Everything belongs to Stephenie Meyer. Love to mllebojangles, and to you for reading.
3
The days passed. Edward's absence was an ache in her chest, but it was one she could bear, if she held thoughts of him at a safe distance while she needed to be thinking about other things like school or talking to Charlie. She thought of him perpetually, of course – his ghost haunted her room, her car, every corner of the school – but with each memory, Bella amended firmly in her mind, He's coming back.
About Alice, she wasn't so sure. There had been no sign of her or Jasper. Although Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper had graduated the previous spring, bringing the formidable Cullen presence at the school down to only two, the disappearance of those two excited avid interest among gossip-starved students. Carlisle must have worked quickly, however, because there was already a story floating around by the time Bella had to face her first awkward question about Edward.
"I heard they have a great-uncle or something who's absolutely rolling in it," Jessica's voice had come floating down the lunch table that first day. "And he took them sailing around the world on practically no notice. Just yanked them out of school."
"Like they don't already miss enough," Eric had commented.
"Too bad they didn't take you along, Bella!" That had been Lauren. Jessica had giggled. Only Angela had had the good grace to look chagrined.
Bella had pretended to ignore them, but secretly she was fervently thanking Carlisle for sparing her the necessity of explaining it to everyone. And when her classmates found that she didn't have much more information about the Cullens than they did, they soon stopped asking her.
Angela was turning out to be an unexpected blessing. Unlike the others, she seemed to bear Bella no grudge for abandoning them for the Cullens' company the year before. Angela's relationship with Ben had cooled off and ended amicably enough, and from outward appearances she was still her happy quiet self. But now that Bella had the time and inclination to truly focus on her, she saw that Angela felt herself to be on the social outskirts of the crowd, and the loneliness pained her deeply.
Both girls were naturally reserved, but under Bella's unobtrusive influence Angela seemed to blossom, and over time, Bella found herself beginning to radiate something back. She also found herself wishing she hadn't wasted so much time before bothering to become friends with Angela.
She caught herself. What a thought. It wasn't wasted time when I was with him. She caught herself again. He's coming back.
All considered, she managed her loneliness with surprising ease, making it through day after day with her loss buried deep where no one could see it. Night was harder, however. She steeled herself before turning out the light, but once she lay down, her eyes were drawn to the empty dim square of the window, and the wordless ache arose in her. Those were the moments that she thought she might spin apart into all her separate atoms if she couldn't feel his arms holding her together.
It was a Saturday, two weeks to the day after she'd seen him last. Bella was at the kitchen table, eating leftover lasagna for lunch and absorbed in her assigned novel for English class, when Charlie clomped through the room.
"Mail's here," he said, tossing a few envelopes in front of her.
She grunted noncommittally. He took a cookie from a box in the cabinet and disappeared into the living room.
Bella sighed and, propping her book open against her plate, flipped idly through the envelopes with one hand. Most were from colleges, and she knew that if she opened them, they would all say roughly the same thing – visit our website, schedule an interview, send your application. She pushed them aside with the uneasy knowledge that she was putting off thinking about the future, and that sooner or later she would have to decide what she wanted to do after graduation.
And a brightly colored postcard slid out of the pile. Bella picked it up. It was a picture of an aquamarine ocean, with rounded hilly islands poking out of it, and written across it were the words, "Rio de Janeiro." She turned it over.
One word only:
Searching
Her heart began to pound. She clutched the postcard with both hands, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles slid unheeded into her plate. The postcard was from Edward.
The woman at the hospital information desk looked at Bella over the rims of her glasses. "Can I help you, honey?"
"Yes," Bella said. "I'd like to speak with Dr. Cullen. If he's available."
A few minutes later she was walking down a hall lined with offices, her hand thrust deep into her jacket pocket, gripping Edward's postcard. She had had enough of self-denial – she was bringing her forced exile from the Cullen family to an end.
Room 256 – Dr. Carlisle Cullen, read the nameplate on the door. She steeled herself and raised her fist to knock, but before she made contact the door swung open and there was Carlisle.
Bella actually stumbled a half step backward. It had been two weeks since she had seen a vampire, any vampire, and somehow she was unprepared for him – her memory had blunted the edges, had shied away from the impossibility of his paleness, his beauty, the silken fluidity of his every movement. Now it was as if she were seeing one of them for the first time. Predator, her instincts shrieked. She knew that her face had gone traitorously pale.
Carlisle saw it too, and something – resignation? sorrow? – flashed through his eyes and was gone. He smiled his least-threatening smile. "Bella. Marilyn called and said you were on your way up. Please come in."
Bella swallowed hard and followed him into the office, glad for once of the small-town life that made anonymity impossible. Somehow it made it easier that Carlisle was expecting her. Of course the receptionist would have known who she was. Perhaps she even had theories as to why Bella was coming up to visit her boyfriend's father. Her absent boyfriend.
He's coming back, Bella thought.
Carlisle pulled out his desk chair, and Bella perched on the edge of the chair opposite, like a patient at a consultation. Carlisle looked at her almost warily, and she plunged in.
"I got a postcard from Edward today," she said, pulling the card out of her pocket. "He's in Rio de Janeiro – or at least he was. He says he's searching for something."
Carlisle nodded, taking the card. "We received one as well, from Buenos Aires," he said. "It arrived yesterday."
Bella chewed her lip. It was a profound relief to be talking about Edward, at last. "What do you think he could be looking for?" she asked.
He frowned. "I'd tell you if I knew, Bella," he said. "He didn't tell me before he left. In fact, he didn't tell me he was leaving that night – he left me a note where I wouldn't find it until morning. I had to move quickly to inform the school in time."
Bella smiled wryly. "Thank you for that, by the way," she said. "It made my life a little easier, not having to explain to everyone."
Carlisle nodded. "I hoped it might take some of the pressure off you." He was watching her carefully, and looked as if he were about to speak, but stopped himself. Instead he looked down at the postcard still in his hands, and gave it back to her, scrupulously avoiding touching her fingers. "As for Edward, I don't know what sort of quest he's on. But you should know that he's not reckless, no matter how desperate he may have seemed before he left. He can take care of himself and keep himself hidden. I have no fears of his being harmed in any way."
Bella felt some tension relax out of her shoulders. It was hard to imagine anything or anyone hurting Edward if he were determined to protect himself, short of his running afoul of a particularly vicious vampire gang, but it was good to hear Carlisle's reassurance nonetheless. But if Carlisle didn't know what Edward was looking for, she doubted anyone else would. She frowned at the postcard, turning it over and over as if it might give her more answers.
"To tell the truth, Bella, I'm much more concerned about you," Carlisle continued. She looked up in surprise. "Edward didn't tell me everything that happened the day he left, but he told me enough. I can't help but feel that you have suffered greatly at the hands of my family. We've caused you nothing but ill."
"No, that's not true," Bella burst out. "If anything, it's the other way around. Jasper and Alice are gone because of me. Edward is gone because of me. I'm the one tearing your family apart." She heard the echoes of Jasper's parting words in her own, and clamped her jaw shut tight.
"It's not your fault, Bella, not at all," Carlisle said, leaning forward. "Perhaps we had all grown too complacent. It was too easy, having you around – it was too easy to forget what we are."
"And what we are is fundamentally incompatible," said Bella miserably, the old despair welling up in her.
He shook his head firmly. "I don't believe that. I have worked for three centuries to prove that wrong."
Bella shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. After all this time it was still strange to be reminded of certain aspects of vampire life. Carlisle continued grimly, "By being with you, Edward is trying to do what no other of our kind has done – maintain a relationship with a human. He is sorely testing himself, but I believe that he is strong enough to do what he sets his mind to. In a way, he is stronger than any of us." For a moment, Carlisle smiled in pure fatherly pride. "If he thinks he can find something somewhere that will make this easier, then I believe him."
Bella nodded slowly. Carlisle's words lightened the dark absence in her ever so slightly.
He stood. "I'm sorry to say I have patients I must see. But I am truly glad you came to see me, Bella. We miss you. The house is very quiet now and Esme longs to have everyone together again."
Bella stood as well. "Rosalie and Emmett must be pretty bored."
Amusement flashed across his face. "I think Rosalie doesn't mind so much. Emmett, though, is furious at Edward and Jasper – he was never good at entertaining himself, and he's lost his partners in crime. When they come home I suspect there'll be hell to pay."
A wistful voice in Bella said, If they come home. Was Carlisle thinking that too? He was trying so hard to hold his family together. Feeling guilty for her part in this, fearing his answer, she asked, "Have you heard from Alice and Jasper?"
The line reappeared between his brows. "Not a word." He saw her downcast look, and added, "They will come home when they are ready, Bella. You'll see. Just give it time."
They parted in the hallway, Carlisle off to his rounds, Bella back to the lobby. "Come visit us if you'd like," Carlisle told her. "Esme would love to see you."
Bella nodded noncommittally, thinking that it would be far to much to bear to see the rest of the family. "You'll let me know if you hear anything from Edward?"
"Of course."
Walking across the parking lot to her truck, Bella thought over his words. He at least seemed confident that his family would return to some semblance of normalcy. But for herself and Edward... what could normal possibly be for them? An image flashed unbidden into her mind as she climbed into the truck, of herself and Edward holding hands in the sunlight, and his face had no inhuman glitter, and his hand in hers was warm and yielding. The simple joy in his crooked smile took her breath away. If only they didn't have to deal with any of this. Maybe they'd go to college together. Maybe they'd get married and have children someday. Edward in a cap and gown with his arm around her, posing for snapshots, brandishing their diplomas. Edward in a tuxedo, waiting at the end of the aisle for her. Edward with a sleeping baby in his arms.
Tears blurred her eyes, and she bowed her head until her forehead rested on the steering wheel. That future was closed to her. The path she had chosen spiraled into darkness, and on it she could see no vision of herself.
Days stretched into weeks, and the postcards came faster now. Bella now found two and sometimes three cards a week tossed in with the envelopes in the mailbox, often at irregular intervals. Lima, Tierra del Fuego, Marrakech, Tripoli, Capetown, Mumbai. After the third card arrived, Bella unearthed a poster-sized world map she'd once used for a geography assignment out of a box of old school materials and tacked it up above her desk, sticking a pin in the map for each postcard. There was no discernible pattern, but when her mind drifted she would spend long minutes of reverie gazing at the constellation of pins. Riyadh, Tashkent, Kathmandu, Phnom Penh, Ulaanbaatar. Sometimes she felt comforted, having reduced the world to a manageable size; sometimes she ached with loneliness, feeling that he was impossibly far away.
The postcards were all unsigned, and each simply said "Searching" or sometimes "Still searching." Bella soon developed a private ritual as each new card arrived, holding it in her hands and concentrating fiercely on it, trying to send her thoughts back along its path: I miss you. I love you. Come back.
In the meantime she was spending more and more time with Angela. The girls spent hours after school ostensibly doing homework but as often as not their conversations spilled from English and history into less academic matters. Bella found that she could forget her loneliness more easily with Angela than with anyone else, and one evening as she drove back from Angela's house, she thought in wonderment, Is this what it's like to have normal friends?
Conversation occasionally strayed toward Edward and the other Cullens, and Bella kept her answers to Angela's hesitant questions as vague as possible. She didn't like lying to her new friend, so instead she was as reticent as possible. Sometimes she could almost feel the curiosity bubbling beneath Angela's carefully nonchalant exterior. She knew she would be equally curious if their positions were reversed, and she asked silent forgiveness with each abrupt or misleading answer she gave.
One afternoon almost two months after Edward's departure, the two girls drove to Bella's house in her truck. Angela was recounting an incident from her math class, which involved the school's star pitcher and a very prickly young teacher, and had Bella shrieking with laughter.
"And then," Angela gasped as they tumbled out of the cab, "Ms. Morris said in that dry sarcastic voice, 'Perhaps you can use the puddle of drool you left on your desk to solve your problem set, since you don't seem to be prepared in any other way.' Jeff couldn't even say anything – just sat there opening and closing his mouth like a fish! Even the other guys on the team were laughing at him!"
Bella leaned against the truck's grille, holding her sides. "Serves him right!" she managed, once she could breathe again. "He's been such a jerk to everyone all year, ever since that ridiculous story in the paper."
"I know!" shrieked Angela. "And then I couldn't believe it when he –"
She suddenly stopped short, all her laughter gone. Bella, surprised, followed her line of sight to the front porch, where a pale, slight figure was unfolding itself from a perch on the top step.
"Hi, Bella," said Alice uncertainly.
Bella's mouth dropped open of its own accord. After all this time, and just at a moment when she was completely unprepared, it seemed impossible that Alice was actually standing in front of her.
Alice came lightly down the steps, and her eyes were guarded. At last she said, with a pleading half-smile, "Well, say something."
Bella jerked into motion. "You're... you're back," she said stupidly. She suddenly became aware that Angela had gone completely still and silent beside her. Bella turned toward her friend, and saw Angela looking warily between her and Alice.
"Alice – you remember Angela, right? From school?" she said hurriedly.
"Sure. Hi." Alice's eyes barely flickered toward Angela.
Bella's questions abruptly overflowed. "When did you get back? Where's Jasper? Have you heard from..." She felt Angela looking curiously at her, and in a flash she remembered the cover story about sailing around the world, and gulped back the rest of her words. "I didn't know when you were coming back," she ended lamely.
"I just arrived today," Alice said. Bella noted the singular with a sinking heart. "But, um," and here she finally looked fully and pointedly at Angela, "can we talk about this inside?"
Angela stiffened beside Bella, and Bella winced. She turned to her friend apologetically. "It's ok," Angela said, two spots of color appearing high on her cheeks. "I'll see you tomorrow, Bella."
"Well, ok," Bella said, torn – Angela was obviously hurt, but she was desperate to talk to Alice. She saw Angela stride down the driveway and realized the other girl didn't have a car. "Wait – can I drive you home?" Her voice twisted.
"No, that's all right," Angela said, turning back to her, not quite meeting her eyes. "It's only a mile or so."
"Good to see you, Andrea," Alice called out. Angela didn't respond.
"It's Angela, Alice," Bella hissed, cringing. Alice shrugged dismissively, leading the way up the porch steps. I'll call tonight and apologize, Bella thought, following Alice inside.
Once safely up in her bedroom, Bella closed the door while Alice hovered uncertainly nearby. Bella perched on the edge of the bed and bombarded her immediately. "Alice, where have you been? Are you ok? Is Jasper back too? Do you know where Edward is?"
She would have continued but Alice shrank back against the door, looking pained. "I'm fine," she said unhappily. "So is Jasper. We just had to be... away... for a little while. And I'm sorry, and I wish I had other news, but I haven't heard anything from Edward."
She was keeping her gaze carefully down, but in the light from the lamp Bella caught a strange flash in her eyes all the same. She got up from the bed and approached Alice. "Are your – Is there something different about your eyes?"
Alice gave a low, defeated chuckle. "I'd hoped you wouldn't notice," she said, raising her gaze slowly to meet Bella's. In the yellowy depths of her irises was an unmistakable dark red tinge.
Unable to stop herself, Bella took a horrified step back. "Have you –" She couldn't even finish the sentence.
Alice nodded miserably. "I'm so sorry, Bella," she said. "It was Jasper. He needed it. He isn't like Carlisle and Edward and the others – the craving was driving him mad."
"You went along with it," Bella whispered, sitting back on the bed.
Alice spread her hands apart. "I love him," she said simply. "It was what he needed." When Bella didn't respond, Alice drifted toward her and sat down on the bed, not too close. "Bella, you have to understand that the world isn't always as simple as we'd like it to be. Things aren't always just black and white sometimes."
"But that's human life we're talking about," Bella burst out. "That's killing. If that's not black and white, I don't know what is."
"Maybe so," said Alice softly. "But to be perfectly honest, I can't say that it wasn't a blessed relief to me too." She chuckled again, weary and humorless. "I'm a vampire. It's my nature."
Bella felt sick to her stomach. Seeing her pallor, Alice laid a gentle hand on her leg. Bella couldn't help it; she flinched. Alice drew her hand back slowly.
"It was only once," she said. "I've gone back to vegetarianism. And it was far away from here."
"It wasn't just once for Jasper, was it?" Bella asked. Alice didn't say anything. Silence between them had never been so uncomfortable. I set him off, Bella thought miserably. Not only did I drive the Cullen family apart, but I caused the deaths of actual human beings, God only knows how many. I'm as guilty as if I cut their throats myself.
At last Bella stirred herself and asked, "Is he back too?"
"He's nearby," Alice said. "He needs a little more time to get used to being around people again. His hunger is a little less urgent, for now." She paused. "He feels horrible about what happened. He wishes more than anything that he could take that afternoon back."
Bella blinked back against the sorrow that threatened to choke her. Poor Jasper, who tried so hard, who wrestled with his hunger so valiantly. "I don't really blame him," she said at last. "Edward explained why – why my smell would have set him off that day." She looked up at Alice, knowing her eyes were filling up with tears. Modesty be damned; Alice should know the truth. "You know that Edward and I had just had sex for the first time? I had finally talked him into it – I finally convinced him that he wouldn't hurt me – but I forgot about the blood."
Alice's face crumpled as understanding dawned.
"He saw the blood and he – he – " Bella's voice broke, the tears spilling over. "He attacked me. He almost killed me. He stopped himself just in time, and that was when I ran to the bathroom. And then Jasper – "
She couldn't finish. "Oh, Bella, I'm so sorry," whispered Alice. "I should have known that it was something like that. But smelling you that way – it was just instinct, it just took us over. You know we would never intentionally hurt you. None of us would."
Bella, nodded, wiping at her eyes.
"Edward loves you," Alice said earnestly, leaning forward and laying her hand on Bella's leg again. This time, Bella didn't flinch. "He's not gone for good – he knows he can't make that mistake twice." She smiled wryly. "He means to come back. I can see that."
Of course. "Alice?" said Bella hesitantly, hope flaring in her. "What else have you seen?"
Alice opened her mouth to speak, then frowned, biting her lip. Bella had never seen her so unsure of herself. "I don't really know what I'm seeing," she said at last. "Nothing is decided yet. I catch flashes of the places where he plans to go, but I don't know what he's looking for, and I don't know if he's going to find it." She looked down, toying with the fringe on a throw blanket. "And he's farther away from me than he's ever been before. I don't know if I sense him right away, in real time, or if there's some kind of delay." She met Bella's eyes. "I'm sorry that I don't have better news for you."
Bella sighed, suddenly exhausted. "It's ok," she said, gesturing at the map tacked over her desk. "As long as I keep getting postcards from him. As long as I know he's still out there." She couldn't even finish her thought, and scrubbed at her eyes. Alice got up from the bed and looked at the map, tracing lines between thumbtacks. She was silent for a long moment.
"I wonder," she murmured, barely loud enough for Bella to hear.
"What?"
"I wonder if he's looking for other vampires," Alice said, not turning. "Old ones. He hasn't gone to Volterra yet, but he seems to be choosing old cities. Old seats of power tend to have covens of old vampires, the ones who are powerful enough to stay in one place instead of traveling around, fighting and hunting." She shook her head. "I hope he knows what he's doing."
Bella shivered, suddenly cold at the idea of Edward alone in dark castles, in crypts and catacombs. These old vampires certainly didn't share the Cullens' humanitarian philosophical bent – would they be friendly to one of Carlisle's strange clan? What if Edward went prying somewhere he wasn't welcome, without his family around him, somewhere she couldn't possibly find him?
"Alice?" she burst out, her voice almost a squeak. "Distract me, could you please?"
Alice climbed back onto the bed, looking concerned. "You're worried about him, aren't you?"
Bella nodded fiercely. "Tell me about – tell me about you and Jasper," she said.
Alice's eyes softened. "You remember how we met," she said. Bella nodded again, pulling a pillow into her lap and hugging it tightly. "Well, there's not much more to the story than that," she said. "I just knew who he would be, and where we would meet, and then it was just a matter of waiting for him."
"If only it were so easy," whispered Bella.
Alice smiled wistfully, looking down. "I sometimes envy people the mystery," she said. "A little uncertainty makes things pretty exciting, doesn't it?" Bella thought of the nauseating worried butterflies she'd had in her stomach for two months, and didn't say anything. "But this is how I am, and it works for me."
"You're happy together?" Bella asked softly.
Alice looked up, and her face lit slowly, as if from within. She nodded. "It's like nothing I can describe," she said. "He's…" She paused. "He's just perfect. Sometimes I think he knows my moods better than I do. He can anticipate whatever I need, to the point where I wonder if he is the one who can see the future. And he's so thoughtful. And he's funny, Bella." Alice grinned, and it was so infectious that Bella couldn't help smiling along. "I know he's never really been able to relax around you, but when he's just around the family, he cracks everyone up on a regular basis." She was pensive for a moment. "There are times when I look at him and I wonder how it's possible that someone so beautiful can be mine."
Bella's heart twinged, because she recognized the feeling. But of course it makes sense that Jasper is with you, she thought, looking at Alice in all her thoughtless fey beauty. You're beautiful and graceful and unbreakable. You're perfect, just like he is. She thought suddenly, unprompted, of their two bodies intertwined, the golden head bending toward the dark spiky one. How easily they would move together, without fear, without danger, with only one kind of appetite joining them.
"You seem to be perfectly matched," she murmured.
"We are," said Alice blithely. "It's funny, because we're so different in so many ways. He can be so calm and quiet and reserved, and I'm…" She smiled wryly. "Well, you know how I am. But I push him, and he grounds me, and we work. He's my opposite and equal."
"Equals," said Bella. "That's it, though. Edward and I can never be equals. He's always just a little bit beyond me. I'm sick of being clumsy Bella, slow Bella, soft fragile human Bella who needs to be protected and carried around and treated like a child." Alice opened her mouth to protest, but Bella pushed ahead; the tears were coming again, and she fought them fiercely. "We can't ever be easy around each other if he can't relax with me. And that might be very intense and romantic at first, but what kind of relationship will that be in the long term?" She wiped angrily at the tears that insisted on falling. Alice was looking at her intently, and for once Bella felt that she could read the thoughts in her friend's mind. "The only answer is for me to be changed," she said. "And that scares me. It scares me more than the knowledge that if I stay human, I'm going to die some day. I don't want to thirst for blood. I don't want to lose my family and my future and my humanity."
She paused for a long time. Alice didn't push her, but just waited. "I love him so much," she whispered. "If it comes to it, I'll do anything for him. But I'm frightened."
"I wish I could help you," said Alice softly. "I don't remember my life before I was changed. It's true, the transition isn't easy. But in our family we have a pretty good life together, and we take care of each other, and we would help you."
But at what cost? thought Bella. Instead, she asked, "Have you seen what's going to happen to me?"
Alice sighed. "It's gotten jumbled along with everything else," she said. "I used to see just two possibilities – you would either be changed, or… or…"
"Or dead," Bella supplied flatly.
"Well, yes," Alice said apologetically. "But everything is murky now. I see things sometimes but I don't understand them. I think it's tied up with Edward and whatever he's looking for." She reached across and took Bella's hand, and the coolness of her skin reminded Bella of Edward's hands, and she bit her lip, willing herself not to break down again. "This is uncharted territory for all of us," she said. "I hate to admit it, because I'm used to having the advantage, but we have to take it one day at a time. I'm here for you, and so are Carlisle and Esme and everyone else, and Edward will be here soon. We can figure things out."
Bella smiled a shaky smile, and heard from downstairs the sound of Charlie closing the front door. She and Alice went downstairs, and though Charlie gave Bella a sharp sidelong look when she announced that Alice was home from her trip with her great-uncle, he submitted easily enough to Alice's effortless charms. She agreed to stay for dinner, and expertly disguised the fact that she didn't eat a bite of her macaroni and cheese.
The girls talked for hours, Alice rearranging Bella's closet while Bella finished her homework. Just being around Alice was enough to restore something of Bella's calm and keep the butterflies at bay for a few hours. It was a relief to relax, to talk about Edward without panic gripping her by the throat. She was genuinely sad when Alice announced that she had to go.
"Jasper will be waiting for me," she explained. "We have to go home and see Carlisle."
"You haven't been home yet?" Bella asked incredulously. "And you spent the whole day with me?"
"Of course," said Alice simply. "You needed me more."
Bella hugged her, and Alice kissed her cheek.
As she was falling asleep a short time afterward, she was suddenly jolted awake by a memory of Angela, her back stiff, her cheeks flushed. I never called her, Bella thought guiltily. She looked at the glowing numbers on her clock, but it was far too late to call, and Angela's parents were strict with a no-texting-after-9-pm rule. She had to satisfy herself with the thought that she'd talk to Angela tomorrow at school.
She'll understand, Bella thought, drifting back into sleep. Alice is back.
