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[ Epilogue ]
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"Come on, kid. We have an audition to get to," Leah calls out as she gathers up her purse and slips on her shoes in the hall.
She checks her self in the mirror, and wipes the smudging lipstick from the corners of her mouth.
"I'm coming!" Renesmee shouts in her all too familiar teenage annoyance.
Today is a big day, one of the biggest since they'd arrived in the bustling city almost seven years ago.
Renesmee had screamed in glee the day they finally received a letter of interest from the The New York Conservatory of Music, a school on the upper east side that had been her dream, years in the making.
It had been a quaint start. When they first arrived, any money earned had always gone to the basics; food, money and education. Little was left for anything else but one afternoon Leah had caved and found an old, well used electric keyboard in pawn shop window on her way back from her cleaning shift in the Financial district. She supposed the kid needed something nice, something to distract her from the spiralling depression she seemed to sink further into as the word they waited on, never came.
Leah wasn't much of a mother either, leaving Renesmee with a questionable baby sitter in the form of a neighbour; but she'd had little choice. Her boss wouldn't understand dragging along a child to her job. She was thankful no one had called children's services granted they looked nothing alike and that their shouting matches would rival any mother and daughter duo.
She had also been grateful that the hybrids growth had substantially slowed once her diet was forcefully adjusted to human food only.
Except now she was left with a normal aging teenager, who got under her skin more than she ever thought possible.
Her mother had been right. Karma was a bitch.
But that stupid, noisy keyboard - had changed their lives. For the better.
"Ness-"
"Oh my god, I'm coming."
Leah can't help but smirk at the girl as she hops into her ballet flats, struggling to slide the back heel in. The once flowing sunburnt locks as a child are now sheered, arranged into a messy, short, still curly, home-dyed blonde, which has been pinned back away from her face. As she grows Leah can see the resemblance of both Bella and Edward in the girl. The big brown eyes, the upturned nose, the smug little smirk that crosses her face when she wins an argument, even her love of the piano.
"Dress looks good." Leah comments, noticing Ness has gone with the simple black, no bullshit outfit.
"I never thought I'd actually enjoy thrift shopping," the teen shrugs in response as she snaps up her sheet music and shoves them into her regular backpack. "But you've made me a believer."
"It does the job."
"That it does. Can I drive?"
Leah makes an awful sound in her throat. "If you actually want to get to the audition in one piece, I'll drive."
Renesmee is already shoving her towards the door when a knock sounds against the pine.
"Jesus Christ," Leah swears, having already shooed away the neighbour three times that morning. "Christina, I told you before, I don't know where your drop kick boyfriend... is."
With the door pulled open she can barely breathe.
Hopeful brown eyes stare down at her. Eyes that used to melt her on the spot, eyes that once ricocheted her to different galaxies, eyes that once held both the sunrise and sunset inside them.
Eyes she once trusted.
"Who is it?" Nessie groans in frustration, trying to peek around Leah as to why they have stopped moving. "We have to be there in 30 minutes. Hurry, hurr- oh shit. Jacob?"
"Hey, Ness."
Leah's mouth refuses to form words, her shock overtaking even the simplest of thoughts.
She wants to scream, cry, murder the asshole that, after seven years, has finally decided to grace their doorstep.
Instead,
she slams the door right in his face.
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An: I might write a sequel one day. So I'll leave this story open-ended, just in case. As always thanks for the support.