4. True love

Alicia looked at me. "I do understand that you find it hard to see that I chose to stay human. But the years with Uncle Barry his fear of exposure meant that he beat and scared me to forget my past. I had forgotten my own name, my parents, where we lived, everything that I was. I lived in his basement for four years. Sometimes he forgot to feed me for days. I had to lick the damp walls to quench my thirst and I was so hungry that I cried myself to sleep in exhaustion. In the basement I had one room with no window and I was mostly locked in there. There was a bed with blankets, table, two chairs and a bucket for personal use. The room was lit up with a bare bulb. He brought down some toys, books and magazines for me to read, like that would occupy all my days."

She paused and then continued.

"He took me up too clean myself once in a while and he sometimes bought clothes for me to wear, they were always too big. I don´t think that I grew normally with the small amount of food that he gave me. Every summer he took me for a camping trip. I hated it, sleeping so close to him and he was snoring. Walking all day long, bitten by mosquitoes all night and that was supposedly my birthday present. My life was frozen, frozen in terror and then the Cullens came and rescued me. I had lost my life and been reborn. I didn´t want to lose this life again. I longed to live my life, have children, to see them and maybe my grandchildren grow up. I got what I wished for, my life has been good."

Everyone was quiet, no one wanted to speak. Everyone sat in their own thoughts.

Renesmee took Alicia´s hand and smiled and continued the story. "I was the only one who knew about your secret, a young man at the campus. He moved from Florida that last year you studied and he was really interested in you from the very first day. Franc was persistent and had a charming way and he was fun to be around. It was difficult not to like him. If only we had known the consequence that it led up to, we would have done it differently."

Alicia looked down on the floor but I could see tears ran down her cheeks now.

"It was so unfair, so awful. I still don´t know if his feelings for me where earnest." She whispered and sighed.

Renesmee sighed" I know you think that he must have been manipulating you and that crushed your heart. I still don´t think that it was the truth. We know he was paid to get you to the house. From that to play with your feelings to make you believe that he loved you, that is something else."

Alicia dried her tears and continued. "We are getting ahead in the story now." She sighed. "I was head over heels in love with Franc from the first minute. I was cautious though as I didn´t believe my own luck. It took him four month to get me in to a corner and force me to confess my feelings for him."

Renesmee laugh. "And who is jumping ahead now then?" She looked at Alicia and blinked her eyes. "I think I need to elaborate a bit. Yes Alicia was stunned totally knee weak. We talked a lot about him those months. She wanted me to stalk him, to find out everything about him."

"Oh! Stop please you´ll make me blush, Renesmee." Alicia holds her hands over her eyes and shook her head, but started to laugh. "Such a lovely autumn, I can still feel the trembles when he looked me in my eyes and asked if he could sit next to me. That was the first day of the semester. I can't remember anything from that period only that I stole a glance at him every few minutes. Later in the cafeteria he asked the same question again. "

"And I can remember how you looked when you came out of that cafeteria" Renesmee said laughing. "You shone like the sun, running towards me and your first question was... Is he looking at me? I am a vampire but I'm not the mind reader in this family." She laughed. "You wanted to be at the right place at the right time. Who do you think would make that possible, little me of course."

"Well who else could I confess to and get some help from?" Alicia retorted.

Both of them stared at each other and started to laugh again.

"Dad I don´t think you will like this." Renesmee said mischievously.

"Well I think whatever you did it is water under the bridge by now." Edward said smiling.

Renesmee laughed. "Well you can't send me to bed for it." And that made Alicia laugh too.

I couldn't se the fun of it, so it must have been a family thing. Or can Renesmee sleep for real? I will ask that later.

Renesmee continued in a rowdy voice. "I started to stalk him as Alicia had asked me. After a month it got a bit out of hand and from there we just got worse. There were no locked doors to stop me or a window even. I sneaked around in the night like a vampire, sucking up every word I heard about him. I climbed up the dormitory walls from outside and with no problems I sneaked into other dormitories to. It wasn´t any problem to find out about his last girl either, he had left her in Florida. She was devastated and he had done a clean break with her when he left Florida. His roommate was very easy to fish information from. Unfortunately he fell in love with me, but I used that to our benefit too.

"You didn't Renesmee, that poor guy! What did Jacob have to say about that?" Edward laughed.

"Well you know he would do anything for me, dad."

"I guess that's true. Luckily he was always around, to get most of the males around you to stop thinking that they had a chance. It´s seems that I have something more to thank him for fending off all the intended boyfriends you could end up having. He must have made my live much more sheltered than I ever knew." Edward shook his head and chuckled. "I think I need to thank him for that." He continued.

"Oh! Give me I break. It wasn't that many, dad.

"Tell that to Jacob." Edward laughed out.

"Hmm, I think we lost the thread here. It's not my story Ryan is interested in. Renesmee replied.

"As I said before I was rudely interrupted. Nothing was impossible everything was allowed. Every bit of information I got hold of I took back to be scrutinized and dissected by us. I must confess that I liked it a lot. We felt like professional investigators and we even made a book. Do you remember that little red paper book we made? We called it "Everything you need to know about Franc". Do you remember Alicia?"

"Oh my god, I still think have it in the attic in the box I named, my early years. I had totally forgotten that little book." She laughed and continued.

"I think Franc wasn't so much better than us, but we did have such big advantages over him. He asked around about me, unfortunately for him we often managed to be around overhearing bits of it. He didn´t know about Renesmee´s perfect hearing, which helped us allot.

First there were the small things. Like managing to come to the cafeteria at the same time we got there. Reading the same books we were so he had something in common to talk about. And then he started too really show his interest. He bought flowers to me and put a word puzzle instead of his name on it. He managed to change the bell sound to the song "Alicia, give me I break". Do you remember that corny song that was so popular when we were freshmen? The guys bugged me constantly and I didn´t know how I could stop them. I didn´t like that remembrance but poor Franc couldn't have known that.

Of course he managed to change some subjects so he ended up in my class. I don´t know if he bribed James, my desk mate or he threaten him, but one day he just turned up and sat down beside me. He twinkled with his eye and didn´t say anything the whole lesson. I never got around asking him about that, but I was very pleased.

We made it harder for him to surprise me after that though. At the Halloween party that year Renesmee and I decided to dress up as each other, of course we where both vampires. We managed to fool many but not Franc though. We got tickets to a music club he wanted to go to. When he asked me to join him I waved my ticket and said I already got mine.

He worked even harder then, somewhere there he must have figured out that I was just as interested in him that he was about me, so he corned me and really managed to surprise me.

"I must say he did that neatly." Renesmee laughed and told us. "I was out hunting with my dad and Emmett. Alicia was in her room studding and he had managed to empty the dormitory with little help from Susan, a close friend of hers. He shut off the power and when she left the room to investigate the floor in the hall was filled with lit candles leading her to him."

Alicia smiled softly and then she continued. "When I got in to the room there where candles in a circle and he was standing inside it. He told me that he loved me and that he knew that I loved him too and now he wanted me to say it to him."

It went quiet in the room for a while. Everyone was picturing the scene in their head. Alicia shifted in her seat. Edward looked at her and asked. "We are being very rude we still forget that you need to eat more often than we do. Let's take a break here Alicia." He said and stood up.

"I was planning to make a spicy Vindaloo for lunch today. I still like Indian food you know."

"I'll come and help you" Edward offered and walk after her in to the kitchen. Soon we heard them starting to prepare the food.

I looked after him surprised that he would touch human food. I realized that nothing should surprise me with what this vampire family got up to.