"I have tentatively concluded that the benefits of telling Renée outweigh the risks. We already use her house as a base of operations, and not having to work around her would be much easier, especially now that we have three people who don't officially exist to hide. She exists - and her official existence is an adult; she can drive us places and so on. She can excuse me and Andi from school, if Charlie morphs her he can be out in public as long as they coordinate and not have to pretend he's not our parent, she can make sure we have enough food in the house - and I guess for Ax we experiment with commercially available forms of hay, there aren't going to be grass clippings in Phoenix so readily available - to sustain extra people. She's flighty but not terrible with secrets. I do think we might want to avoid teaching her specialized vocabulary like 'Yeerk' or 'Escafil' or whatever, because that seems like the easier slip for her to make, but I think we should tell her what's going on. Charlie will be able to convince her that we can't just turn over the issue to the authorities."
She shrugs. She writes. "If your stepdad died would your mom inherit his stuff as per usual or is there something else set up?"
"Does he have other close relatives you know about that he'd bother setting something unusual up for?"
"Give her an alibi," shrugs Bella. "Convince her to go someplace where she'll be noticed, make it look like he fell down the stairs."
"Could work. Tricky, though, the falling down the stairs part. And she almost never goes anywhere."
"Does she have people over? Anyway, she has an excuse to change her behavior around now - her kid just ran off."
"I bet you can plan a perfect murder what with telepathy and morphing and being missing presumed dead. They are useful tools. Anyway."
Robin, being one of the few people in the house who is officially both alive and in Forks and happening to be nearest the door, answers it.
And she heads for the last known location of a Swan twin.
"Hi, Mom," says Bella, and she goes to shut the front door. "Dad -"