6. RELOCATION
- - - GRANT WILLOUGHBY - - -
"Edward? What are you still doing here? Is everything alright?"
"You tell me."
I stepped forward to my room slowly, still trying to understand what was going on. Edward continued.
"Relax, nothing's wrong. Alice said you were going to take things pretty hard when Coraline left. I stayed around to make sure you're alright."
"Really? She saw that?"
"Yeah, among other things. You don't handle loneliness too well, do you?"
"Well, historically speaking, I guess not."
"Listen, you don't have to be alone right now if you don't want to be. Carlisle told my school that I'm sick at home with mono. I've got nothing but time. And... if you wanna talk about it..."
"Edward – thank you, but... everything in this city is a painful reminder. I really need to get out of New York. I'm sure you understand..."
"Yeah, Alice said you would say that," he replied with a smirk. "How about this instead: you pack up your things, and you and I drive back to Montana together. Jasper's heading to Cleveland to meet up with us there and ride the rest of the way. I'm guessing you could use some quality guy time about now. Besides, it'll be a lot more fun than going by yourself. So, what do you think?"
"I... I don't know what to say. The two of you would really do that? For me?"
Edward put a hand on my shoulder, smiling with his eyes. "That's what friends do – we help each other out in the rough times. C'mon, let's get your stuff packed and get on the road."
I pulled my things together, loading them into the relatively small trunk of my car, and we were on the road by late afternoon. The cloud cover Harriet had so graciously provided was thinning considerably by the time we left Manhattan, and before we were halfway through Pennsylvania, the sun was peeking through in random, rogue bursts that threatened to expose us. We briefly considered pulling over until nightfall, but we didn't want to keep Jasper waiting that long, so we veered off onto some lesser-traveled country roads and made our way westward through the picturesque countryside.
Conversation was fun and easy for the first couple of hours, but then the inevitable happened. Edward brought up Coraline, and instantly, I was depressed again.
"So, Grant... while we were at the game, I heard some things – some thoughts," he began cautiously. "I know you don't want to talk about it – about Coraline – but there's something you need to know."
I sighed. There was no escaping the topic – I had to face it sooner or later.
"Okay. What?"
"She's not indifferent to you, not at all. She's just scared."
"Scared? Of what?"
"She's afraid of hurting you, afraid of committing when the two of you could never be together."
"But we can be together," I countered, speaking to Edward as though somehow he was the one I was trying to convince. "I'm perfectly safe in my anonymity, and she only has forty-one more years in her sentence. It's only a matter of time..."
"That's not how she sees it, Grant – that's what I'm trying to tell you. In her mind, you're the forbidden fruit, the grass on the other side of the fence. She's tormented by wanting something she can't have, and she's trying to keep you distant so you don't have to feel the same way."
"But I do feel the same way! For heaven's sake – I love her! I love her, and I can never be with her. That doesn't mean I love her any less, though. It doesn't mean I don't want to cherish every stolen moment together that I can."
"You have to understand, she's keeping you at arm's length because she cares about you."
"Well, that's just stupid."
"Not to her. At least try to see things from her perspective..."
"And why are you so interested in defending her cause all of a sudden?"
"Because I know how she's acting is tearing you apart, and I want to help you understand. She's doing the only thing she knows to do. Listen – if you don't hear anything else I have to say, at least hear this: she cares about you, she just doesn't know how to show you. Give it more time."
We both went quiet for a while as I digested everything he told me. As backwards as it sounded to me, Coraline's behavior did make sense in light of Edward's explanation. It didn't make me miss her any less, though.
Eventually, we found other, less emotionally-charged subjects to talk about, and by the time we arrived in Cleveland to pick up Jasper, I was in a much better mood. My Corvette was really only designed for two passengers, but the three of us found a way to squeeze in, and we had a terrific ride in spite of it. We took a break for half a day in Chicago to enjoy the city life there and watch game five of the World Series at a local sports bar. The three of us chatted, laughed and joked about randomness the whole time – there was never even a mention of Coraline, which was a good tonic for me.
After the game, we crammed back into the car and passed through Minneapolis and Fargo, North Dakota before we came to the more remote stretch of the drive. Once we got into Montana, the two of them were practically salivating, talking about all the endless acres of national forests that were overflowing with wild game. After a couple hours of pleading, they wore me down, and we took a sizable detour, heading south into northern Idaho. The three of us spent a day and a half roaming an 8 million-acre national forest area, and hunting bear and mountain lions. The Cullens were professionals at hunting large game, and after a few tips, I was able to subdue a rather large grizzly. It was quite a rush, taking on a creature of that size face to face, and though the blood had a strange flavor, I did enjoy the warmth and freshness of it.
The three of us arrived in Whitefish after a four-day return trip, one I enjoyed much more than I would have returning on my own. I invited Jasper and Edward to stay at my house for a while, but they had plans to visit our mutual friend, Robert Slape, in Seattle. Mr. Slape, an associate of Hawkins and his gang, was our inside connection for the counterfeited documents necessary to live in the United States.
The Cullens had been in Syracuse for too long, and they were planning a family relocation to Alaska – something that required new drivers licenses, birth certificates, passports... the whole bit. I thought about it as I bid them farewell – my family and I had been living in Whitefish for nearly 8 years, and we didn't look a day older than we did when we arrived. It would probably be time for us to start thinking about relocating to a new town ourselves. As it turned out, a relocation was coming sooner than I expected.
I returned to my house to find it empty. Harvey's motorcycle was missing from the motor house, and the front door was locked, so I assumed he and Lucy must have been out for a scenic drive (as they often were in the fall). I had called ahead from Chicago, alerting them to my change of plans on the way home, and had expected them to be in town to welcome me back, but I didn't think too much of it at the time. The fall colors were just beginning to show in Whitefish, and the October air was cold and crisp. If I had a motorcycle, I'd probably be on it, too.
My next stop was at the mortuary, and that's where the full picture began to come into view. The mailbox was nearly full, stuffed with business letters and invoices, which was odd, since we didn't usually receive a high volume of mail content in a single day. In front of the back door (which was my usual entrance) was a half-wilted floral arrangement, the type that we received on a regular basis. The delivery date on the card was for four days earlier, which would explain the poor condition of the flowers. What it didn't explain is why Harvey and Lucy didn't bring the arrangement inside. Worry and wrath were vying for emotional supremacy inside me as I walked around to check the front door, and found – as no surprise – three separate notes attached, each requesting a call back for pick up and embalming service.
It was obvious that Harvey and Lucy hadn't been to the office in several days. Either they were grossly neglecting it, or something terrible had happened to them. Needless to say, I was quite unhappy about either possibility. I hurried back to the house and called Alice to ask if she had seen anything disturbing in their futures, and she had nothing. I fought to keep a clear head, and decided to assume they were just being irresponsible. I would give them to the end of the day to return before I allowed myself to think about something horrible like them being found by the Volturi.
I waited impatiently at the house for six hours before the the familiar roar of Harvey's red Harley Davidson came thundering down the driveway.
They were alive.
I was going to kill them.
As soon as they were in the door, I unloaded on them, allowing my emotions to get the best of me. Even with Edward and Jasper's diversions, it had been a pretty emotionally taxing week, and there was just no self-control left.
"Where in the bloody hell have you been?" I demanded, cold and deliberate. I could see the shock in their eyes – they weren't expecting me to be back in town yet. Lucy had guilt written all over her face, which was just as well. I could more easily forgive her. Harvey was my own brother. He should have known better.
"It's good to see you, too," was his nonchalant reply.
I went from angry to furious.
"Have you any idea how much trouble you've caused? We're past due on the electricity bill, we're going to have to refund a thirty-dollar floral arrangement that never made it to the Wilson's funeral, and we've lost at least a half a dozen jobs, all because you two were off gallivanting around on that stupid motorcycle."
"Geez, sorry. If it's such a big deal, I'll pay you back."
"Harvey, I asked you to do one thing while I was gone. One simple thing. Could you not even handle that?"
"Yeah, one thing – to spend all day long working at the business you wanted to keep so you could have some one night stand with your Volturi girlfriend. Oh – and on absolutely no notice whatsoever. Forgive me for not bending over backwards to grant that request."
"That business is the only way that this family survives, and you'd do well to remember that. After all the things I've done for you, the least you could do was give me one ounce of respect, suck it up, and actually do some work for once."
"So now I'm a slacker?" He retorted, becoming as angry as I was. "I do my share, just like Lucy does, just like you do. What makes you so high-and-mighty?"
"I hold this family together," I half-shouted in response, ready to pop him one in the jaw, "I'm the one who has to make all the tough decisions. I'm the one who puts in the extra hours. I'm the one who actually behaves like a responsible adult."
"You've got your head stuck so far up your own ass that you don't even know what's good for this family anymore. All you care about is that stupid mortuary and your stupid girlfriend. Get over it, man. Wally's dead. Coraline might as well be. It's time you started caring about the people in your life that are actually here."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"We hate it here."
There was a long pause as his words sat in the air. The dynamic level came down a bit, but it was still as serious as ever.
"Can't you see that?" He continued, looking over at Lucy. "Luce and I, we're not cut out for the small town life. We're bored to death here. That's where we've been. We spent the last three days in Seattle, and we loved it. I didn't want to come back. We've gotta get out of here, we're going crazy."
"Lucy?" I asked, hoping she might have less intense feelings on the matter.
"Harvey's right," she said, eyes on the ground. "We love you, we just... we don't fit in here. We thought we could make it work, but we're tired of trying. I'm sorry about the office..."
"Guys, I... I had no idea. Well, okay, so I may have had an idea, but honestly... I didn't know your feelings were this strong."
"I know, Grant," Harvey said, stepping forward and patting me on the shoulder. "I love you, man, but you've been a little messed up since Wally died. I know you miss him, and I know you miss Coraline. I know they were like family, and I'm not trying to belittle that, but you need to remember, we're your family, too."
He stepped back slightly and took Lucy's hand.
"Lucy and I have decided that we're moving by the first of the year, probably to Seattle. I hope you'll come with us. You could really use a fresh start."
"I'll... give it some thought..."
"Good," he answered. "... and sorry about what I said – about Coraline. I got a little carried away..."
"Don't mention it. Like you said, we're family."
Harvey's announcement hit me like an asteroid – sudden, unexpected, crushing. I dwelt on the subject heavily for several days, and ultimately came to see that he was right. I had been so busy mourning the relationships missing in my life that I had neglected the ones present in my life, nearly to the point of losing them. I had to do something. It wasn't the moving itself that bothered me – I had been thinking of relocating for a while – it was the realization that my brother and his wife had been suffering in silence for so long. Part of me wondered if a change of scenery would really solve the problem, or if the issue was with me. There was only one way to find out, and it was something that needed to be done anyway.
We were moving.
I put the business and the house up for sale, and began diverting my attention from undertaking to investigating our next living place. Seattle was the obvious front-runner in Harvey's mind, but I had lived there as a human twenty years earlier, and knowing my luck, someone would recognize me (after all, I didn't really look any different). The last thing we wanted was to get settled into a new town, only to turn around and leave to escape suspicion, so Harvey and Lucy reluctantly agreed to look elsewhere, at least until our next relocation.
With Seattle off the table, the entire world was at our disposal. Our previous research (from when we left Havana) was primarily focused on small towns, so we launched a thorough investigative initiative, and came up with several viable options. We considered Portland, Vancouver, London, Glasgow, Lima, and Stockholm, among others. Harvey and I weren't quite ready to try living in the UK again, and I was the only one who spoke Spanish or Swedish, so we ended up selecting Portland as our next home.
Well, not technically Portland.
Harvey and Lucy wanted to rent a flat in the middle of downtown. I was still nervous enough about sunny days to want the privacy that a more secluded location could provide. After a few heated discussions, we struck a compromise. We bought an 18-acre plot of heavily forested land backed up next to Mount Hood National Forest, and had a nice two-story house built there. The lot was perfectly secluded, but only 20 miles from the very center of Portland, which, in my mind, afforded us the best of both worlds. In addition to the house, Harvey and Lucy rented out a 14th-story flat near the riverfront, so on any given day, they had their choice of where to stay.
The moving transition went relatively easily, and by the end of January 1957, we were settled in and making the most of the opportunities a larger city provided. Due to the timing of the second world war, Lucy had never been able to attend college, and a move to a new town was the perfect time to change that. At my suggestion, she started taking classes at the local university in the spring semester, working toward her medical degree, which, given her caring heart and concern for the welfare of others, was a great choice.
Between her total-recall memory, her ability to read textbooks several times the speed of a human, and expert tutoring from her knowledgeable brother-in-law, college proved easy for Lucy. She took as many night classes as possible, enrolling in more classes simultaneously than even a studious human would attempt, and graduated with straight A's in the spring of 1959.
Lucy enjoyed her undergraduate program so thoroughly that she immediately enrolled in the University of Oregon's medical school, working toward a specialization in pediatrics. Fortunately, they had a campus in Portland, so we were able to keep the family planted there for a reasonable amount of time. The academic scene was good for Lucy – it allowed her to make friends her age and have something to do with the mountain of free time on her hands. Considering how much she enjoyed and benefited from her education, I was hoping Harvey would take a similar course. As usual, though, Harvey had his own ideas on the subject.
For all the pleading and persuading that Harvey did to get us to move to a larger city, he was the one who spent the least amount of time there. About six months after we changed locations, he was contacted by our old mutual friend, Hawkins. Three weeks later, he was working as a black-ops agent with British special intelligence.
At first, I was strongly opposed to the idea – part of the reason we had left Havana in the first place was to get away from the killing business. Harvey assured me that the majority of his assignments were information-gathering only. He did receive orders to kill from time to time, though, which usually presented a problem. On two different occasions, he lost control after eliminating his target, and fed on the body. Both times, Lucy and I took him through ten weeks of blood-rehab before letting him get back out for another mission.
In his defense, Harvey was only out on assignments 4-5 days a month. The rest of the time he spent enjoying the city life and riding his motorcycle all over the western United States. He and Lucy traveled frequently, roaming as far north as Alaska and as far south as San Diego. Admittedly, I was mildly jealous. I would have given anything to have been able to travel that freely and frequently with Coraline. It was just as well, though. I had plenty to keep me busy in town.
As was the case in Whitefish, a large portion of my time went into the undertaking business. I purchased a somewhat successful mortuary on the east side of the city, and went about renovating it to suit the family's unique needs. After about a year of doing things myself, I finally took a chance and hired a few employees to run the basic tasks during the day. Hiring help turned out to be a wonderful idea – the business grew rapidly, and without much effort on my part, it became profitable.
Not that I needed the money.
Even with the cost of relocating, the family funds were extensive. My years of lucrative assassin work in Havana, along with my ownership of a reasonably-large Swiss bank, had provided me with a sizable monetary stockpile, which only grew larger as I reinvested in domestic and foreign stocks and businesses. By 1960, the family had a net worth of over $6 million, and it actually became a little bit challenging to responsibly dispense all that income. Since I wasn't an official citizen, I felt no need to pay income tax, or anything of that nature. I did, however, feel the need to give back to help those less fortunate than myself. With Harvey and Lucy's help (well, mostly Lucy's, to be honest), I selected a variety of charities to invest in – everything from feeding the hungry in Africa, to providing low-income housing in urban Portland, to donating heavily in Lucy's church (yes, she still went regularly, even without Wally and her old congregation in Whitefish). In time, the mortuary, investments, and even the charities were running smoothly with minimal input from me, which gave me the opportunity to explore other areas of interest that I had been keeping on the shelf for some time – namely, science.
Lucy's interest in furthering her education was an inspiration to me. With all the free time on my hands, I decided to join her, pursuing and attaining a position as an adjunct faculty member at the school. It was the perfect scenario for me – I taught three freshman-level physics classes and a chemistry lab every semester, and in return (besides a modest salary), I had unlimited access to the university's library and laboratories.
It was rather odd at first – going back to the last job I had held as a human – but in time, I regained my old form and remembered how much I loved academia. My lectures as a vampire went over much better than they had as a human. For one thing, I didn't have to keep any notes in front of me, or struggle to remember my lesson plan. Everything was neatly organized and to-the-point. I also had the advantage of being able to hear every whispered comment and catch every passed-along note. By the end of my first year teaching, I became notorious on campus as being the "A-student" professor. I had very little tolerance for chatty students, and would expel them from my classroom on a regular basis. As a result, my classes were always on the small side, but they were filled with attentive students, which is the way I preferred it.
A lot had changed in the world of science and technology since I last stepped onto a university campus in 1935, and I made it my goal to stay abridged on everything new. I spent countless hours in the library after it had officially closed, reading through the latest research journals and textbooks, and before my second full semester was over, I was (in my own humble opinion) fully qualified to teach graduate-level classes in nearly any branch of physics, chemistry and biology. At the time, though, I was happy enough with my freshman-level classes – it was just nice to be back on campus.
Everything Harvey had said to me about living in the here-and-now hit home, and after the move, I made a concerted effort to spend more time doing things with my brother and sister-in-law. We played games, watched television, and went on trips as a family. I tutored Lucy in all her science classes, taught her to speak Spanish and French, and even went to church with her on Easter and Christmas. I taught Harvey how to fly a plane, and we bought a pair of matching aircraft to race. Actually, we bought six – one for me, one for Harvey, and then four replacements for the ones Harvey crashed into the ocean. In return, he taught me the finer points of riding motorcycles, and of course, we raced those, too. We actually raced just about anything that would move faster than we could run.
In addition to competitive activities, Harvey and I also shared a growing love for sports, and made an effort to attend any major sporting events in person. We had front row seats at every NFL Championship game, World Series game and college football Rose Bowl, and during the regular season, we watched as many televised games as possible.
My relationship with Harvey was never one that would be characterized by deep conversations – at least, not to the casual observer – but we did share a lot in those first few years in Portland, and we came to a better understanding with the whole "Coraline" issue. I understood that his objections to her were based entirely on his desire to protect me from physical and emotional harm. He understood that unless she told me outright that she had absolutely no interest in me whatsoever, I would continue to write her and hold out hope that we could be together someday. It was a tenuous truce, but at least we had peace.
After our time together in New York, Coraline and I resumed our correspondence, keeping a steady stream of letters going back and forth across the Atlantic. Her work slowed down a bit once the primary talent scout, Pearl, was back in control of her senses, but she still managed to write me every 8-10 weeks. Every once in a while, she would send me a postcard from one of her exotic places of travel – I collected them all and kept them, along with the letters, in a special box for keepsakes. Every word, every thought from her was precious to me – I could never get enough of them.
We talked about all sorts of things in our letters, but never about the status of our relationship. I would have pressed the issue, but I was comfortable enough keeping the status quo – that, and I was afraid of upsetting the apple cart. My friendship with Coraline was a strange, unconventional one, but it was still a friendship. After all the two of us had been through over the years, it was a wonder that we were even alive, let alone in contact with each other.
Everything progressed in my life quite naturally for my first five years in Portland. And then in March of 1962, I got another special letter. Coraline, along with Wesley and Harriet, had somehow convinced Piers (who was now the one they directly reported to) that they deserved some vacation time for all their hard work. They had plans to be in Venezuela for business in June, and arranged for an extra three days there, completely free of responsibility. In addition to inviting me, they also extended an invitation to Harvey and Lucy, which would make it less of a "romantic getaway" and more of a "family vacation." Considering the status of my relationship with Coraline, it seemed the most logical (if not the most desirable) course of action, so I heartily supported it.
Much to my delight, Harvey and Lucy thought it was a great idea, so we decided to make an extended family trip of it. First, we would fly down to Peru and spend a week sight-seeing in the Andes mountains. Next, we would rent a boat and take a 9-day journey down the Amazon river in Brazil. Finally, we would end up in Caracas, where we would meet up with Coraline, Wesley and Harriet for an extended weekend. It was the perfect vacation – I just hoped that the time with Coraline would prove more natural and confusion-free than our time in New York.