A/N: My first fanfic and I'd love to know what you think. I must mention my co-writer Ams. She puts up with my insanity!!

EPOV

"Rose, Alice, get your asses down here. We're leaving like now." Emmett yelled up the stairs.

The two girls came down the stairs, with what most the world would consider as the entire contents of their closets. With those girls it only measured a quarter.

"You do know we're only going to be gone for like two weeks right?!" I said, trying to hold back the laughter at the look on their faces.

"It must be a girl thing." Emmett joked as Rosalie and Alice walked past us out the door.

Esme, Carlisle, Rosalie, Alice, Emmett, and I are leaving for Phoenix, Arizona. It's going to be a rough two weeks for Alice and myself. The three year anniversary of my mother's death is at the end of the two weeks that we're going to be there.

We've been in Phoenix for a week and a half already, and I've hardly gotten a chance to truly think about today, August 16th. I'm sitting at the cemetery, and now that I'm here, for the first time since she died, it's all flooding back.

Flashback

I was twelve. Bella and I had just walked home from the bus stop. When we got to my house she continued the last two blocks to her house alone. I yelled my mom's name for 5 minutes until I walked upstairs into her room and found her unconscious on her bathroom floor.

It took two days for the doctor to tell us that Mom had cancer, and from that second it all fell apart. Mom was dying, dad was losing the love of his life, and Alice, my eleven year old sister, didn't fully grasp what was happening. I was holding us all together, and I was starting to break as well, but I had the one person in the world that could help me through anything.

Bella had gotten me through my mom's death a year later and it looked like things might actually be able to get better. It was then that I needed her more than ever, and she was there, the same insanely wonderful girl who had been there through everything. Anytime, anywhere if I called she would come, until that day. The day she disappeared.

End Flashback

Sitting there staring at the headstone, all I could think about was Bella. The questions I had been avoiding started to flood my mind, and for once I couldn't push them away. I just couldn't comprehend why she had stayed with me, through it all. Why had she never given up on me, even when I had?

I had tried to ask her once, why she was always there for me; how none of this could be anywhere near as overwhelming to her as it was to me. She played it off, like what she was doing for me was nothing, replying with, "For the same reason you hold your family together, Edward."

I didn't admit it at the time but I was starting to question why exactly I was trying to keep it all together. It was quite obvious that things would never be like they were. It seemed, during that moment, sitting in Bella's room, that she knew me better than I did, like she had some insane way of seeing inside my head.

"Edward, can we leave now?" Alice's soft, tear filled voice interrupted my thoughts, bringing me back to reality. Turning around to ask for a few more minutes, I caught the look on her face and knew that this was getting to difficult for her to handle. I pulled her down on the ground next to me and wrapped my arms around her. We sat there for a while longer as I let her turn my shirt a darker blue with her tears. Being here it was all settling around us, and I felt myself settling into my old role as her protector. I sighed, some things never change.

Two weeks later, and I'm back, in what I like to think of as my personal hell, Forks High School. I was stressing, and the typical Forks rain wasn't helping to add to my mood as I sauntered into the main building. I had to admit that school did have its perks, or perk, people. I watched as my young pixie-like sister was surrounded by a crowd of people, lost in conversation. As I walked by I noticed that she seemed happier at that moment than she had since our trip. I was walking to my first class, on the outskirts of her constantly growing group of people, and looked up to notice her looking at me, with that look that let me know exactly what she was feeling. She was back in her element, and I could worry about her a little bit less.

Junior year. Honors Chemistry, eight o'clock in the morning. Could it get any worse? I was suddenly pulled out of my self pity when I heard a familiar voice. "It couldn't be." I whispered to myself. I was in complete denial until I heard that shy giggle coming from the hallway as she tripped into the classroom, with her ever-present clumsiness, behind the teacher.

"Class, this is Bella Swan." The teacher announced.

I was sitting there, staring at the girl who had disappeared years ago, and taken a large part of my heart with her.

Let me know what you think. It's a bit rough, but it gets better.

K & A