AN: Anyone familiar with western Montana will realize that I've horribly bungled its geography - in reality, Swan Lake only has a population of about 150 people, and Laramie, Wyoming is quite a lengthy commute. Also, I've committed the cardinal sin of "telling, not showing," but I hope you'll pardon my errors. (After all, this is a fairy tale, of sorts.) Enjoy!
Coda
i.
"I want you to stay just as you are," he whispers in her ear.
And for once in her life, she does not argue.
ii.
She goes to Dartmouth, reading ancient greats every day and falling asleep in Edward's arms every night. She stops referring to him as her "boyfriend" and slowly settles on "fiancé" instead.
Jacob occasionally writes, ink-splattered scrawls that try to say everything but only tell very little. She writes back about classes and papers and future plans. But never about Edward. She values his friendship too much to break that fragile truce of silence and avoidance.
But the fiancé rumor reaches him somehow—via Billy via Charlie, no doubt—and his tone changes:
I heard the news. Can't offer my congratulations. You know what I think of him. Be careful, Bella.
Jacob
She cries quietly, then rips the letter into tiny shreds.
iii.
She receives her BA in English literature in early May, and returns to Forks to swap surnames two weeks later. With Alice's help, she decides on an outdoor wedding—green vegetation under a grey sky that hints at a rainstorm which never actually arrives.
Renée corners her before the ceremony, trying not to crush her veil and updo but failing miserably. "You look so beautiful, honey. And so young. You both are so young..."
The world blurs. She finds herself on Charlie's arm, walking from the back porch through the small crowd of people seated on the lawn. Grass crunches beneath her ballerina flats. Her silk skirt rustles against her crinoline. Charlie squeezes her fingers gently.
She hears a branch snap in the woods to her right, and twists her head to watch a pair of glowing eyes vanish into the forest.
iv.
They move eastwards after their honeymoon—in a shaded valley, twenty miles from any signs of civilization, with the Flathead National Forest stretching before them and Swan Peak looming over the horizon. She gets a job in the nearest town—ironically called Swan Lake, Montana—working initially in the county courthouse. But after eighteen months of refresher courses and tedious exams, she earns her teaching certificate. She quits her position as Mrs. Cullen, secretary and proofreader extraordinaire, and becomes Miss Bella, instructor and den mother to twenty squirmy fourth graders. Edward is delighted. He pours over her textbooks, adds elegant notes to her messy lesson plans, organizes field trips and projects and parties for her.
Yet in her classroom, the only visible sign of his presence is the small framed photo of their wedding.
v.
Two years go by. She's busy with the changing crowd of little pupils, running off to Forks or Jacksonville to see Charlie and Renée on holidays. Edward remains at home. The Cullens occasionally drop in, a pair at a time—Jasper and Alice most frequently, Emmett and Rosalie far less often—but she begins to realize that she misses something. Or rather, someone.
She jots a quick little note to Jacob, but addresses the envelope to Billy in hope that it isn't discarded unopened. Surprisingly, she receives a reply—guarded, distant, and formal, but she decides that any answer is preferable to his angry silence. A regular correspondence ensues. She shares silly stories of her students (Katie Ward thought that Scotland was a town in North Dakota), and descriptions of autumn sunrises and wilting corn fields. Jacob's aloofness starts to melt, his letters growing lengthier and more personal with each passing month.
How's he faring? he finally asks near the end of February.
The same as always.
vi.
"What are you thinking?"
She pauses over the skillet, too occupied in her thoughts to notice the acrid stench of burning toast. She searches for a couched, diplomatic explanation, but in desperation falls back on the truth.
"I want to adopt a baby."
He doesn't reply—just walks from the back door into the swirling blizzard outside.
vii.
He returns three days later, deeply apologetic and eager to consider the idea. Esme telephones that evening, full of advice and delighted encouragement.
She researches adoption procedures, fills out an ever-increasing stack of legal forms. A social worker comes up from Missoula one gloomy day to complete their homestudy. The woman seems doubtful ("She thinks we look too young," Edward explains in a quiet aside), but he eventually dazzles her into a state of satisfied approval.
Six months later, she drives down to Missoula and returns home with a green-eyed, tawny-haired toddler named Marianne Elizabeth Cullen.
viii.
I'd like to visit you and Maria, Jacob writes, if you're not busy. (Translation: when Edward is not around.) I want to finally see one of those Montana sunrises you always talk about, and Charlie wants me to spy on your housekeeping skills and report back to him with my findings.
She wanders out to the backyard, where Edward is pushing a giggling Maria on the swing set.
"I got a letter from Jacob. He asked if he could come see Maria."
He pauses mid-push, and the wooden swing—child and all—whacks into his chest. "By himself?"
She nods. He pulls the chains slack, letting Maria kick her heels fruitlessly against the empty air. "He doesn't want me here," he says—a statement, not a question.
"He's my friend," she answers defiantly, then adds as an afterthought, "you could stay with Carlisle and Esme for a few days."
Edward lifts Maria out of the seat, smoothes her wispy little pigtails, kisses the top of her head, then slowly ambles back to the house. He pauses halfway across the yard and turns back to face her. "I'll stay with Alice for the weekend. But if that dog hurts my family in any way, I'll know."
The door squeaks shut. She sits on the swing until the red sun dips below purple misty peaks.
ix.
Edward heads off for Alaska one Friday afternoon, and Jacob pulls up in his old VW Rabbit two hours later.
He grins widely when he first sees her—the same smile he uses (almost) every time they meet, full of warmth and just a hint of protective concern. He scrutinizes the bruises on her shins, from walking into the coffee table; the stains on her linen shorts, from chasing Maria through the tall grass; the cuts on her palms, from repeatedly tripping in the driveway; the thin grey streak over her left temple, thanks to Charlie's genes and accumulated worries. His face brightens, and he rushes forward to envelop her in a crushing hug.
"You look terrible, he says, laughing.
She accepts it as the compliment as he intends it to be.
x.
"Tell me a story, Mama."
She tucks Maria snugly into her sheets and smoothes her bangs. "What kind of story, baby?"
Maria wrinkles her nose. "A true story."
She fluffs the pillows, taps her finger in thought. The curtains rustle in the wind, and she can almost spy Edward leaning outside the door in the hallway. "Very well."
She tells of a boy who lived long ago, in a time was chivalry was inherent and good manners widespread. The boy was kind and good and perceptive, but then the fever struck. His only chance for a cure was a mythical fountain of youth that lay far away in a strange land.
He caught the eye of a great, talented doctor, who agreed to carry the boy to that fountain. He barely reached it in time. He felt his strength slipping away as the doctor carried him to the edge and immersed him in the water.
"He couldn't breathe, so he began to panic, sucking in huge gulps of the cold water. He swallowed more and more and more. He ached everywhere—his lungs, his head, his throat. Then suddenly, the pain stopped."
"Was he all better?" Maria asks anxiously.
"Yes and no. You see, now that he had drunk from the fountain of youth, the boy would never grow old. He was forever beautiful and good and kind. But there was a terrible price."
"What?"
"His life stopped when he tasted the water. He would always be seventeen—the exact age when he entered the fountain. And to survive, he needed to keep on drinking from that fountain."
Maria nods slowly. "What happened next?"
Edward enters the room and kisses Maria on the forehead. "He met a pretty and brave and unpredictable girl. But that is another story, for another night."
xi.
Each evening at bedtime, Maria begs to hear the continuing story of the eternally youthful boy and the perpetually clumsy girl. And every night, Edward sits in the rocking chair in the corner and listens with her.
"If this is a true story," Maria says tentatively, "are the boy and girl real?"
"Absolutely."
Maria sneaks a glance at Edward in the corner. "Are they people I know?"
She smiles. "Absolutely."
xii.
For the summer holiday, she usually spends two months cleaning out the closets and revamping the garden. But this summer, she writes. She spends two hours before breakfast scribbling hastily on a long yellow legal pad, then spends some time after supper tweaking and polishing what she had written earlier. It begins as a simple transcription of Maria's bedtime stories, but swiftly develops into something deeper and more complex. She adds a third protagonist, the childhood friend of the clumsy girl—passionate and warm and prone to anger.
I'm writing a book, she tells Jacob, a fairy tale, of sorts. You're a main character in it. Do you mind very much?
No, he writes back. What's it about?
Oh, the usual. Life, love, war, and pain. And good cooking.
xiii.
She finishes her novel one night, printing THE END on the last page with great satisfaction. But as she flips through the sheets, she slowly realizes that the story is incomplete. She hands three legal pads to Edward and asks for his advice.
"This is good—fantasy overlaid with brutal honesty. I think your problem, though, is that all the events are told from the girl's perspective. She offers some insights into the friend, but she doesn't appear to have a good grasp of the boy's thoughts."
"The boy is very mysterious," she admits. "I don't think the author even understands him completely."
xiv.
She sends the typed manuscript off to a few agents, and receives the same response: interesting work, great potential, but not something they could represent. She places it on a shelf in her closet and continues with her everyday activities, teaching and gardening and writing lengthy letters and occasionally visiting her parents.
Seasons come and go—Maria starts school and passes quickly through grade levels—Jacob marries a girl from La Push and starts slipping snapshots in with his fat letters.
Edward rotates between jobs, sometimes working as a lab assistant down in Missoula or Laramie, sometimes staying home for months at a time to compose at his piano. He tries to teach Maria, but she proves to be hopelessly stiff-fingered. So he plays on the keys alone, shifting effortlessly from Esme's favourite to her lullaby to Maria's perky ragtime tune.
xv.
She expands her garden into the spot where Maria's swing set once stood, planting tulips and lilies around a squat little rosebush. Almost overnight, her rich dark hair becomes speckled with pale silver—she half-jokingly blames the change on her dangerous adolescence.
Maria shoots up suddenly, tall and slender and towering several inches above her. She has papers to write and labs to complete and colleges to consider. Maria often discusses medical careers with Edward, and eventually settles on a pre-Med degree at Cornell.
They both attend her high school graduation: she sitting with her parents and Jacob and Jacob's family, Edward hovering alone near the back of the auditorium.
xvi.
Before she leaves for college, Maria helps her garden in the new row of tomatoes and aubergines on the eastern side of the vegetable patch.
"Mama, do you remember those stories you used to tell me when I was little?"
She nods, tying the tomato vine to its metal cage.
"You said they were true. These past few years, I stopped believing you, because I didn't think that make-believe and reality could coexist. But … there's no other way to explain it."
Maria brushes loam off her knees and sits down, crossing her legs. "When was Papa born?"
"1901," she says matter-of-factly. Maria's eyes bulge. "In Chicago. His last name was Masen. Carlisle and Esme adopted him after his parents died—just Carlisle, actually, because he hadn't married Esme yet."
Maria gradually drags more details out of her—Carlisle was the doctor, the fountain of youth was metaphorical rather than literal, Edward had attended several colleges over the years, often focusing on medicine.
"Why didn't you become like him?" Maria finally asks.
"Honestly? I don't know."
xvii.
Charlie dies unexpectedly—a heart attack, Jacob tells her—and she stays in Forks after the funeral to sort through his belongings. She stands before the fireplace in the old house, looking at the crowded jumble of photos and cards on the mantle. She finds her wedding picture tucked behind Maria's college graduation announcement, and studies their smiling faces.
Renée calls that night, inexplicably chatty. "I haven't seen Edward in years," she says, her tone cautious. "Are you two...?"
"We're doing great, Mom. He's just very busy with his work."
xviii.
Do you ever regret not becoming like them? Jacob asks in a shorter letter than usual, his normally messy handwriting looking even more agitated. Was it the treaty? Because they always mate with their own kind. Sam has never heard of them staying with a human before.
She taps the pen against her lips, pulls her hair out of her eyes and tucks a lock behind her ear. Once, I wanted nothing more than to stay with him for all eternity. But a lifetime is more than enough for me. I would never have been able to teach, or raise Maria, or keep in touch with my parents, if they had changed me.
He's a good man, Jacob replies, a little grudgingly. I guess he deserves you after all.
xix.
She retires from her teaching position and withdraws to her garden, her books, and her letters. Maria gets a position in a refugee camp near Sudan and marries a physician there, sporadically sending photos of her growing family.
She begins to realize that she is old and grey and tired, aimlessly pottering among her flowers and her library. Alice comes to visit more frequently, flipping through old scrapbooks and reminiscing about Forks. Her gold eyes are gentle and sad; she wonders what exactly Alice has seen lurking in her future.
During the winter, she catches a cold that never completely goes away. She coughs often, struggles to catch her breath sometimes, and stays indoors more and more.
Edward reads to her every night, just as she once read to Maria. Each day, he writes slowly and methodically in a notebook, filling each page with his elegant script.
And one day, he pulls the rocking chair next to her bed, opens a folder, and begins to read.
It is her story, but elaborated and perfected. The novel now shifts between the clumsy girl's thoughts and those of the beautiful boy, unraveling and revealing the mysteries of his character.
"He just wanted her to be happy," she whispers.
Edward smiles, and holds her hand until she finally slips away.
xx.
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
--"Sunday Morning," Wallace Stevens