s Edward doing tonight?” she asked after a few minutes.
My pen dug into the envelope I was working on. “Emmet’s home for the weekend. They’re supposed to be hiking.”
“You say that like you’re not sure.”
I shrugged.
“You’re lucky Edward has his brothers for all the hiking and camping. I don’t know what I’d do if Ben didn’t have Austin for the guy stuff.”
“Yeah, the outdoors thing is not really for me. And there’s no way I’d ever be able to keep up.”
Angela laughed. “I prefer the indoors myself.”
She focused on her pile for a minute. I wrote out four more addresses. There was never any pressure to fill a pause with meaningless chatter around Angela. Like Charlie, she was comfortable with silence.
But, like Charlie, she was also too observant sometimes.
“Is something wrong?” she asked in a low voice now. “You seem . . . anxious.”
I smiled sheepishly. “Is it that obvious?”
“Not really.”
She was probably lying to make me feel better.
“You don’t have to talk about it unless you want to,” she assured me. “I’ll listen if you think it will help.”
I was about to say thanks, but no thanks. After all, there were just too many secrets I was bound to keep. I really couldn’t discuss my problems with someone human. That was against the rules.
And yet, with a strange, sudden intensity, that’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted to talk to a normal human girlfriend. I wanted to moan a little bit, like any other teenage girl. I wanted my problems to be that simple. It would also be nice to have someone outside the whole vampire-werewolf mess to put things in perspective. Someone unbiased.
“I’ll mind my own business,” Angela promised, smiling down at the address she was working on.
“No,” I said. “You’re right. I am anxious. It’s . . . it’s Edward.”
“What’s wrong?”