I decided to walk home on the last day of final exams. I went slowly, bidding farewell to the scenery as I passed it by- especially to the mountains that graced the horizon. I would miss the Adirondacks, but I was looking forward to exploring the Great Smoky Mountains. Carlisle had accepted a position at the hospital in Athens, Tennessee, although we planned to live well outside of town. He had almost gone with a hospital in Memphis; he was attracted by their research programs, as well as the high count of rainy days. But in the end he felt it was more important to stay rural, to protect Rosalie's identity. The New York Times had finally gotten a whiff of recent events, and had published an article in tribute to the tragic death of Rosalie Hale, the beauty who was days away from her ascension to the prestigious King family. Much to our dismay, they had printed a photo of Rosalie along with the feature. We had no way of knowing how many other papers had picked up the article, and Carlisle decided that we would need to avoid large cities for a while.

I was secretly glad of his choice. Athens was much closer to the Smokies, as well several other large state parks and wildlife reserves. Carlisle had assured me that there were plenty of mountain lions to be found, and I was also relieved to learn that there were herds of elk, even that far south. While they weren't nearly as good as carnivores, elk blood was definitely preferable to that of regular deer.

After I was past the city limits I broke into a run, eager to get home and begin packing. We were planning to leave the next day, with Carlisle and Esme in the Eagle and Rosalie and I in my car. I had promised Rosalie that we would take turns driving, and since Carlisle knew the love that both Rosalie and I had for speed, he had agreed to stay back with the moving van, which would be in the care of a hired driver. When he had announced this, I was surprised to hear Esme thinking that she might like to learn to drive. Her daughter could drive now, after all, so why couldn't she? She seemed to have some ridiculous idea that Carlisle wouldn't like that, though, and was delaying bringing it up with him. Earlier in their marriage I probably would have said something to Carlisle, but I decided to stay out of this one. They had managed just fine without me for four years, after all.

Later that night, we all took a break from packing and gathered in the living room to discuss our plans. Carlisle brought out a newspaper which he had ordered from Tennessee, and we looked over the real estate listings, finding a few possibilities for our new home. We wanted to wait until all of us could choose the house together; the driver would be delivering most of our belongings into local storage.

"Oh, Edward, I almost forgot- here." Carlisle opened his briefcase again and produced another packet with "University of Tennessee" printed on the envelope. "If you can get your application filled out tonight, we can drop it off in the mail on our way out tomorrow. I've already signed up for a post office box that we can use as our return address for now."

I took the packet slowly, turning it over in my hands. I really wanted to pick up in Tennessee where I had left off- as a junior majoring in Biology. I was even more interested in medicine now than I had been when I began the classes, and I frowned as I realized what I needed to do.

"Carlisle, I don't think that I should go to college in Tennessee."

Everyone turned to look at me, and I reluctantly handed the packet back to Carlisle. "Think about it. Rosalie will be going to school for the first time, and I need to be able to keep an eye on her. If we go to high school, it'll be much easier to ensure that we have most of our classes together, and we can be closer to home. And we won't have to deal with the sunlight nearly so much, in high school."

"But, Edward!" Esme said. "You've come so far! And I know you don't like high school."

"I don't," I admitted. "But it's best this way. We could start in the middle, and then we could both go to the University together- if you want to, of course," I added, looking over at my sister.

She nodded, her face impassive and her thoughts carefully controlled. I saw a flash of Royce's leering grin but tried not to react. The sooner we got her out of here, the better.

Carlisle and Esme smiled at each other. "Well, son, that's… that's terrific. This takes a load off of my mind," he said as he returned the packet to his briefcase. "We'll keep the cover story that we've already agreed upon, but we'll move both your ages back two years. You'll both be still adopted, and we'll say that Rosalie just joined our family. Let's still have Rosalie be a year younger than you, but we'll say that we're holding you back to her grade because of the delays while you were in foster care."

I nodded. "Yes, I think we should keep that part. It'll make my protective-big-brother tendencies seem less out of place."

Rosalie sighed loudly. "I don't see why you get to be the older one. I'm older than you."

"No, you're not," I said, frowning at her. "I'm thirty-two and you're a measly eighteen. And I'm taller, too."

"So what? You're twice as annoying as my little brothers were when I was human- and there were two of them!"

"Annoying? When I come home from school, only to find your lingerie laid out to dry in the front yard-"

"All right!" Esme shouted. "I think you both can continue your argument while you start carrying boxes out to the moving van."

.

.

.

After we had finished the packing, Carlisle and I drove both the cars over to the hospital to clean out his office. He had accumulated an extensive library over the years, and a good third of it was at work. We had waited until two in the morning, so that there wouldn't be too many nurses nosing about while we worked at our normal speed.

We finished in thirty minutes, and when we arrived home, we found a note on the door.

Took Rosalie out for one last trip. Be back in a couple of hours. Esme

"That's odd. We just went hunting the other day," Carlisle said as he tore the note off the door.

I shrugged. "Maybe she's nervous. Don't humans eat when they're nervous?"

"Not usually. Maybe she just wants to be as full as possible in case she gets too close to anyone."

"Makes sense," I said. "She's amazing, though, isn't she? If her eyes weren't still that brownish red, you'd never know she was a newborn."

"Yes, amazing," he said thoughtfully. Edward, are you…?"

I grinned. "No, your matchmaking stinks. Keep your day job."

.

.

.

Five hours later, Carlisle and I were starting to get worried.

"She said they'd be back in a couple of hours," he fretted.

"They might have decided to go out father," I said. "I know Esme was disappointed that we never got to take Rosalie up to our spot in Ontario."

He frowned. "I don't think she would have done that tonight, though."

We would have gone after their scent, but it had been raining all night. Another hour passed, and I was cleaning the upstairs when I heard Esme's frantic mental voice break into my mind.

"Edward! Get Carlisle and come meet me! I'm coming from the northwest! Hurry!"

I cursed, dropping the broom and yelling for Carlisle to follow me as I shot out the front door. As we ran, I heard Esme repeat her message to me again. I waited anxiously for Rosalie's thoughts to appear, as well, but I was getting nothing.

Carlisle's thoughts were a storm of horrible scenarios as he ran beside me. Rosalie had attacked a human and they were hiding the body. They had run into a pair of nomads and had gotten into a fight. The Volturi had captured them.

"Edward, I can't stand it," he finally called. "You go on ahead, I'll follow your scent."

I nodded and burst into my top speed, quickly leaving him behind me. I soon found Esme, and we both skidded to a stop a few inches apart.

"It's Rosalie!" she cried as she looked around for Carlisle. "We were stalking a herd of elk, and we both took one- where's Carlisle?"

"He's coming."

"We both took one, and when I was finished she was just gone. Edward, I looked everywhere! Her scent-"

"I know, the rain. Carlisle will be here in a moment, and then you can take us to where you saw her last. Did she say anything before the hunt? Do anything odd?"

"No! She just said she was thirsty, and that she was worried about running into humans on the drive down. We weren't more than fifty miles out, I'm sure of it."

Carlisle arrived, and Esme told him the story while we all ran together. We reached the spot where they had hunted, and we found Esme's kill still on the ground.

"Where is Rosalie's kill?" Carlisle asked, looking around. "You said you attacked together."

"We did. I mean, we jumped out at the same moment. I just assumed she was drinking as well. You know how it is when you feed."

"She must not have taken an elk," Carlisle said. "Maybe she heard something and went off to investigate."

"Or smelled a more enticing prey, and gone to pursue it," I offered. "The question is, why didn't she come back?"

The three of us arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously. "Another vampire," Esme whispered. "Oh, Carlisle! What if she's been hurt?"

Or killed, Carlisle thought grimly, glancing over at me. "Let's search the woods- together," he said grimly. "We're not going to separate, under any circumstances." I can't believe Esme was out here alone. Just the thought of her running into a hostile nomad… He shivered and looked around the clearing, sniffing for any evidence of his daughter's trail. "I think it's this way," he said uncertainly as he led us off to the north.

But the weather was determined to thwart us. The rain grew heavier and we were soon in the middle of a full-blown nor'easter. Rosalie's trail was garbled, and we lost it before long. We returned to the clearing again and made a wide circle, widening our search each time we passed our starting point. We never found the scent of another vampire, but it was possible that it could have been washed out, as well. We changed tactics, crisscrossing the forest and visiting some of the hunting spots that Rosalie had been to before. The rain finally ceased around sunrise, but we never picked up her trail again after that.

We finally returned home with heavy hearts, deciding to wait at home for her. We doubted she could have gotten lost, but we weren't ready to accept the possibility that she had been killed or taken. Carlisle called the moving company, saying that an emergency had come up and that we needed to keep the van at the house for another day. We stood motionless outside the front door for hours. I was straining my gift to the limit, searching for her thoughts.

"I'm going into town to look," Carlisle announced suddenly.

"Why? Surely that's the last place she would be," Esme said.

"I don't know. Maybe the thought of leaving today was reminding her that she is leaving her human family behind. I'm going to head to their house first, and see if there's any trace of her scent." It seems like something she would do. But I don't see why she would do it without telling us- maybe she thought I wouldn't let her go.

Esme leaned heavily against me as we watched him drive away. She was hoping that Carlisle was right, and that he would find Rosalie standing in the shadows, weeping as she held vigil over her lost home and family. It would be a sad picture, but at least we would have her back.

I kept my fears to myself. I still thought that our first theory was correct: that Rosalie had met up with a nomad, and gotten herself into trouble. I didn't think she had truly been killed- I doubted even a nor-easter would be able to cover up the smell of a vampire having been burned. But she could have been taken, or dismembered somewhere. While she was ahead of schedule in terms of resisting human blood, Rosalie was a typical newborn in terms of her volatile emotions. If she did encounter a hostile nomad, it was more than likely she had lost her temper and attacked without thinking. I realized with a sinking heart that we had never even thought to teach her anything about fighting. She had her instincts, of course, but we would never have expected her to need to defend herself alone. A single nomad might not try to take on a newborn, but nomads sometimes traveled in mated pairs, or very rarely in groups of three. We had promised her, upon her awakening, that no one would ever hurt her again. But she was more beautiful than ever now; it was entirely possible that a pair or trio of male nomads might have come upon her, and that her fate been repeated. The very idea made me feel sick, and I felt guilty now for the annoyance I had felt when we had brought Rosalie into her family. She was my sister now. I knew that if we never found her, I would feel the loss for the rest of eternity.

There was the other possibility, of course; Rosalie could have simply decided to leave us. I wouldn't have been surprised if she had done so in the beginning. But over the past few weeks, she had truly come into her own as a member of the family. She might not be the sweet, warm person that Esme was, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that she would just leave without saying goodbye. And I really didn't think that she would have suddenly decided to abandon the animal diet, either.

Carlisle was gone for hours. I called the moving company at four o'clock to extend our rental another two days. Esme and I waited out on the front porch again, and Carlisle finally returned alone around eight. When he got out of the car, he just shook his head, and walked past us into the house, collapsing into a chair.

"Nothing," he said tiredly. "Absolutely nothing. I don't know what to do."

Esme began to cry, and Carlisle just looked up at her with a hopeless regret in his eyes. I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around my mother, her dry sobs shaking both of us. As I held her, I wondered if this is how my parents had looked after I had left them back in 1927. It had never occurred to me that they might have been worried about my safety. In fact, it had never occurred to me to fear for the safety of any member of my family. I was accustomed to thinking of our kind as indestructible.

My parents had waited four long years for my return. How long would they have waited, if I hadn't come back? How long would we wait for Rosalie? Our kind carried hope like we carried everything else; eternally. Time had little meaning.

After Esme had quieted, I decided to give my parents some time alone. "I'm going to run up to Hamlin Beach," I said as I headed for the door. It was the place where we had first exposed her to humans, and the site of her first success.

"I already looked there," Carlisle said.

"Then I'll try Buffalo."

"I looked there, too."

"Oneida, then. I can't just sit here!" I said angrily. I took a deep breath. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry. I just want to do something to help."

"Of course, Edward. Go ahead." Esme said, going over to sit in Carlisle's lap. He just laid his head on hers and nodded to me.

Thank you, son. Just be back by sunrise, so we don't have to worry. I nodded and slipped out the door, leaving them to find some comfort in each other.

.

.

.

I went straight to the park in Oneida where we had seen the symphony. The bandstand and the benches were empty now, and I felt like a ghost moving through the empty aisles. I went to the back row and sat where I had before, keenly aware of the empty spot beside me. Rosalie had been so brave to come here, and more eager than she should have been to try going out among the humans. She was so full of life, in her own unique way. The thought that her life might have already been cut short was just so unfair. She had just begun to enjoy herself! I remembered her smile when she was shopping in those ridiculous boutiques with Esme. I remembered the focus in her eyes when she was learning something new about the car. I remembered just two weeks ago, when she and Carlisle had returned from her first driving lesson. She had looked so triumphant.

The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that she hadn't abandoned us. No, if Rosalie was separated from her new family, it wasn't by choice. I recalled again her thoughts on the day of her driving lesson. She had been thinking that her new life was bringing her a freedom that she might never have had as a human.

Had that freedom really ended so soon?