As he watched her disappear from sight, her long black braid swinging, he felt like part of his heart had vanished too. Their time together flashed through his mind, a frenetic slide show of memories. Looking for green rocks on First Beach. Rocking a five year old Claire covered in chicken pox to sleep. A huge gap toothed smile as she pedaled the bike he'd given her for her seventh birthday, pink streamers flying. Hours of flashcards when at age eleven she decided to teach herself French, because it was not offered at the Quileute Tribal School. Claire's ecstatic expression when she'd opened Harry Potter a L'ecole Des Sorciers, which had taken him hours of scouring bookstores in Seattle to find. His grandfather's brilliant smile when he had brought Claire over to visit and she'd started conversing with Old Quil in fluent Quileute. Her wide eyes darting around the bonfire at all the members of the pack after they finally told her about werewolves before a shrug and a "yeah, sounds about right," followed by a wicked smirk in his direction. Fourteen year old Claire's hysterical laughter when he and Jacob would mock argue in front of her hoping to elicit just such a reaction. Silent tears streaming down her face and her fingers desperately clutching his at the cemetery as they buried her father. The blazing stare she'd shot at him when she was seventeen that had caused his insides to twist with newly discovered longing and desire and seeing her in an entirely new light. Watching from the woods as her senior prom date reached under her skirt during an otherwise brief goodnight kiss on her front porch. He'd seen red and been mere seconds from springing out and beating the cocky teenager senseless when dainty Claire in her powder pink gown had knocked the kid to the ground with a right hook powerful enough to make even Quil himself see stars. The look of desperation on her face when she told him that her mother was dying of cancer. Claire falling asleep on his shoulder from utter exhaustion, spending her weeks commuting to and from college, so she could spend as much time as possible with her fading mother. Claire choosing not to walk at her graduation ceremony so she was home for her mother's final days. Holding her as she sobbed. Her glowing face when she told him she had accepted a job as a flight attendant and was finally going to see the world—and get paid to do it. Watching helplessly as she packed her clothes and his heart in her suitcase.
He knew, in the deepest part of his heart, that this was what Claire wanted—what she needed. That knowledge was the only thing keeping him sane as she passed through security in the Seattle-Tacoma airport. He remembered vividly how she'd talked about this, dreamed about this, for years. The posters on her walls of foreign cities and exotic locales— all identifying places she dreamed of visiting, the great pyramids, the Outback, the Eiffel tower, Macchu Picchu. He used to bring fancy travel magazines and brochures over to her house, and the two of them would spend hours cutting out the shiny pictures of the Dutch windmills, the dunes of the Sahara, and the beautiful shrines of Japan. She would paste them with the utmost care onto the wide, white pages of the blank book he'd bought her for her tenth birthday. He could close his eyes and remember with picture perfect detail the wistful, dreamy look on her face as she would prattle on for hours about the places she wanted to see someday. He knew that Claire would never be content to remain on the reservation forever, and he wanted, above all, for her to be happy. He could go on, even without her, as long as he knew she was content. Because he loved her, he would never let himself hold her back, no matter how much he might want to scoop her up and never let her out of his arms. He loved her more than anything in the world: she was his entire world. He knew that he had to let her go, but he had never felt so empty. For the first time in nineteen years he felt cold.
Dear Quil,
I'm finished with training, and after three LONG weeks they've finally told us where we will be based! I'm headed to, drum roll please, NEW YORK CITY! Can you even believe it? I have a week of actual flying training, where I'll be flying all over, and then I move to the Big Apple. I'm so excited I can barely write! I'll let you know when I find out more! Miss you.
Love, Claire
He got her first letter and remembered her childhood room with the shiny poster of the New York City skyline on her door. Focusing on her joy was the only way he kept himself moving. That was the day he decided to buy a house—an extremely run-down house that would take him forever to fix up. He signed papers on the Clearwaters' old place within the week. Leah and Seth had both moved out years ago, and Sue, unable to keep up the place on her own, had moved to a smaller place in Forks. No one had lived there in ten years and it was a ramshackle money pit. Embry told him he was crazy, but Quil knew that he needed something to throw himself into, something to take up his time. Days seemed far longer than they ever had before.
Dear Quil,
I'm in New York City! It's hard to find a place to live here, and everything is so expensive! But I'm staying in what they call a "crash pad." Twenty flight attendants live in this 2 bedroom apartment, but since our schedules are so crazy and we're so often out of town, there are usually never more than 6 here at a time. It's crowded and messy and completely insane, but I'm living in New York City! Today was the first day off since I moved here, and I took the subway all over. I saw the Statue of Liberty and Times Square. Another girl and I got half price tickets to see a Broadway show tonight! I fly out tomorrow—my first international flight! I'm going to Amsterdam. I can't wait. Give my love to everyone. Miss you.
Love, Claire
When he got the postcard from Amsterdam three days later he put a map of the world on the wall of his living room and started inserting pins in all the cities she mentioned in her letters. Staring at the map on the wall made him feeler closer to Claire, yet at the same time further away than ever. He started working even more hours at Jacob's shop, both to eat up time and to earn extra money for the house. Any time he wasn't working, either at Jake's or on patrol, he spent on the house. He rebuilt it and designed it with Claire in mind. He didn't know if she would ever come back, but it made him feel better. He painted the walls with brighter colors than he himself preferred, knowing that she would love them. He couldn't stop thinking about what could have been, what should have been. He knew that he loved her, was irrevocably in love with her, and, whenever he let his focus lapse, he would wonder whether it would have changed anything if she'd known. She knew that he loved her, of course. She loved him too. As deeply as she cared though, he also knew that she wasn't in love with him. She was in love with the world and her dream to experience it. Her passionate and obsessive determination to live out that dream was something he loved about her, but that tunnel vision had also deterred him from ever asking if she ever wanted more from him. He loved her too much to make her choose; he loved her so much he was scared to let her. She needed to do this.
Dear Quil,
"One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster!" Asia—CHECK! I'm in Thailand and it's beyond amazing! It's even prettier than those travel brochures you used to bring me! Flying is crazy and exhausting and sometimes the people are crazy too, but I love it! It's everything I've ever wanted. Miss you.
Love, Claire
"It's everything I've ever wanted" ripped a new hole in his heart. She was everything he'd ever wanted, would ever want. Everything. She obviously didn't feel the same way he did, he knew that, but it still hurt. He threw himself into working on the house with even greater zeal.
The letters came once every few weeks or so, never anything very long, just a quick hello and where'd she been. He never wrote back. She never asked him to. He did carefully place every letter, every post card, every picture into another album, meticulously chronicling where she had been and how she was doing. Embry frowned whenever he saw the book but said nothing.
Dear Quil,
I'm in New Zealand! It's incredible—so beautiful! This trip is just for fun—no work! I've got 10 days off so another flight attendant and I flew down. There was a you-know-what on my flight from JFK to San Francisco, I'm sure of it. He sat across the aisle from me, white as a ghost and disturbingly beautiful. It made me quite nervous, but he was very well behaved and polite and no one died, so that's good. We got a great deal on a place down here and I plan to go sky diving tomorrow! I know you will think it's dangerous, but by the time you get this I'll already have gone, so no worries, okay? Miss you.
Love, Claire
Thinking about a bloodsucker so close to his Claire was excruciating. He ran straight outside after reading that and exploded without even removing his shoes, something he hadn't done in years. He ran, his thoughts frenetic and disjointed until he heard Brady screaming "Bloodsucker!" He was at the scene within minutes and relished every second of ripping the smirking vampire to shreds, more shreds than was actually necessary. He eagerly took extra shifts on patrol, keeping a look out for the leech's mate, who had slipped away during the frenzied demise of her lover.
Finally tracking the female leech down took six months, and Quil found himself at a loss when she had been destroyed. He'd needed the distraction it had offered.
Dear Quil,
I'm in Prague, as you can probably tell from the postcard. It's beautiful here. I'm moving out of that horrid crash pad finally! I met Adam at work two weeks ago and we hit it off straight away—he's one of the coolest people I've ever met. I know you would love him. He has a big apartment in Uptown and I'm moving in next week! I'm very excited—no more sleeping on a cot with four other girls next to me when I'm home! Miss you.
Love, Claire
He'd curled up in a ball on the floor and sobbed when he'd read it. She had found someone else. They were living together. She didn't want him. She would never want him. Embry found him hours later and sat with him in supportive silence all night long. The next day Jacob showed up with bikes and they drove for a week straight. Jacob didn't say much; he didn't have to. Quil knew that Jacob knew what it was to love someone so deeply and have her choose someone else. They returned to La Push a week later, and Quil returned to work and life, albeit much quieter than he had ever before been. The sense of loss was nearly tangible around him, but her ever cheerful letters kept him functioning: she may have been happy with someone else, but she was happy.
Dear Quil,
Paris is beyond words. I decided to fly over for a few days, just for the hell of it. I've bought probably a dozen new books in French! Tres bien! I love sipping coffee and watching the people hurry past. It's so romantic here—I saw a man propose to a woman right near the Eiffel Tower. Cheesy, sure, but somehow still magical. Give my love to everyone. Miss you.
Love, Claire
Having numbly finished his own house, he started in on the James' place. Spending so much time in the house he had watched Claire grow up in was a struggle, but no matter how many memories inundated him, he found it cathartic working there. He labored to restore it to the better, shinier, purer place of his memory, before so much death had sullied it, dulled the edges. He had spent so many days here, sitting with Mrs. James through her pain and suffering while Claire was at her classes. He could still remember the medications filling the refrigerator and soon purchased a new one. He couldn't bear to look at the sofa where Mrs. James had spent so many days, so he carefully covered it and relocated it to the basement. He built an enormous fancy new bookshelf along an entire wall of the living room and spent hours meticulously arranging the hundreds of foreign language tomes: textbooks, dictionaries, grammar guides, novels, histories, etc. Claire had spoken Quileute, French, and Spanish (the only foreign language taught at the school on the reservation) with ease before starting college, where she had studied languages including German, Japanese, and Latin. He could well remember her rants about schoolwork. Her grades in sciences and math were abysmal, but something in her brain called out for languages, and she absorbed them with childlike ease. Organizing her books, which were scattered haphazardly throughout the house with not even a smidgeon of order, made him feel closer to her. He remembered her reading these books, touching them, hugging them to her chest—he'd often wished that she would only touch him like she did her language texts. He lived in and through her letters, but those books kept him grounded between missives.
Dear Quil,
I've been doing quite a bit of South America flying lately! Lima and Rio are my favorites. I had chatty passengers in my business class during a few of these Brazil runs (the free booze loosens their tongues—you would not BELIEVE the things they elect to tell me. I hear more dirt than a priest in a confessional), so I've been picked up Portuguese, which is great fun! Not too difficult, what with all those years of Latin, French, and Spanish, but it's nice to branch out a bit. Convenient, as I'm hoping to go to Lisbon next month! Adam found a great deal on a weeklong safari, so we're flying to Tanzania in two weeks. Lions and tigers and zebras, oh my! But I've known bigger animals, so I'm not too worried. ;-) Miss you.
Love, Claire
He had nightmares for a week of her being attacked by an angry hippopotamus or snarling lion. She'd been gone two years, and he knew she could take care of herself. She did not want him to take care of her or worry over her, but there was nothing he could do to completely vanquish the anxiety that ate at him. She could be anywhere in the world, attacked by any sort of monster, human, animal, or mythical. He threw himself into rebuilding Sam and Emily's place after the roof collapsed during a particularly nasty storm. Sam, Emily, and their boys stayed at his house while he and the rest of the pack built back the house, doubling its size. Sam and Emily had three sons in their early teens, all over six foot, all growing like weeds, and the pack had been placing bets for the past year on when the oldest would start phasing. They would most definitely need the room. It helped to have people in the house. Quil enjoyed wrestling with the boys and eating Emily's ever amazing cooking. It saddened him to realize that no matter how homey he tried to make the place, it would always be empty—never a true home—without Claire. His runs through the woods in wolf form grew longer and longer, and he eagerly took over shifts from others in the pack when they needed a break to be with their families. He didn't like being in wolf form with the happy, fulfilled family members of the pack anyway—it was too painful to see that contented joy and completeness that he would never have.
Dear Quil,
Happy Birthday to me! 25, can you even believe it? Time flies. I've got an awesome layover in Costa Rica! 48 hours! So much fun. I've got a 36 hour layover in Krakow next week and Adam has been obsessing for weeks about me going to see this huge stone statue of a dragon that is rigged to breathe actual fire. Apparently, it's the city of dragons or something. He's such a dork. But it does sound kind of cool. Anyway, it'll be my first trip to Poland—I will have to pick up some lingo. Miss you.
Love, Claire
The letters stopped. No reason, no explanation. He slipped further and further from reality, because she was his only reality. Without her, he had no reason to live. She had never gone so long without writing, without contact of any kind. He could not believe that she was dead, his wasted heart would know if she were, but she no longer cared enough to write. The damn postcards that were his only link to her, the only hope he had, the only thing keeping him sane, were no more. Days went by, weeks, months. None of the pack members could rouse him. He grew listless and lethargic. The lack of Claire was like the removal of the sun from his world. Everything around him grew dark and blurred. Nothing mattered. Time passed. His life darkened until he saw no more.
Embry was gasping and shaking him, two words penetrated the shrouded abyss of his mind, "She's back!" His eyes flew open and saw the light for the first time in weeks. She was back. He could live.