Twenty minutes later, I arrived back home. Five faces stared at me from around the small living room.

Rosalie looked up, worried, but quickly hid it with a sneer.

So, youre back?

It was true, I had been gone for a while. I found that it was easier for me to tune out the world and just forget for small portions of time when not surrounded by 'supportive' family.

Esme was up, and at my side in an instant. Worry emanated from every corner of her being. Something in my expression told her not to ask anything, but she couldn't help what she thought.

Has something changed. Well obviously, or he wouldn't have returned to us. But what? has he decided to return to Bella?

I winced.

"Where are you going to go?" called Alice from upstairs. I could see in her mind that I was undecided, I only knew I was going. That, I was sure of.

"You're leaving? Why? Son, if we are to close, you know the family will move wherever you need us." Carlisle stared anxiously at me, trying to decipher what was going on in my mind.

"No… Even you remind me of… " I stopped. They knew what I meant.

"I'm so sorry Edward. Are you quite sure you've made the right decision? I'm positive she would take you back in a heartbeat Edward." Esme was so loving, but I was her priority. She didn't see that, for the girls sake, I could never return to her. But I didn't need Esme trying to reason with me. I was ambivalent already, any more persuasion and I'd be out the door.

"I'm sure."

Hmm. Victorias scent cut off at the airport, suggesting she took a cab… but as a bloodthirsty, definitely not vegetarian vampire, I couldn't see her sitting quietly in the backseat as some brazilian rambled about this wonderful city.

I decided that if I couldn't distract myself from her by doing nothing, I might as well be useful, and hopefully distract myself at the same time. Victoria did pose a threat to the girl, I still refused to think her name. Even though Victoria hadn't shown herself as of recent, I might as well be aware of her location at all times.

Which was what led me to Brazil. After finding a trace of her down in Texas, I figured that she took a plane to Brazil, after tracking her scent to terminal nine, where, ten days earlier (which was how old the scent was) there had been a plane going to the beautiful capital of Brazil.

As it turns out tracking is much harder than it seems. Sure any vampire can follow. But tracking/ It requires insight into your prey, a keen sense for what choices they will make and how they will try to elude you. I am a poor tracker.

After a couple days in Brazil, and no new information that could lead to my discovering Victorias location, or at least her past locations, I couldn't stand being as far as I was from Bella. I decided that being on the same continent as her would be tolerable. Or, really, being on a different continent than her is intolerable. That is a more honest statement.

I have reverted to my previous methods of distraction. I lay facedown in the snow the darkness doing nothing to disguise my agony. Each second a torture, my life without her has become just that. I no longer have a life, I just have my time with her, and my time without her. Anything before; pointless. Anything besides; irrelevant. The shocking difference between these two periods of my life, the with and the without, is paradoxical. The former the happiest, fullest, most enriching and most meaningful times of my life, though brief. The latter is stark my comparison, an empty wasteland of doubt, fear, hatred and longing. I remember when Bella first came to Forks, when she sat next to me, when I spoke to her the first time, I asked her if it was hard for her to be where she was. She responded, 'you have no idea.' At the time, she confused and surprised me. But if life in Forks for her, at least in the beginning, was the tiniest fraction of what life without her is for me, then I wholeheartedly empathize with her.

Of course, life without me cannot be for her what it is to me. I'm sure her life has progressed suitably, and beautifully, as it should have. Maybe she has a new boyfriend. She wasn't capable of loving me the overwhelming, possessing, obsessive way that I loved her. So how could she miss me, and grieve for me even a fraction of the way I do her?

I cannot imagine a worse feeling than the way I feel now.

My cell phone rings.