NEARLY NUMB

"How is she today?" Alice asked, walking in from the beach with a bowl full of sea glass.

I must have had fallen asleep on the sofa. It was so comfortable, out in the open sitting room with the doors open so that the sea breeze would cool me off. The bedrooms did have very comfortable and aesthetically pleasing beds, but the rooms themselves were so hot well into the night it nearly impossible to sleep. I would try for hours before giving in and dragging a pillow out the sofa and bedding down there instead.

I opened my eyes to see Jasper sitting across the room on an armchair, starring at me expressionlessly. I stared back at him just as stoically.

"Waiting for me to burst into flames or something?" I asked quietly. He gave me a crooked smile without moving a single other muscle in his face. Alice flitted to his side and sat on the arm of the chair. She held up her bowl of scavenged treasures inviting him to look. He gaze did not break from mine.

My daily diagnosis session. What was I projecting this morning? More frustration? More helplessness? Or just endless bitter, bitter grief, self-blame and loathing…

But after weeks of crashing waves, burning hot days and sticky, humid nights, and near isolation from everything that defined my world, the emotional pool had run dry. I sat up on the coach and stretched, getting oxygen into my muscles. Alice found these human aspects of mine so endearing. Again, as I arched my back and threw my arms back and forth, she titled her head and cooed. But Jasper's small chuckle gave her a start.

"What is it?" Alice asked him.

"She's numb this morning," he stated. "About time."

"Being numb is a good thing?" I debated. "Do tell."

"Being numb is a better thing," he corrected. "It's the best mood you've been the whole time we've been here."

"Right. Breakfast time then," Alice chirped and danced off to the kitchen.

I groaned. Although her cooking had improved with practice, I felt so weighted down by the human food I had been forced to endure for the last several weeks.

"Not steak and eggs again!" I argued.

"What else?" Jasper laughed. He must have sensed my disgust.

"Can't I just hunt down a shark or a whale or something?"

Jasper smirked. "Cold-blooded animals don't taste right."

Yes, I guess that was likely. There were certainly hierarchies of taste. I had gotten by most of my life on deer and elk, but herbivores tasted none so good as the occasional brown bear or bobcat I was able to track through the forests of Washington. And then there was one prey that was far beyond any of them…

I shuttered at the recollection of taste of human blood. It had taken all of three weeks for my body to process it all out of my system. Now in the two weeks since, I was going through a sort of withdrawal. As if Isle Esme's climate weren't enough to contend with, I had been suffering night sweats and jittery days. Alice had tried to curb the effects by taking me hunting on the mainland, but the moment we pulled the boat into port, I picked up the scent of a group of fisherman unloading their early morning catch. Jasper had detected my instinct shifting fast enough to stir the boat back out to open sea.

The moment was broken by ringing of Alice's phone. In the kitchen, between the banging of a pan on the stove and the closing of the cupboard, I heard her flip it out of her pocket and answer.

"Hello?... Yes, she seems to doing better. At least the constant stream of tears has stopped. What's happening there? ….. No, I'm blind as a bat with my radar jammer nearby. … Should I just put you on speaker? Okay, wait just a second."

Alice reentered to find my folding my blanket and Jasper fingering through the bowl of sea glass. She set her cell phone on the table between us.

"It's Edward."

With a flick of her finger, the speaker phone clicked open , and I could hear the reverberation of empty air.

"Daddy?" I asked meekly. I hadn't spoken with him in five weeks. A lack of communication with those I loved was one of my punishments, Alice had explained earlier.

"He was arraigned today," was his simple response. The he in question was clear. But, the woeful tone of my father's voice was unexpected. What was it that was leading him to sound so weary? "He pled innocent by way self-defense. The DA is pushing for involuntary manslaughter. Carlisle is trying to find some 'expert' witnesses to attest that the neck injuries were caused by his struggle through the forest, causing the blood lose."

"How will they explain the fact that they can't find his blood anywhere in the forest then?" I asked dully. I had already mapped out in my head the possible scenarios that would be attempted, but this was a problem I had discovered with this particular scenario.

"It's Forks, dearie," Alice smiled. "Remember the near constant presence of rain?"

"The sun was shining that day."

Alice's smile faltered. "We'll just have to hope that they didn't go too thoroughly over the crime scene before the rain came back that night."

"The bigger problem we're running into right now," Edward continued ", is explaining the circumstances that Jacob was found in."

"Meaning?" Jasper asked, staring at the phone on the table before him.

"He had just phased from wolf to hold down Nessie," Edward answered. "Naturally, the DA is curious why Jake was naked when he was found."

Everything that morning had happened in such a blur, it had not even registered with me that Jacob hadn't had any clothes on. He was always very cautious not to phase in front of me or anyone else for that matter to avoid the awkwardness. My mind suddenly replayed the image in my brain and I realized my father was right. I felt my face flush as the fact that Jacob had pinned me to earth, that his bare body had been holding down mine washed over me. Jasper gave me another revealing smirk. Again, I flushed, but this time from knowing that Jasper had sensed my momentary sensation of… something different. Lust?

"Maybe write it off as a spirit-quest Quileute thing, just circumstantial that the gunman ran into him while he was out there," Alice suggested. It didn't sound like an all-together bad idea. The Quileutes were a relatively small and culturally isolated tribe, and not much of their customs had been studied or documented.

"That's certainly a tact we will be trying," Edward agreed from afar. The use of the word wehad not escaped me.

"How is he?" I asked bluntly. Again, the he in question was all too clear.

"Jacob is doing fine," Edward answered. "He is handling everything with so much maturity and class. He doesn't think too much about how much of a sacrifice he's making. He just goes day to day happy that the police don't seem to be interested in you anymore. He's glad you're safe, and he never stops thanking us for getting you out of harm's way so quickly. Of course, Leah is not your biggest fan right now."

I felt the well of tears polling up again. Jacob had many good qualities. His near devotion to me was something I had always taken for granted. I had never questioned why. All that I had changed the morning my grandfather died. Jacob had ceased to be my constant companion; but he had thrown himself to the wolves, so to speak. He was living his whole life for my sake.

"He is a fool," I concluded. Jasper and Alice were taken aback. Even a small gasp from the phone's speaker told me Edward was surprised as well. "Why is he doing this? It's not like he couldn't escape if he didn't want to. He could easily leave Washington and go anywhere- they'd never catch him. Why is he insisting on this drama?"

"He is doing what is necessary to keep our family safe," Edward rebuked. "You would do well to remember that."

"What about him, though!" I shouted. "What if he gets convicted? He never killed a person in his life. Is he expecting me to just sit aside and go on living my life while he sits in prison for a crime he never committed?"

"Jacob trusts us to do what's right," Edward returned, as always satiny smooth while being bluntly harsh. "We will get him through this. Jacob is part of our family, and we don't abandon our family."

"Dad, I'm so scared for him," I whispered. The tears again had found their way down my cheek. "I dounderstand what he is doing. But I couldn't endure if something happens to him because of what I did. If he is convicted, I'm not sure I could…."

My voice tapered off. I looked up from the phone to Jasper and Alice, hand in hand, their gazes full of curiosity and concern.

"…you're not sure you could go on living."

Edward completed my thoughts so succinctly. I swallowed back my tears and nodded. Although he could not see me, I'm sure my silence served as a confirmation.

"He is doing all this because of how much he loves you, Nessie," Edward continued. "He would rather face a 20-year prison sentence than see you suffer a moment. We'll see you soon, sweetheart, and it may all make better sense then. Alice, take me off of speaker."

Alice snatched up the phone and hit its keypad in half a second. She left the room and resumed her post at the stove. Jasper threw his arm around me and lowered me to the couch. I turned my head onto his shoulder and let the tears flow freely. He made no attempt to calm or sedate me. He had been right. Numb was better.

"You're not going to swing me?" I asked him through gasps, surprised that he was allowing my wallowing to endure.

"Not all painful tears are wrong," he answered, stroking my cheek. "No, you cry until you can't cry anymore. I can't think of a better way to deal with what you're feeling."

"You can't be serious!"

Alice's voice rang out from the kitchen with a tone of disgust. My mind immediately was busy constructing dire realities of yet another twist of fate against us.

"Fine!" she added after a moment. "I guess it's a small sacrifice. Nessie and Bella will actually look very good. We'll see you a few days then."

I heard her flip phone close. I felt a slight spark of hope. We'llsee you a few days. Either Edward was coming to us, or better yet, we were leaving the island and going to him. Either was a welcomed change.

After a few minutes, Alice bore a tray of juice, bloody steak, and eggs over easy and set in on the table in front of me. I rolled my eyes in disgust, but hunger wins in the end. I set about eating my human food like the good little half-human they wanted me to be.

Jasper stood to put his arms around Alice. He must have sensed that she needed comforting, but her face revealed only frustration.

"Nessie, you'll need to pack your things, we'll be leaving tonight," she informed me. "Jasper and I need to hunt before getting on the plane. I trust you'll be okay here for a few hours by yourself?"

I nodded obediently. It wasn't as if I was going to throw a wild kegger.

"Carlisle has found a new house and taken a job," she continued. "Esme has been setting up everything with the movers and all of things are supposed to be there tomorrow, so I guess it's time to move on. We'll also need to do some shoppingon our way."

That was assumed with Alice. But the tone of the word shopping made it sound like a very unpleasant thing. Alice find shopping for anything unpleasant? Would my world never cease flipping itself on end? I looked up at her, eyes full of curiosity.

Her teeth clenched as she answered through a manufactured smile.

"School uniforms."