This story takes place directly after Edward leaves Forks, but will otherwise branch off into another direction. Don't assume you know where it's going.

He was gone.

No matter how many times I told myself this, it never seemed entirely real. Some part of me, in the darker recesses of my soul, waved it aside whenever those three words floated through my mind. It must be a nightmare, I told myself. Some anxiety that I had harbored for all those months we were together, creeping into the light when I wasn't with him.

But every time I thought it to myself, another piercing pain struck me. My legs would begin to waver as if I were dizzy, and the world around me seemed to fade into greyness and silence. It was as if every word stabbed a shard of glass into my heart, and left it there.

He was gone.

I sat at the window, in the rocking chair that he had sat in so many times. Faint grey light filtered through the heavy clouds, and caught in the raindrops as they ran down the glass. Down below the window I could see the faded red of my truck, the only color I could see in the dank outdoors of Forks. I shivered, resting my forehead against the cold glass, letting my unseeing eyes drift across the play of light and shadow.

Then something dark moved in the woods. Something dark and swift, moving so quickly that it barely made a stir among the ferns that clustered under the willow trees.

My heart leapt up into my throat. Without thinking, my hand rose to touch the window, and I was tempted to throw it open and call out his name. Was it him? It must be! Nobody else could move so swiftly and silently, unless it was Alice or one of the others.

Was one of them coming to check up on me? To see if I was all right?

My eyes clung to the spot where that dark shape had been. The slightest glimmer of bronze would be enough. A glimmer of light on iridescent skin. A flash of gold eyes. If I could just see who it was - if I could be sure that he hadn't vanished completely from my life -

But as the moments ticked by, the only movement I saw was the stirring of the wind among the ferns and grass. The trees seemed to drift down over the spot where that dark shape had been before, like a theatre's red velvet curtain falling when a performance was over. The theatre had gone dark, the applause had faded, the actors had vanished after taking their bows, and now all was cold and silent.

I slowly sank back in the chair, and wrapped myself tightly in the heavy wool blanket that Charlie had brought up the other day. There was no shape out among the trees. If there had been something there, it had been a bird or a gust of wind.

It had just been my imagination. Again.

I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, with no warning. A person standing near me, just out of sight. Something dark darting among the endless moss-encrusted trees. A name that looked like that of someone I knew, but which never was. A voice that sounded slightly like his, only to rise or fall into that of someone else's.

There were holes in my life, where he and his family had once been... but they were gone now, leaving gaping holes where they had been once. Now my mind was trying to fill in those gaps, but every imaginary sight or sound jabbed another icy shard of glass into my heart. Blood had threaded into my thoughts and emotions, until everything I saw and felt was tinged with pain.

He was gone. I was alone.