"I'm not voyeuristic, you know," she said defensively as she saw the appalled look on my face. "I don't want to go viewing other people's love lives. Thankfully I don't see the usual stuff that people do to fill the day and night, only if I'm really trying to watch out for them, which takes an awful lot of effort. But I do see the big stuff, the events of significance or change. This must be one of them. I did see you covered in bruises the first morning of your honeymoon. That's why I packed the dresses. I knew that would be a changing point in your relationship with Edward, and I was taking care not to see what happened to give you the bruises. I'm really not a peeping tom. I only wanted to know that he wasn't going to kill you, what with it being the first time for both of you and you used to be so delicate".
She was rambling. I put my hand up to hush and dismiss her babble.
I felt like crying. But the tears would not come, not in this stone body. We sat there in silence for a few minutes. She still had her arm around me. I sat with my head in my hands. She took my nearer hand from my head and held it.
"Alice, can you see any triggers, or anything that would give a clue to timing. This must be a long time in the future, right?"
"I've tried," she said with frustration. "I spent most of last night in the forest alone trying to concentrate. But nothing. It's too dark to get any sort of handle on time or place."
"I'm going to have to leave, to get away. Maybe if I go they will both just stop this." Panic was in my voice but this plan was already cutting through the numbness. It meant action. I had something to do. I had hope again. "I need to be really quick. I have to persuade Edward that we have to leave without letting him know the real reason. Do you think he'd believe it if I just said that Nessie needs a holiday after months of tension, just somewhere with the two of us? He really doesn't need to know about Emmett. You know how jealous he gets. If he heard Emmett thinking about it, it's sure to end in a fight, and they are brothers. He loves Emmett. I think he must know about Nahuel already and that's what's stressing him out, and why he wasn't telling me the real reason for them hanging around here. He doesn't want me to know. It's like it was with Jacob all over again, but this time there are two of them, Emmett and Nahuel."
At least this time, I don't love either of them in that way, not one little bit, I added to myself.
I thought then of the months of tension that there had been between me, Edward and my best friend Jacob, and the way that Edward had forbidden me to see him. At the time, he said it was only out of concern for my safety, what with Jacob being a werewolf and all, but in the end he had to admit it was more to do with prejudice. He was also clearly jealous, but he never admitted it. In Jacob's case Edward did have something to worry about. I did love Jacob and not only as a brother. But that love was like a tiny spring against the huge river of love that I felt for Edward. If there had been no mythical world and Edward did not exist, I would have been with Jacob.
Of course the situation with Jacob had resolved itself, but not really in a way that I liked. Jacob had imprinted on Nessie the day she was born. It almost felt like Jacob and I had only been so close because he was subconsciously waiting for her to arrive. Neither Edward nor I were thrilled about having a werewolf imprint on our baby, but we knew it was totally involuntary on his part and that there was nothing romantic at all in his thoughts towards her at the moment. His whole world revolved around making sure she was happy and healthy. As he pointed out, not much different from mine really, just I was her mom.
"I'm not sure that an extended holiday would be a good idea when Demetri is coming," she reminded me, "and it's mainly Nessie that he's coming to observe."
After a few more seconds silence, Alice's eyes went blank again, but for just a few seconds this time. She turned back to me, a small smile on her face.
