Chapter One
Dear Jessica,
I apologize for the length of time since my last letter. With the fair quickly approaching, Charlie has been working us both to the bone and I rarely have a moment to myself. And anyway, my arm hasn't even stopped tingling from our last attempt.
Bella Swan paused in her letter to giggle over her father's latest experiment. The explosion had singed off his eyebrows giving him a perpetually surprised look. She grinned and set her pen back to the paper.
How are things in Port Angeles? If you must know, I'm living through you. Everything remains the same day after day in Forks. Your letters provide me with a small taste of the exciting life in the city.
A bit of an exaggeration, Bella mused, but she'd come to understand that such lavish compliments encouraged long letters from Jessica about the goings-on of the city.
I shall write again soon. Millicent is nearly ready to calve; she's certainly been quite loud about it.
Give my regards to your parents.
Yours,
Bella
Satisfied, she folded the letter carefully and placed it in the warm recesses of her dress.
"Bells, Billy and I are going fishing," Charlie called up the steps, "will you be fine for a few hours?"
Charlie was the chief of the police force in Forks, though you'd hardly know it as there was such little actually happening in the tiny town for a crime to occur. Occasionally, the volunteer squad would have to put out a fire when Old Lady Browning fell asleep at the stove or when a member or the community needed a ride to the hospital in Port Angeles, the neighboring town. It was a good three hours to Port Angeles, so mostly, people in Forks just crossed their fingers and made do with the mediocre doctors they had.
"I'll be fine!" she responded. Even from upstairs, she could hear the squeak, click of the front door signifying Charlie's departure.
Bella sat back in her chair and sighed deeply. Nothing and no one ever changed in Forks. She'd been surrounded by the same people, buildings, scenery since birth and would probably be with them until she died.
Forks was the kind of town you wouldn't find on any map, unless of course, the cartographer himself was from Forks. It was the type of town you'd ride past in buggy or on a horse and then blink, and already be past it all. It was a speck, a tiny dot on the face of humanity and she, Bella Swan, was doomed to live there forever.
I should be grateful, she thought chastising herself angrily, I have a home, a farm, a loving father.
Then why does it seem like I'm just biding my time here? Why do I so much want there to be more?
She pushed these mutinous thoughts from her head and crept into the barn.
Bella usually considered herself lucky. She and Charlie owned a pseudo-farm on the outskirts of town. Her father had bought it when he and her mother were still newlyweds. Now it was just she and him on their patch of land. They had yet to try their hand at growing anything, though. Mostly, they just sold milk made by their faithful cow, Millicent, eggs from the dozen or so chickens, and relied on Charlie's small salary paid by the people of Forks to get by.
Their barn wasn't huge, as it only held a few animals. It may have been red a long time ago, but it had dulled to a faded pink. The whole structure creaked when the wind blew hard enough and the roof leaked when it rained. Charlie always held his monologue whenever they stepped into the barn, the same one he'd done for fifteen years.
"I'll need to patch up that ceiling as soon as I have time, Bells. Remind me."
Millicent stared at her balefully. Bella tip-toed carefully around the scattered hay and made her way to the pregnant cow. Millicent mooed mournfully, begging Bella to somehow ease the pain. Bella stroked her bulging stomach and spoke softly, both hoping the baby would come soon. They, the heifer and the human, remained in this fashion for an immeasurable stretch of time sharing a connection that only females can have with a baby on the way.
The barn doors were thrust open streaming sunlight into the dark room. Bella raised an arm to shield her eyes. "Who's there?" she asked tentatively.
Immediately, Bella wished she had just hidden behind Millicent while she had the chance. Because the person standing in the doorway of the barn was the last person on Earth she wanted to see.
Mike Newton was charming in his own way, Bella supposed, and no one in Forks could deny the fact that he was handsome, but other than that, there was little else to recommend his character. In fact, Bella was fairly sure that Millicent's calf would be smarter, but as everyone else seemed to look past that and focus solely on his looks, she wisely chose to keep her opinions to herself.
"Ah, there you are, Belle. I didn't see you in town today."
Bella cringed inwardly at his personal nickname for her. My name is Bella, you oaf, and you didn't see me in town because I am currently sitting beside an expecting bovine…
Instead of voicing her dark thoughts, Bella busied herself with a piece of hay. "Millicent will be calving soon; she needs me."
Mike wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Belle, are you honestly going to deliver a cow? Why can't your father hire hands for this kind of hard labor?"
To Bella, bringing a baby into the world wasn't at all hard labor…well, Millicent would be in hard labor, as this was her first pregnancy, and—
"Are you listening, Belle? It just isn't seemly for a woman to know so much about childbirth."
Bella's mouth twitched. "Oh?" I'll bet Millicent's glad I know what I do about childbirth…
"Yes!" Mike came to sit next to her on the floor. "Bella," he said using her preferred name (for once), "you deserve the best. I want you to have the best." He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. "If you'd just agree to marry me—"
Bella wrenched her hand away. How dare her use this as another time to make an unwanted marriage proposal! If she hadn't felt it beating beneath her fingers seconds ago, she would have seriously doubted that Mike had any heart at all.
Millicent watched the exchange silently, thankful that her attention was no longer focused on the pains of labor.
Irritated to say the least, Mike scowled. "I suggest that you think this through. Think about what I can give you, whatever you desire. Besides," he scoffed, "it's not as if someone better is going to come around. I'm the best suitor in three towns. I know it, you know it, the whole town knows it. So I'm going to ask again: Isabella Swan, will you marry me?
Bella stood and re-opened the barn door. "I think you should go, Mike."
Mike stood and crossed the span of the barn and out into the sunlight. "Belle," he said loftily over his shoulder, "you'll come around."
She will be my wife, Mike thought.
Bella pushed the door closed and leaned back against it gratefully.
Mike represented everything she hated about the world: arrogance, ego, selfishness. Marriage, for her, was a union to be joined in if—and only if—the couple was truly, madly, deeply in love. So much in love that they could imagine themselves old and wrinkly celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of their devotion. It was certainly not something to jump into blindly by a parent's wishes or be bribed into. Mike could be kind when he wanted, but she didn't love him. She hardly even liked him. And she most definitely couldn't see herself with him in sixty years. Frankly, she'd always regarded Mike as a kind of medicine: to be taken in small doses and only when absolutely necessary.
The problem was Bella was beginning to wonder if that type of love was even out there. Charlie's marriage hadn't ended well. Her mother was like a wild horse. Her father had tried and failed to tame her and after a pitiful two years, they terminated the marriage, her father heartbroken and her mother rearing to change out and grab life by the horns.
But Bella was still young. Maybe she could find love. But even if true love didn't exist, she wasn't foolish enough to enter matrimony with a man she'd only be miserable with.
It has to be somewhere; I only pray that it's close enough that I may someday get to see it.
Millicent mooed as another contraction sliced through her.
Bella smiled knowing it would be less than an hour before Millicent would be a mother. At least, she thought, life still gives me something to smile about.
-------------------
Mike on the other hand was not smiling. He stormed into Ruby's Diner, glaring at everyone in the small establishment. Ruby, owner and manager, set his usual steaming glass of cider in front of him at his regular booth and retreated under the excuse of tending to other customers.
Ruby was in her early twenties, though her youthful face made her appear to be Bella's age. She had laugh lines already forming around her tiny mouth. Her eyes were a steely gray that danced when she talked and seemed endless. There was many a man in Forks in love with her.
Ruby had lived in Forks all her life. Her parents had died of pneumonia the winter she turned seventeen. For a few years, she'd scrounged for pennies, saving and earning until she was able to buy the old abandoned hardware store. She'd turned it into a diner and a serviceable one, at that. There were barely any other eating places in Forks and people knew they could always come to the orphan with the laughing eyes for a cider and a smile. Ruby knew everyone inside and out. She had a way of making people spill out their life stories, casually serving advice as easily as she did her apple pie.
Mike Newton, for example, was in a pickle. The child was not much younger than she, but his temper was legend. He had a manner about him that made the girls swoon and the men hold tighter to their women without even meaning to. He could have anyone he wanted and he'd chosen Miss Bella Swan, Chief Swan's only child. Trouble was, she didn't seem to be nearly as eager to marry him as he was to marry her.
Who did Bella Swan think she was? Mike thought. Women in Forks kissed the ground he walked on; who was she to refuse a prize any other woman would kill for?
He sipped moodily at his cider. It was a known fact that Mike wasn't one to give up until he got what it was he wanted. However, it hadn't gone unnoticed by the citizens of Forks that Mike had been after the chief's daughter's hand in marriage for months and had yet to secure an affirmation from her. It was simply unheard of! No one had ever managed to deny the young man anything…for long. Tim and Tuck, elderly twin brothers with a knack for getting into mischief even in their old age, had gone so far as to start a betting pool on how long Miss Swan would hold out.
"She's a strong lass," they said, "but she'll give in soon enough."
There'd even been some speculation suggesting that she was a bit touched in the head. Honestly, what sane red-blooded woman would give up a find like Mike Newton?
Ruby scrubbed the dirty dishes thoughtfully. No, Isabella wasn't insane; she was only doing what no one had succeeded in since Mike's birth.
But in Forks, to go against the general consensus was to be ostracized and poked at forever. So Ruby kept her mouth shut and her ears open, hoping that Miss Swan wouldn't be just another girl bending to the will of men.
The bells over the front door tinkled, signaling another customer. Tyler Crowley strode through into the diner. At Ruby's slight tilt of the head, he searched the booths for Mike. He nodded at her and slid into the seat opposite him.
Tyler had been best friends with Mike and Eric Yorkie since the trio had been in diapers, just further proof that nothing ever changed in Forks. He knew even without asking that Bella had rejected Mike again. Tyler, having bet quite a sum of money on Bella caving today, shared Mike's pain. Neither could fathom how a single female could be quite so stubborn.
Tyler ordered a tall glass of cider and drank slowly, not saying anything. He'd learned that attempting to engage his friend in any type of conversation was just prolonging the inevitable outburst.
"She said no," Mike finally mumbled.
This was not the time for sarcasm or remarks about his personal financial loss, Tyler noted. It seemed that the unshakable Mike had finally been beaten. By a woman. "So," he said choosing his words carefully to avoid angering his comrade even further, "is that it?"
Mike stared at his empty mug and shrugged.
The bells rang again and Charlie and his friend Billy Black entered. Billy lived in a house on the Native American reservation and only came to Forks to see Charlie every now and then.
"What can I get you, Chief?" Ruby asked without looking up.
Charlie placed a hand on the arm of Billy's wheelchair. "Nothing for me, thanks. Billy?"
Billy's wide face cracked into a grin. "I've heard of the cider here, Miss Ruby. I'd be pleased to have it served to me by a beautiful lady."
Ruby flushed red. "That's quite the charmer you brought with you, Chief. Alright, let's get you fellows to a table." She wheeled Billy to the table. Then, looking around to determine whether certain pair of young men were too engrossed in their brooding to pay any attention to the young barmaid, she leaned towards Charlie. "There's talk that Mike Newton asked your daughter to marry him."
Charlie blinked in disbelief. "Again? Well, you have to admire his perseverance."
Billy frowned. "Who?"
Ruby walked back to the bar and grabbed a mug. As the cider tap slowly filled the glass, she said, "Honey, you must be new to town if you don't know about Mike and Bella. They're about as close to matrimony as a couple can get without actually getting married."
Charlie focused on a dent in the wood, not at all comfortable with the possibility of someone taking his daughter away. It was a great relief that thus far Bella hadn't agreed, but even he knew that eventually she would. Though they weren't aware, he and Bella were both worried over the same issue.
"Oh, to be young and in love," Billy said sighing and not showing any surprise at being called 'honey' by a girl decades younger than him. "So why hasn't she said yes?"
Love? Charlie felt himself turning green.
Ruby paused in their conversation to retrieve the cider. She set it down in front of Billy. "That's the thing, isn't it? Why hasn't she?" They turned to Charlie expectantly.
Charlie felt a wave of nausea rise up. "I should think you two will find better things to discuss than silly town gossip." He stood stiffly. "If you'll excuse me, my invention awaits me at home."
-------------------
Unawares, the citizens of Forks were being watched.
In a house so overgrown with weeds and vines and ivy it could hardly be called a house anymore, lurked a creature succumbed to darkness. Its lair had crept further and further into disarray, as its master remained rutted in a deep pit of depression. The mansion couldn't even be considered a building now; it was more of an abnormally massive tree.
It mattered not. The occupants of the house, those who resided with the creature in a companionable—if not truly satisfying or fulfilling—existence, cared little about the exterior of the home. They themselves had not seen it in almost half a century.
Nor were they concerned what passer-bys may think. No one had passed the old, secluded structure in decades.
In the cold gloom of the mansion, however, life went on. Those relegated to the confines of the house carried on as what was normal for them.
All except for one.
Another creature crept into the semi-dark room, her bare feet treading silently on the dusty carpet. Regardless of her lack of noise, she knew the thing in the chair had heard her presence.
"Leave me be," it said.
The female creature, defiant to her petite core, didn't slow her feet or make any move to acknowledge the other's order.
"Alice, I said go. Go join the rest of them."
The one called Alice crept nearer still. "But what of you, sitting here staring out the window?"
I wish Alice would just leave him alone. She does this every year. It's his fault we're in this mess to begin with…
"I am where everyone wants: alone, ashamed of my mere existence, excluded from what pitiful life we are permitted."
Alice stood behind the tall, crimson, wingback chair. It was an antique, she guessed, but things stopped being antiques when you realized that you yourself were indeed older than they.
"Edward—"
"Alice! I do not require your company nor do I want it."
Alice forced herself not to be hurt by his words. "I worry about you, Edward. All you ever do is stare out the window at the humans—"
Edward growled in warning, his fingers sinking into the plush leather of the chair.
"—and we all grow so worried. Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie…"
"Rosalie?" he scoffed. "Rosalie has disliked me since I rejected her all those years ago. She began hating me when I cursed us all."
Alice was in front of him in the enveloping mustiness before he could blink. "It's not your fault, she said firmly."
When all he did was grunt, she gathered her skirt and stood. "We'll all be here whenever you're ready to talk." With that, she shut the heavy mahogany door and left him to his thoughts.
It would be nearing mid-day. A glance at the window told him it would still be a while before the humans went to sleep.
Sleep. How many moons like the one that would languidly ascend the sky tonight had passed since he'd slept? Millions, he thought. Too many to ever count.
Meanwhile, Alice trudged down the stairs to the parlor. It was simply laughable that this dreary, cobweb-encased room was the same one that Esme had toiled over, slowly, tediously collecting pieces of art and furniture to render it the most beautiful room in the house. Now all one could say was that it was morbid with just a touch of fashion and creativity, like someone had given up on it.
Which, in a sense, they had.
Carlisle and Esme sat huddled on the settee, his hand rubbing smooth circles on her back. Emmett was on the floor absently flexing his biceps. Rosalie's feet were in his lap and he occasionally stopped to tweak her toes lightly.
But Alice only had eyes for Jasper, her love, her life. He'd been pacing in front of the vastly underused fireplace, but stopped when she entered smiling wearily. He was at her side in an instant, placing the palm of one sinewy hand against her cheek. She held it there with her own dainty pale one, reveling in the fluttering in the stomach.
"No?" he asked.
Alice leaned into his touch. "No," she answered.
Rosalie snorted. "Were you honestly expecting anything different?"
Carlisle gave her a stern look.
"What?" She removed her feet from her lover's lap and examined the others. "I would most certainly be upstairs hating myself if it were me."
A rare scowl flowed onto Esme's face. "Keep in mind that it very well could have bee you, Rosalie."
Alice sank gratefully into Jasper's embrace. Jasper said, with a trace of amusement in his voice, "You've always been one to stick your nose high in the air in matters concerning Edward. Any higher, Rose, and you'll be bending backwards."
Emmett suppressed a smile at Rosalie's look of unbridled fury.
But everyone whirled around to stare at Alice as she suddenly became rigid.
Her eyes glazed over and everything about her cemented. Her hands were still fisted in Jasper's shirt and her chest was still pressed against him, evidence of an unnecessary breath. For that brief period, Alice was by all accounts frozen in time.
Jasper watched her closely, waiting for the second her eyes returned to their normal hue.
Alice came to, gulping air as though she'd been underwater.
"So?" Rosalie demanded.
Alice shook her head, still trying to understand herself. It had been weird, the only one she'd had about the outside world in ages.
A girl wearing a plain country dress watched a heifer clean her newborn. The remains of a tough labor coated the hay around them. And then…
Nothing. After that the vision had just dissipated.
"I'm not sure. It was strange."
"Seeing the future is strange, Alice," Rosalie griped.
"That's enough, Rosalie," said Carlisle. "Alice, was it important?"
Alice shook her head. There could be nothing significant about the tidings of a girl and her cow.
Everyone sat in tense quiet before Emmett spoke. "How many has it been, then?"
Esme thought. "Forty-nine?"
Emmett groaned. "Only? It seems like so much longer." For him especially, their house was a jail. He hadn't been outdoors in forty-nine years today. To be confined like a bird in a cage was as close to hell as he'd ever get, he thought. But it wasn't Edward's fault as Rosalie so liked to think.
Rosalie had been his wife for sixty-odd years. Behind that façade of seductive beauty, he knew that she was and would always remain bitter about what had happened to her, what had happened to them all.
The three couples stayed as them were as the minutes crawled by.
Inside the big deteriorating mansion with its wide windows and huge French doors, seven mysterious creatures dwelled, but the old fancy things no longer served as sources of enjoyment. These beings may have lived, but inside them all was a deadness they couldn't even run from.
-------------------
It was a girl, Bella thought joyously.
Less than forty minutes after Mike had left, Millicent had given birth to a bouncing brown baby girl, just as she and Charlie had hoped.
Heifers were much more valuable to a house. They provided milk and more heifers, plus they tended to have sweeter dispositions than their male counterparts. Bulls weren't nearly as lucky. They were of no use other than mates for the heifers and, eventually, fresh meat.
Bella hoped she would have loved a bull as much as she loved Millicent, but deep down, she was greatly comforted.
The calf looked in wonder at its long spindly legs. Millicent's head nudged at the calf's rump, successfully pushing it on its feet. Two seconds off the ground on unsteady limbs, and the baby crashed back to the hay.
"Anna," Bella said to the pair," her name will be Anna."
Anna and her mother snuggled close as the young cow drifted into the land of dreams.
Charlie swung an arm around Bella's shoulders, not surprising her, though she hadn't heard him come in. "You did a fine job, Bells."
Bella beamed, pleased. "I learned from the best."
Charlie should have been happy at her words, but all he could concentrate on was the conversation at Ruby's.
"So, Bells, I hear Mike came around today."
Bella's eyes darkened and suddenly she couldn't face the one person she trusted implicitly. "Yes."
Charlie cleared his throat. "I hear he may have asked you something."
Bella knew Charlie knew about all the previous times Mike had asked her to marry him, but he'd never actually brought the subject to discussion. It was uncomfortable territory for them both and neither wanted to venture there, but Charlie needed to hear it from her.
"I said no, if that's what you want," Bella growled. "As long as I live and breathe, I refuse to marry him."
Charlie, a bit alarmed at the finality in her voice, cleared his throat again to mask his relief. "May I ask why?" he said, and immediately regretted it.
Bella threw her hand in the air and began pacing. "Where should I start?" she whispered angrily, ever aware of the snoring bovines. "He's a pompous, self-serving, snake-in-the-grass. He disapproves of our lifestyle, but I suppose anything short of his home is below his standards, right? Can you believe it, Papa? He actually had the gall to tell me that birthing Anna was unseemly? Unseemly my foot! I can't stand him and his backwards notions of women!" She stopped and finally glanced at Charlie's face. Composing herself, she said, "I just think we're too different."
That'd be putting it mildly, Charlie thought.
"You're alright with that, aren't you Papa?" Bella asked misinterpreting his silence.
Alright? Charlie wanted to dance! But he forced himself to calm down and spoke truthfully. "I only want what makes you happy, Bella."
That was why she loved Charlie so much. Never once had he made her feel inferior because of her gender, nor had he allowed Bella to give that as an excuse for any of the tasks life served her. She thought back to the first time she'd ever come home crying.
She was about six, still young enough for colorful ribbons to adorn her twin pigtails; young enough for the scrapes on her knees to be bandaged and kissed, for loose teeth to be lost and then rewarded with tiny bronze coins.
Bella came home sobbing brokenly into her soft palms. Charlie emerged from the barn in faded breeches and a blue shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. "Bells? What happened?"
Her words were jumbled and hard to discern, but he'd become fluent in Bella-speak over the years.
"They wouldn't let you play? Why not?"
Bella sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. "They said girls were too dumb to play."
Charlie wanted nothing more than to personally lecture those boys, but this type of thinking was not uncommon. In Forks, women were not exactly revered for their minds. The role of a woman was to be seen and not heard until they were old enough to be wed and then be demure and bear children—preferably sons—and lead the same predictable, monotonous life until their quiet deaths. It was the way it had always been. It was pure scandal if a woman so much as learned to read.
Charlie was different. The human mind was too precious a thing to waste, male or female, and raising children to be so ignorant was as bad a waste as any.
He looked into his daughter's blotchy, tear-stained face. "Isabella, never let someone make you believe they're better than you or tell you that you can't do something." Charlie tapped her nose lightly. "You can do anything you want."
It was that very day that they'd become partners. From there on in, there was nothing that Charlie wouldn't ask for assistance with, no secrets he kept from her.
Bella hugged Charlie tightly. "I love you."
"This I know."
Bella grinned. "Let's go prepare that fish you caught so we can get a head start on the invention."
The two slunk out of the barn leaving the slumbering mother and her child in their wake.