20 years pass rather quickly when the only one that ages in the house looks 17 within a year. And as 20 years pass your old ties fade away when you obviously lost that ability. Married young, a mother young. I did lots of things young, my child will do everything young, too. Of course she has a house of immortal's ready to fight for her no matter what. We check back infrequently, no longer announcing our arrivals and simply visiting Charlie before taking off. We've moved the house, relandscaped so we could just return to the old house and not be bothered by someone who was curious. Renee was in on it now, too. She came to visit when we did. Money was no object so when it was time, it was time. She never took advantage, neither did Charlie, they never would, I never doubted. They were both happy to be grandparents, though Renee couldn't spoil her granddaughter very long, she still did her best, taking her out shopping with Esme and having a grand ol' time of it.
Renee took the news of my changing a little worse than Charlie had. She'd fainted, and when she woke up she screamed, but not about monsters, but about how I could have kept such a secret from her for so long. I conveniently didn't tell her about what could have happened had she known. At least in detail. And as flighty as she was, she was my mother, and I knew she could keep this secret to herself. Not even Phil would know, though he did see us, just not Renesmee, but she didn't really mind. Our lives as vampires didn't really fluctuate, but we did travel the world often. What else can you do? We've been to the east coast where I did actually attend school, night classes of course. Once I finished, they asked if I wanted to try high school again. I gave them a big no, using the excuse that I didn't want to attend school with my own daughter. She didn't find the idea so appealing either, but mostly because she'd been watching a lot of TV, mostly high school dramas. I hoped every day that she didn't grow up to be like those people.
In a year she didn't look much older than me, but that didn't change how Edward and I saw her, even though the others often made comments about how they sometimes forgot how old she really was. We knew, even after being 17 for 20 years, she was our little girl and she never got away with anything. We found out the hard way that she was able to get drunk. She was also able to get hurt in a car accident. She was grounded as soon as she'd healed a few days later. Jacob didn't like that so he was grounded too. It's odd seeing my best male friend as a sort of son-in-law.
Edward was very against letting his daughter marry Jacob, but really couldn't stop them. They also really wanted to, but I knew Renesmee wouldn't just run off without both me and Edward approving. And she didn't, and she was a little disappointed, but she still had Jacob, so she was content with that and so was he. Edward, Renesmee and I still had our little cottage in the woods, and we still used it when we came to visit of course, but we always met up with our bigger family in the main house.
Not much had changed in the Cullen family. Rosalie was as warm and endearing as ever. Carlisle was the wise paternal figure, Esme the kind mother. Jasper was rather brooding, but getting much better at his control in the last 20 years. He even manage to turn away a tempting blood donation packet once or twice. Of course these were baby steps. The biggest event was Jasper and Alice's divorce five years ago. They'd split on good terms, and there was no need to take sides. Alice was still friendly with him and vice versa but they were not married or together anymore. No one knew why the split took place, not even Edward, and since then no one has bothered to question it. For now we're just content to be the almost normal family you see down the street. Except for a few minor differences…
First difference, we're a family of 8 vampires, one vampire-human hybrid, and one shape shifting werewolf.
Second difference…Nevermind, there couldn't possibly be anything more different than us. No, I think we're pretty normal, if you forget we drink blood or turn into giant wolves and have supernatural powers.