Bella looks at him just a little pointedly, but makes no objection, not even a silent brainphone kind of objection.

"This is real good, Bells," Charlie remarks. "Laney help you?"

"He chopped up the carrots, and stuff," Bella says.

"Well, this is a better recipe than the old one," Charlie says, nodding to himself.

Om nom nom, pie.

Bella puts out a bowl of grapes as a facsimile of dessert.

Om nom nom, grapes.

And then...

Bella wonders if Alice wants to start. He probably doesn't, but she checks. [You want me to take this?]

[Yes please,] he says.

Talking about his dad isn't exactly the problem; talking to Charlie about his dad is a much bigger one. He just doesn't know how. And he clearly demonstrated with Angela earlier that talking to normal people is not a skill of his.

It probably isn't something you can pentagon, either. Or at least, it's not something he'd want to.

[Yes, pentagoning that would be weird as hell. Who knows what kind of personality magic would glue onto you.]

"Dad," Bella says, when the grapes are a bowl of stems and no more, "in abuse cases - like, domestic violence and stuff - how is the victim's safety handled in cases where the defendant gets off? Even if it's on a technicality or something?"

Alice wholeheartedly and definitively rejects the thought of modifying himself in such a way.

And then looks to Charlie to observe his answer.

"Uh," Charlie says. "Not a lot we can do, honestly. Guy gets off, we have to treat him like he's innocent. Sometimes we can put the victim in lockup to keep 'em safe, but unless they do it again and we can arrest 'em a second time for a technically separate crime, not a police matter."

"Hmm," Bella says, reading Alice for a reaction.

"But certainly if the defendant, however technically-treated-as-innocent, were to do anything to harrass the victim - say, showing up at a workplace, following or hiring someone to follow them around, etcetera - then that would be a police matter again," Bella says.

"Yep," says Charlie. "Bells, is somebody after you? That's not why you moved here, is it? Renée would've told me if there was -"

"No, no," Bella says, shaking her head.

This seems like a good moment to tell him, actually.

Alice hesitates on the vague suspicion that he would say it... wrong in some way.

"Dad," Bella says quietly, "it's Alice's father."

Charlie's expression is one of slowly dawning comprehension. He looks at Alice.

"In November," he said.

"Yep," says Alice. "I really pissed him off that time. He usually doesn't hit me with things, and even when he does it's usually not a poker."

He recalls the felt/heard sound of his own ribs snapping and winces slightly.

Charlie looks nonplussed at this straightforward description.

"Part of today," Bella said, "went to making a list of - well, everything." [Are you going to hex yourself eidetic memory? This'd be a good time. Copy my version.] "I know Mrs. Hammond can't be compelled to testify against her husband, but their driver knows enough to be suspicious if he were halfway decent as a human being, and even the fact that Alice went to the hospital in November and didn't explain why ought to be suspicious - I figured it out that way. Alice has a safe place to go, whichever way a trial goes, but is worried about his dad buying someone off or there not being enough evidence to convict, and then he could get harassed at school."

Alice obediently uses up a hex.

And thinks of the same sound again, this time with considerably more clarity.

Well, that's... definitely a mixed blessing. He carefully does not start down the road of mentally listing all the things it would be really inconvenient to recall in detail right now.

[It won't call up anything you're not actually trying to remember; I specifically included that. I have stuff I don't want to replay in my head all day too,] Bella tells him.

"If he's got a place to go, no reason not to bring charges," Charlie thinks. "Bribing folks the sort of thing he'd do, Laney?"

Maybe Bella has the self-control not to peek into her memory's septic tank. Alice expects that he doesn't, at least not perfectly.

"Probably," he says. "He'd do just about anything to keep his name clean, if he thought he could get away with it." [Good idea or bad idea to mention why we moved?]

[Er - don't for now. Charlie takes a dim view of illegal things in full generality.]

"Mm," says Charlie. "Can let the right people know that's an issue, but if there was a way to make it go away altogether we'd already be doing it. I think Roberts is a solid fellow, though. He'd most likely get the case while Lawrence is on maternity leave."

[It opens an avenue of investigation that both makes you look less like jury bait and that your dad may be tempted to neglect. It's a choice for the lawyer, later, not Charlie,] Bella explains.

"Right, I guess a little town wouldn't have that many judges in it," Bella says aloud.

"Don't have to worry about Roberts," Charlie says, confidently. "Jury might be a problem. There's procedures against jury tampering, but..."

"We might be able to block that," Bella says, "by unorthodox means you don't want details on. Or we can just catch it and after they go through a few juries, Roberts can decide the case without a jury."

Bella is magic and smart and he loves her. So much.

Alice is slowly, tentatively beginning to smile.

[Smiling's gonna look weird, right now,] Bella tells him.

"Right," says Charlie. "Well, I can make the arrest, Bells."

"He's out of town till the end of the week," Bella says.

"Flying in?" Charlie asks. "Could have him picked up at the airport if you know which one."

"Yeah," says Alice, "he's flying. Don't know the airport, though."

And he kind of doesn't care how weird he looks. If feeling overwhelming relief at this point is an abnormal reaction, it shouldn't be.

[It's not about being relieved or not, it's just about the whole thing being a serious matter. But whatever, this is just Charlie, you can pentagon acting for the witness stand.]

"Well, I can see if we can find that out," Charlie says. "With any luck he'll never set foot in your house again, Laney."