11. Dispel

The run back in the rain with my eyes wide open would have been exhilarating had it not been for the lead weight in the pit of my stomach.

We slipped our muddy boots off on the back step and Edward took my wet cloak so I could run upstairs to towel dry my hair. When I came back down, he was in the living room talking with my dad. As soon as I entered, he got up and left the room.

"Hey, Dad," I said, sitting down next to him. I laid my forearm on the arm of the couch and watched him put his hand on top mine. There was no weight to it, only an extra chill on my already cold skin.

I plastered a smile on my face. "All this time, Dad, and you never told me you were a ghost."

He huffed. "Bella, you came to the funeral. The whole town was there. You've known what I am all along; you've just refused to acknowledge it."

"Why did you stay?"

"I believe everyone gets the opportunity to wait around a little after they've died, to finish things up or something like that." He sighed. "You were virtually catatonic for three months, Bella, and no one seemed capable of bringing you out of it. I couldn't leave you like that. You needed me. Harry suggested I show myself and see what happened."

"Harry Clearwater?"

"Yep. You remember my old fishing buddy?"

"But he's…"

"Dead, yes. He's around here somewhere." He looked toward the window then back at our hands. "Anyway, I showed myself to you and you took one look at me and said, 'Hello Dad,' and went and put the dinner on. It was the first time you'd cooked yourself a hot meal since I'd died."

"And you stayed."

"It's what any parent would do for their child."

"Not all parents." My mother hadn't even come to his funeral.

He patted my hand, not that I could feel it. "You started to live again – do normal teenage things. You even dated that idiot Mike Newton for a while." His expression hardened for a moment. "You graduated high school, went off to university, got your degree, and now you're earning a living, supporting yourself. I'm very proud of you, Bella."

He looked out of the window again. "But… you know, I'd really like to go fishing with Harry. He's been waiting for me for seven years – says I'm his unfinished business – and he hasn't been too subtle about it either. He's scared the life out of Sue on numerous occasions. If I don't distract him soon, she'll be joining us before her time."

His effort to make light of the situation was wasted on me. Inside my head and chest, I was right back at the beginning when I found him dead from a heart attack.

"Mom should have left me with you all along," I said. "I'd barely got you back and you…"

"Come on, Bells. Say the word."

"You died," I whispered.

"I'm sorry, Bella."

"So you should be," I said, half laughing through my tears.

"You already know the house is yours. You could live in it now if you want to."

"But you won't be in it anymore."

"In your heart and mind but not here. I'll be fishing with Harry in the hereafter."

My dad got to his feet and I joined him. He put his arms around me and although I knew he was hugging me, I could only draw on the memory of how it used to feel.

"Say goodbye to me, Bella," he said.

"Can't we have just a little longer?"

"You've had seven years more than you should have."

Tears were streaming down my face as I closed my eyes. "Goodbye, Dad."

Two strong arms wrapped around me from behind. I leaned back into Edward and dared to open my eyes and look at the empty space in front of me.

"Did I imagine that?" I whispered.

"No," Edward said. "I was here. I saw and heard everything you did."

"But what if you're not real either?"

He squeezed a little tighter and said, "I should have known you wouldn't make it easy for me."

He was wrong, of course. It wasn't him I made things difficult for, it was myself.

Edward must have sensed my body going limp as a wave of emotion took hold of me because he scooped me up and sat on the couch with me on his lap, holding me to his chest. I cried myself to sleep in his arms.

When I awoke, the house was dark and I was freezing cold. Edward was exceptionally still. Too still. Something wasn't right.

Without thinking, I brought my right hand up and dipped my fingers under the placket of his shirt, encountering the fine hairs on his chest. His skin was ice cold, considering it had been hours since our excursion to the cemetery. I undid some buttons and placed my palm flat against his chest. His rib cage suddenly expanded and he made a humming noise.

I sighed in relief. "You weren't breathing," I whispered.

"I don't need to."

I pressed my ear to his chest. "I can't hear your heart."

"No. It's been silent for almost a hundred years."

I frowned. "And you haven't gotten any warmer for being indoors all this time."

"No, Bella."

I started to shiver. "You're the reason I'm so cold!"

"Come on, then," he said, lifting me off his lap. "We'd better warm you up."

I sat quietly at my dad's kitchen table, staring at the grain of the wood while Edward emptied the can of tomato soup into a pan to warm it through and dug around in the freezer drawers until he found the sliced bread and shredded cheese.

"I'm very glad you're here," I said eventually, not even allowing myself to consider the whys and wherefores.

He placed the hot soup and the grilled cheese sandwich down on the table in front of me along with a bottle of water and pulled out a chair to join me.

"You are very welcome," he said.

I ate slowly, my mind jumping from one thing to another until I'd eaten all I could manage.

"You were wrong about me," I said, pushing my plate and bowl toward the centre of the table. "I'm not the virtuous person you think I am. I don't look past the surface because I'm non-judgemental, I look past it so don't have to see it for what it is."

He shook his head, a half smile on his lips. "Even if I were just a man, Bella, you'd still ignore my appearance."

I sniffed. "I am not completely unobservant, Edward, neither am I unaffected, but I am well aware that external beauty is only skin deep."

"Which proves my point."

I sighed. "I've been unfair to you. I've found reasons and explanations to disprove everything you've said or done that doesn't fit with my idea of reality. I've told myself over and over that it's all pretend, an act put on in order to honour that damned rental agreement, but now I'm not so sure."

"It's alright, Bella. I knew what you were doing."

"Because you read my mind?"

"No." He frowned. "I can't read your mind."

"Ha! So I was right."

"Only partially. I've been able to read every mind I've ever encountered with the exception of one: yours."

There was me trying to make sense of everything and he had to go and throw another cat among the pigeons.

"Did your family really desert you?" I asked.

"Yes, and they did a thorough job of it too. They haven't just disappeared off the face of the earth, they've blocked my personal finances."

"What?"

"It's okay, Bella. It's inconvenient but it's not as if I'll go hungry or die of hypothermia."

"You might run out of clothes, though, if you keep on chasing mountain lions."

"True." A small smile graced his face.

"When we were in the cave, you said you didn't put yourself up for hire." He shook his head. "So how did you come to arrive on my doorstep?"

He lay his hands flat on the table and tapped out a rhythm with his fingers. "It happened within a matter of twenty-four hours," he said. "I rarely pay heed to my sister when she whines so I was only listening with half an ear when she complained that one of her escorts was going to let her down at the last minute.

"I recall Jasper suggesting one of us could stand in if her client would accept a replacement. I was so preoccupied with what I was doing, I just nodded my assent, vaguely aware that my father and other brother had also agreed to the plan."

"What were you doing?"

"Setting up a highly convoluted domino race."

I raised both eyebrows. He shrugged.

"The next afternoon, my sister returned home and announced that her client had chosen me. Emmett didn't take it well." One corner of his mouth crept up into a lopsided grin. "He broke Esme's coffee table and stormed out of the house.

"My sister then thrust a sheet of paper under my nose for a few seconds – a copy of the contract with all your details on it – and then made me sit through a food nutrition video while she packed my bag for me."

"So that's why you didn't bring any pyjamas or underpants with you."

"No, Bella," he said seriously, his eyes fixed on mine. "I have no use for pyjamas and I never wear underpants."

I took a swig of cool water from my bottle. I was beginning to feel much warmer.

"When I was about to leave," he said, "she insisted I drink some donated human blood and that is how my eyes came to be red when I arrived at your apartment."

"What colour were they before that?"

"A bit more golden than they are now. It's the animal blood that makes them that way."

"Oh." I frowned, thinking through everything he'd just told me for a moment. "You know, Edward, I booked you the very same day you arrived."

He propped one elbow on the table and leaned his head on his hand, but the expression on his face was blank.

"Your family set you up, didn't they?" I said.

"It certainly looks that way, yes."

I felt a knot forming in my stomach. "Were they playing a game of a chance with my life?"

"Quite possibly."

"Were you, too?"

"Yes. No. I don't know, Bella. I cannot believe that's what my sister would have intended. She has forced my hand but she has done it in a very specific way. There has to be a reason behind it."

"Forced your hand?" My voice was shrill. " Are you saying she chose me for you?"

"That is beyond even her capabilities, but I do believe she envisioned you and me together somehow."

"Envisioned?"

"My sister can see into the future."

Edward told me later that I had blacked out. Fortunately, he'd been able to catch me before I'd slid off my chair and underneath the kitchen table. He had cleared up, turned down the thermostat, unplugged the television and locked the house before taking a circuitous route through the forest, with me bundled up in his arms, back to Port Angeles.

I came to shortly after he'd laid me on the sofa in my apartment. He was taking off my boots. He insisted I take a hot shower and I was too exhausted to argue with him.

My bed was ready when I came out of the bathroom but Edward was nowhere in sight. I slipped under the covers and let sleep take me wherever it would.

When I opened my eyes next, Edward was lying on his side facing me, fiddling with a lock of my hair. His irises were a thin golden ring around his large black pupils.

My apartment had that dull glow about it of brilliant sunshine shining through the fabric of the curtains.

"What's the time?" My voice was hoarse and my throat dry.

"A little past one."

I scrubbed a hand over my face, using a fingernail to scratch the sleep from the corner of one eye. I covered my mouth as I yawned and then groaned.

"I have so much to do and so little time," I said.

"What needs doing?"

"The laundry."

"Aside from the bedding, the laundry is done."

I raised an eyebrow. "Grocery shopping?"

"I went to the grocery store before the sun broke through the clouds. I hope you don't mind that I took your wallet from your purse."

I shook my head, more than curious to check out the food cabinet and the refrigerator to see what he'd bought.

"All you have to do is eat your lunch and cook for the freezer," he said.

"And the bedding and the cleaning?"

"I can do those."

"I don't recall seeing housework listed in the small print," I said. "Why are you doing all this?"

"Does it matter?"

"It does to me."

"Can't you just thank me and let me get on with it?"

I stared at him.

He blew out a cool, sweet breath. "The contract said you had to house me, not run around after me like a servant, Bella. I'm happy to do my share."

"Still, not even my own mother was this domesticated, and as for my father…"

He cupped my cheek in his hand, wiping a lone tear away with his thumb, and then he pulled me to him. His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, so I pressed my nose to his skin and took a deep breath. If I hadn't needed to empty my bladder, I'd have been happy to stay right there for the rest of the day.

"Thank you, Edward," I whispered brushing the underside of his jaw with my lips.

I eased myself out of his arms and got out of bed, half walking, half stumbling toward the bathroom. I hadn't gotten around to writing my shopping list the day before so I hoped he'd noticed that we'd nearly run out of toilet paper.