TO FINDING, TO LOSEING, TO FOREVER

Prelude

September 26, 1917,

A train somewhere in Illinois.

Dear Sketch

I am happy, completely and totally one hundred percent happy. At least that's what I've been trying to convince myself of for the last two days, but honestly I'm miserable… sorrowful, dejected, depressed, downhearted, despondent (the list goes on and on) but I'm trying to be happy for mother, if she's happy then I can be happy, and she claims that she'll only be happy if I'm happy.

"Well that's not very likely, now is it"

If I'm going to try and be happy I might as well stop complaining and tell you about something else…

What else was there, there wasn't much that I hadn't already written about the interior of the private sleeping car I was sitting in. I looked up from my seat at the window and glanced out at the passing landscape, the farther east we'd traveled the more lush the landscape had become it was so different from the Arizona deserts we had left behind. The scene I saw out of the trains window Was in fact very beautiful it was open green fields with the occasional farmhouse dotting the landscape. The thing that I couldn't wrap my mind around was the color, was it supposed to be this green? It was so different from the browns reds and yellows of my families home, it was a bit unnerving like being on a foreign planet

"and were not even in Chicago yet"

It was getting darker out side and the sun was setting, to my other side I heard my mother pulling back the sheets of the little twin beds prepared for us in our sleeping car. As I went to draw the curtains shut I saw a man and his two children wrestling and laughing out side of their house while silhouetted in the doorway the mother stood affecinetly staring down at her family, I only saw it for a second before the train sped by. A tear rolled down my cheek, it was so much like my own family.

What was I doing here? Miles away from my father, our families ranch in Arizona, from my best friend, from my uncles, from my aunts, from the magical desert landscape, from my childhood fort in the back orchards, from my piano, from my books, from my life. Everything that I had known and loved since I was four years old, it was all gone, and it was all because of me.

At least that's what I had to keep telling myself it was so much better in my mind from the other reason, I would embrace the fact that it was my fault my mother and I were now traveling hundreds of miles to Chicago to live with my grandmother, that it was my fault that my father was now living alone without us in our old home, most likely heartbroken, that it was my fault that I had to break my promise to my friend, that I had to break my promise to myself, if it just meant that the rest of it wasn't true.

It's not supposed to be this way I told myself, your going into society, your young and rich your supposed to blame it all on your parents. But that wasn't me it wasn't the way I was raised, I had been raised by my loving sweet and harebrained mother, who was one of my best friends, I had been raised by my strong and caring father, they were both good people and I just couldn't bring myself to say it was their fault.

"Bella dear, come on we've had a long day and we'll be arriving in Chicago tomorrow you need to get your rest, we wouldn't want any of our fellow neighbors to see us when we aren't at the height of our beauty."

Renee tittered. Ahh Renee my sweet, kind, loving, caring, hectic, harebrained, not always there mother, I sometimes thought that she was the child and I the parent, I always chalked it up to the way we'd been raised, she had grown up in Chicago's wealthiest social circles, brought up from an early age to make a good marriage, and then there was me, I had lived the first four years of my life in Chicago though I was far to young then to remember it, all of my memories were of our life in Arizona, I had been raised relatively free, running around playing with the children from the nearby reservation whose parent were under my fathers employment, going into Bisbee every fall to be taught proper manners and etiquette (there were some things that my mother just insisted on, even though at the time my father and I both secretly scoffed, why in the world would I need to know proper society manners on a ranch in Arizona, I guess I knew why now).

The reason that my mother and I had left Arizona to return to Chicago was so that I could "partake in good society" and eventually find a wealthy husband who came from a good family and live the rest of my life attending society functions, oh how that very though made me so ecstatic. NO! The very thought made me sick, that was not me that was not what I wanted from life, I wanted to travel to see different places, to help other people, I wanted to go to Paris and try to live off of my brush for a year and above all I wanted to find love, it was foolishly romantic, and stupidly optimistic of me, and I knew that it was just one of those silly girly fantasies but I could still hope. I had found love on our ranch back home, not true romantic love but a sort of deep sibling love.

My best friend Jacob Black and I did everything together, the bond between us was so strong it was as if we were siblings, he was two years younger then me but I always said it was his fault for all the trouble that we got into. I know some people (coughReneecough) feared that we might be in love and whish to marry, but that wasn't the way it was he was my sweet little brother and we both were mildly disgusted by the thought of ever being anything more

"Well what would you do if someone suggested you marry your sister" he'd told me after I slapped him for vomiting behind a bush when some one first mentioned the possibility "well I'm not that bad, and your not so great yourself mister Black", after that it was a sort of joke between us. Poor Jacob it had broken my heart to leave him behind, the look on his face when I told him that I was leaving still haunted my dreams.

It was all my fault, why did I have to cause everyone around me so much trouble. But it's not really you fault a small voice in the back of my head said as I slipped into my white lace nightgown. I crawled under the rich red sheets of the little bed and laid down

"But I wish it was" I whispered as I drifted off to sleep.

September 27, 1917

Chicago Train Station.

The fabric felt stiff, and scratchy to me, and the color and over all design were atrociously hideous and constricting.

"And to think THIS! is the 'height of fashion" my voice was dripping in sarcasm, even to me.

"Now Bella these clothes are gorgeous, and don't fret if you don't like it, these are just traveling clothes, not all your outfits will be like this."

If I was going to be brutally honest with myself (which was not likely considering that my whole new life was one big giant lie to myself so far) then I would have to admit that I liked the dress I was wearing. When it had first arrived about two months ago, as a gift to my mother and me, from my grandmother I had been delighted. I was not usually a superficial person, I usually left that sort of thing to my mother, but the clothes (there were several) were gorgeous. The note had read

Dear Isabella

So you can start your sixteenth year off in style, I've no doubt you'll be wearing many an outfit like these for quite some time to come.

Sincerely Grandmother Marie

Touched. I had been touched when I read the card, happy that she thought me worthy of such pretty things, how stupid I was. Since I was told that my mother and I would be leaving for Chicago, the letter, and the clothes, had taken on a dark sinister meaning. I could see clearly now that these clothes represented the real reason my mother and I came hear, the reason they were meant to disguise. We weren't coming so I could "partake in society", we were coming because my mother did not love my father, and had chosen the most graceful way she could think of to get out without completely abandoning me. That hurt. That was the real reason and it tore at my heart to think of it, I would so much rather have it be my fault we had come, but apparently it wasn't.

"Bella dear come along they've already taken our bags out",

I wasn't listing I was absentmindedly picking at the fabric, with a scowl planted firmly on my face.

"Now ISABELLA!" I looked up startled, " you listen to me, instead of daydreaming. We are making this move for you, and your benefit."

She had no idea how mush those words hurt me

" so please, please behave, and make the absolute most of it, remember everything you have learned…"

ohh I would. Though she forgot that not everything I learned was society manners, and dancing,

"always appear happy, and live each day to the fullest."

She concluded with a bright smile, ending her speech with her life motto, live each day to the fullest, I'd heard it my entire life, but it had never quite stuck with me.

Soon enough though I would find myself living each day to the very last strains of the fullest.