Everyone looked like Alice to me.

The cashier at the grocery store with black hair, the girl at the park with a scar on the inside of her arm, the lady on my street with green eyes.

They all looked like Alice.

But they didn't look like her. No one's hair looked like hers: short, thick, spiky, and black as black could get. No one's eyes were as deep as hers: shades of green that reflected off one another, suffocating memories that would never fade.

Everyone looked like Alice, but none of them ever looked like Alice. None of them ever were Alice.

It took me a good two years to get my life together enough that seeing sugar didn't make my system scream with desire and the color green didn't make me want to cry. Even then, five years after rehab and five years after I forced myself to leave the only good thing that had ever entered my life, I wasn't the man I wish I could've been. The man she deserved. The man I was positive she'd moved on to.

It had been a while since I'd spoken to Peter, but when I called to see how he and Charlotte were doing, we talked as though no time had passed at all. I told him about how I sobered up, and he told me about the small town they were living in now. Forks. He said it was a good place. Rainy and kind of dark, but good.

"You're welcome to come live with us if the city's not treating you well anymore," he'd told me. "We have a guest room."

I didn't want to impose on my old friends, even though New York just wasn't the place I wanted to be anymore. Too many memories… too many awful, gut wrenching memories.

"You can work off your stay," Peter suggested when I said I couldn't support myself. "Charlotte owns a daycare, and she could use some extra hands. Being around kids might help you out."

Kids. To be honest, I'd never gotten the chance to really hang around kids enough to decide whether or not I liked them.

Here's your chance to find out.

So I said yes, took him up on the offer. I packed up my things and moved to Forks, Washington. Population: ten and a couple of squirrels. It was a good place for starting over. It didn't help me forget, but it washed some of the pain away (quite literally - there was a lot of rain).

Some, but not all. All those years, and not a day went by that I didn't miss her, that I didn't want to hold her, that I didn't wonder how she was, what she was doing, that I didn't have to force myself not to go looking for her.

The job helped more than I thought it would. Kids. I had a thing for kids, I soon found out. They probably liked me more than I liked them, but that wasn't to say I didn't like them. They were different than anything I'd ever really experienced. Happy. Innocent little souls whose biggest worries in life were how they were going to choose between ice cream and cookies for their snack and if the kids at their kindergarten class would like them.

Charlotte informed me that a new girl, Lacey, would be joining the next day. I had experience with new kids. They gravitated toward me more than a lot of the other workers. I helped them fit in and have fun despite their initial worries. It was a funny thing, really. Jasper Hale, recovered drug addict and alcoholic working with kids. Rose would've laughed… not a day went by that I didn't think about her, too. My dear sister, how could I have fucked up everything we had, too?

Work started the same time everyday. Eleven o'clock sharp I walked in. There was Leah Clearwater, sitting on a chair reading the newspaper with a little girl, the only one of her age at the daycare at the time, looking scared and nervous beside her.

"There you are!" Leah said, flinging the newspaper onto the counter and pulling off the teddy bear-printed apron she was wearing. "You need to ask Charlotte if you can start coming in earlier. It's a real pain having to watch this room when you're not around."

But I wasn't looking at her. My eyes were on the girl. Lacey. It had to be her; I'd never seen her before.

She looked like Alice.

She looked like Alice from every angle. She was so much younger, she had no scars, no bruises on her neck, long hair, but she looked like Alice. The very same color hair, the same skin, the same hands, the same lips. She looked like Alice.

Except for her eyes. Her eyes were the only difference. Their shape was different, the emotions behind them were different, and the color was different. They were bluer than blue. As blue as my sister's eyes. As blue as my eyes. I caught my reflection in a small mirror on the counter, then looked back to Lacey. Our eyes were shaped exactly the same, as though they'd been crafted by the same hands.

But no. It couldn't be. There was no way.

Aside from the fact that it was the kind of impossible thing that was just always impossible, no exceptions, even I wasn't so unlucky that I would leave the perfect girl and she would have a perfect daughter. And that was another thing. Lacey was perfect. I could tell so much by simply talking to her for a few minutes. There was no way she could have anything to do with me, no way I could've helped create someone so beautiful.

Besides, from what I gathered, her last name was Cullen, not Brandon, and unless Alice had married, that wouldn't be so. Lacey didn't mention a father at all to me, though she hardly mentioned her mother, either. I was desperate to ask questions, find out if there was even a chance that Alice could be here, that Lacey could be mine…

But the more I thought it, the crazier it sounded. What was my life, anyway? A soap opera? A carefully written novel? Hardly. These things didn't happen, and especially not to people like me. It was impossible. It was nothing short of being impossible.

And then there she was, Lacey's mother.

And she looked like Alice.

Conveniently named, Alice Cullen had my Alice's eyes, her lips, her skin. Her hair was longer, however, and brown. She might've been taller than my Alice, but the high heeled shoes could have been tricking my eyes. Her hair covered her neck and as hard as I tried, I couldn't make out any bruises. I looked down to wear her wrist was exposed. My eyesight wasn't perfect, but I was almost certain there were no scars.

This couldn't be my Alice. Or could it?

My Alice, I scoffed to myself. Right. She was never yours.

No ring on her finger. Highly possible she wasn't married, meaning it was highly possible that Cullen was her maiden name. Not Brandon.

She couldn't be, but she could be. She wasn't the same, but she was.

God, she looked like Alice.

A/N: For anyone who didn't understand, the sugar thing was reference to Jasper's cocaine-addict years, and the color green… well, Alice's eyes.

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