AN: I'm all teary-eyed over how great happymelt, faireyfan, and midsouthmama are as beta and prereaders. Such terrific ladies!

Playlist:
Zebra by Beach House and When I'm Sixy-Four by the Beatles. Links are on my profile. Enjoy!

Chapter 24: Blind Spots

~.~.~.~.~.~

If I were a superstitious person, I would have had ample reason to be concerned with the way my year began. But I never have been superstitious. As it was, I was merely grumpy.

It all began with a phone call on New Year's Day. I was sitting in my parked truck with the engine running, en route from my place to Edward's, waiting for him to retrieve hot coffees from Muddywaters. We were both out of beans, and the grocery stores were closed. I turned the heater up and contemplated the previous night's events.

After closing out 2009 at Edward's installation site in a way that felt unmistakably right and proper, he and I had joined our friends at the Lodge. It was the rowdiest of the town's three bars and would normally have been packed with students. On New Year's Eve, however, the place was overtaken by Clearwater residents—townspeople and faculty alike, all joining in an annual live band karaoke tradition. I'd stayed tucked away in a booth for most of the night, content to enjoy the show from a distance. I let myself be taken on a few spins around the dance floor with whoever wasn't on stage at that particular moment.

Throughout it all, Edward's rediscovered sense of playfulness was in full effect. He recruited Esme to sing a duet while he pounded the piano keys and crooned like they were a hotel lounge act. He let the provost's daughters choreograph him as a back-up dancer to their hip-hop song. He found a trove of odd instruments and passed them out to anyone who admitted the slightest musical ability, cobbling together a passable rendition of When I'm Sixty-Four. Closing my eyes behind my dark glasses now, I conjured up the image of him swaying onstage, never breaking eye contact with me as he grinned and flirted his way through the song. I cracked a smile at the memory of it.

My phone rang, and I fumbled to answer it quickly, careful not to aggravate the hangover elves who had been more or less merciful up to this point. I pressed the phone to my ear gingerly.

"Hey, Jake." My voice sounded like a growl.

"Wow. Someone sounds happy to be awake on this fine morning."

"Mmm. Uh, happy New Year."

"You too. Listen, I'll let you get back to sleep—"

"No, I'm not—" We were talking over one another.

"But I just wanted…what?"

"I'm in my car, that's all. You didn't wake me. You go."

"Well, I was just calling about the birthday remembrance for your mom we've got coming up. I wanted to give you a heads up about what Phil might be arranging."

I was starting to feel the bile creep up the back of my throat now. "What might Phil be arranging?"

I tried to peer into the semi-dark café. Where was Edward with our coffees? Sue hadn't exactly opened up shop yet, but she never said no to Edward.

"Well, he invited Dr. Ateara and Dr. Call to be there…which I know is something we all talked about." I grimaced and nodded dumbly, knowing Jake couldn't see me nodding. These were the surgeons who performed the transplant procedure; they were among its pioneers, in fact. "But now I hear around the hospital that the PR office wants to send a writer to shadow them and talk to the rest of us about our experiences."

I turned my head and watched Edward climb into the truck and settle our coffee cups into the holders. A brown bag of coffee beans dropped onto the seat bench from under his elbow. His face clouded with concern when he saw my face.

"Our experiences? No—I can't even…of a failed procedure? That's the image they want in the news?"

Over the phone I heard Jake sigh. "That's just it, Bella. From a scientific point of view, it has value. I'm sorry, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but your mom's experience helped us learn so much about antirejection interventions. The procedure itself was perfect. You know that. It was the aftermath…"

I cracked open my door just in time to lean down and vomit on the street. For some reason, I was fixated on the fact that I heard him say us. Helped us learn. Since when had Jake switched teams?

Edward pried the phone out of my hand and handed me a napkin. "Uh, she'll call you back." He shut the phone down, and then I felt the warmth of his hands on my shoulders and back. "Baby, what can I do?"

I yanked the driver's side door shut, shaking my head. Ow—shaking my head was a mistake.

"Wanna let me drive? We'll be home in a minute." I nodded to this and let him lift me onto his lap briefly so we could trade seats. I moved to take a drink of coffee, and he stopped me just before my disgusting lips touched the rim of what turned out to be his mocha. He traded cups with me, teasing me gently. "Sweetheart…morning breath is one thing, but come on."

I sighed. I thought of my toothbrush sitting next to his in the porcelain cup on his bathroom counter, ready and waiting for me. A dutiful soldier. I drank my coffee eagerly.

Edward glanced my way when I chuckled, remembering something.

"What?"

"Oh, just…something my mom used to say."

"Well, what? I wanna hear it."

"She used to say, 'It's nice to have someone to kiss at midnight, but hold on to the one who kisses you the morning after, too.'"

He looked back and forth between me, the road, and the rearview mirror. My stomach tensed when he pulled the car over to the side of the road. His smirk was unreadable.

"Edward, wh—"

"No. She was right." He slid over to me on the bench seat and wrapped his arms around my waist and neck like we were in a Hollywood movie. I couldn't stop giggling and twisting my head away from him. "Hold still."

I pinched my lips closed as he bent down give me a quick peck—on the cheek.

"Gross."

"Yeah, well. That's the point, isn't it?" He slid back to his side and resumed driving, still grinning like an idiot. "One day you'll be ninety-seven and wear dentures and need a scooter to get around, and I'm gonna fucking show up for that, too."

I simply stared, gently shaking my head. I might have been smiling, just like him.

~.~.~.~.~.~

Later in the day, Edward came across me scowling at my laptop screen. Jake's phone call had stirred up my curiosity about the current standard of care for lung transplants, and before I knew it I had been reading journal articles and science news for three hours.

I could feel Edward's breath as he hovered over my shoulder. He put a hand on my neck, massaging it. "Do you think you would make a different decision today, knowing what you know?"

I continued to stare blankly at my screen. Knowing what I know. He could have been referring to the science I was looking into, but I had a feeling he was talking about the outcome for Renee. Knowing she would die anyways, would you still do it? "I just don't know."

What I didn't say was that a part of me wished Renee had made the decision for me; I wished she could have somehow known and accepted her fate and refused the surgery. It would have been so much simpler. I could have said a proper goodbye. The knowledge hung there inside of me like a lead weight where my heart should be—a lead weight wrapped in a murky blanket of guilt.

~.~.~.~.~.~

Edward was working a lot at night now. And during the mornings. At noon, at dusk. He said it had something to do with different qualities of light and darkness. As much as he was working, he seemed content. Sometimes I would notice him slipping out of bed in the middle of the night, and I would simultaneously feel a giddy thrill and a twinge of grief at him leaving; he would be back soon, you see, and he would climb in beside me smelling like fresh air with his heart beating faster than mine, his feet and hands colder than mine, torturing me with his closeness. I loved it. I would burrow into the still-warm sheets on his side of the bed and fall back to sleep, drunk with anticipation.

One Sunday evening he joined me in front of the fire at his place, having wrapped up work for the day and showered. He lowered himself to the couch opposite me, only to hop up again and rifle through the Sunday paper lying on the table. "Are you done with these sections?"

"I'm done with all of it." I had moved on from the paper to my pile of poetry books, halfheartedly searching for a selection that felt appropriate for Renee's birthday remembrance event.

He gathered the sections he wanted and paused to plant a kiss on the top of my head. He glanced at what I was reading. "Plath? Really?"

"Eh. It's too dark, I guess." I turned back to the poems. There was something oddly comforting in her vivid and unvarnished words.

Edward returned to his seat and began scanning the arts section. A moment later, though, I felt his eyes on me. I looked up.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to read Sylvia Plath aloud to commemorate my mother." I shook my head. Plath's ideas about motherhood were…controversial. "I'm just enjoying the way she writes about nature and winter. She does make a compelling case about what a powerful force nature is…a case for letting nature take its course."

His posture stiffened. I noticed it out of the corner of my eye, even as I kept my head in my book. After a silent moment, he rose slowly to his feet and stood with his hands on his hips, staring into the brightly lit kitchen.

I lifted my head to look at him, feeling my lips twist to the side. What was he thinking? An image came to mind of Edward standing in a similar posture once before—after I'd shown him Tanya's letter. My words came back to me, and I realized how it sounded. Many people only knew Sylvia Plath for her suicide and connected everything to it.

He scrubbed his face with his dry hands and spoke without looking at me. "The path of least resistance, huh?"

"Edward, I…that's not what I meant. I just meant…when she writes about nature, she makes herself into this passive observer, I think, and..." This was complicated, and I couldn't explain myself. He looked about as bothered as I'd ever seen him get. I could practically see the wheels turning as he calculated how to respond to me.

He puffed his cheeks out, shaking his head. "'If you expect nothing from anybody, you're never disappointed.' That's her, right?"

I nodded. "Yes, but she wrote that in a novel. That was her protagonist speaking—she didn't feel that way personally. Not necessarily." Were we really analyzing literature right now? I had a feeling we were talking about two different things.

When he finally met my eye, his expression was blank. "We're all out of...milk, I guess. I'm…taking a walk." He spun toward the door, checked his pockets, and grabbed his coat on the way out.

~.~.~.~.~.~

About an hour later, I was soaking in a bubble bath with a different book—Carl Sandburg this time—when I heard him on the stairs. I'd turned out most of the lights, but the fire was still giving me enough light to read by, and I could see a soft smile on his face when he walked in to see me in the tub.

He really had gone for milk. He put it away in the fridge and then walked over and dropped a different package on the floor next to the tub. He leaned down, hooked a finger around the chain to the drain stopper, and eased it up. I listened to the water gurgling down and chanced a questioning look at his face.

"I was doing math all day, so I'm fairly confident in estimating that this would overflow if we don't let out a few gallons first."

I blinked. His shoes were off, and his pants were close behind. He wasn't booting me out of the bath. He was getting in with me.

"Why were you doing math all day?" I sat up straighter, dropping my book to the floor, pulling my knees in, and scooting forward to allow him room.

"Typical art stuff. Mass, volume, weight. Thermal dynamics." As he eased himself into the tub behind me, the water level rose to very near the edge. He sank down slowly, keeping a close eye on it. His body was so much bigger than mine. "You can always pick out the lightweights in Sculpture 101, because they blow off their calculations."

As soon as he was settled in the tub, his legs framing mine, I leaned back to rest on his chest, tilting my head up. He brought his arms around me and sighed. The tension between us was still there, but the way he held me told me it was just that: tension. Not a crisis. We would deal with it.

He nudged the drain stopper back in with his foot, then bumped the spigot knob with his toe to let more hot water into the tub. I felt the warmth of the water drifting toward me from one end and the warmth of his body behind me. A resurgence of bubbles foamed up.

"I brought us some books." He smoothed his wet fingers over my eyebrows, as if he knew I was bound to start frowning. "About grief and trauma."

I rolled my head to the side, peering at the bag he'd dropped. "Oh…okay."

Truthfully, it didn't shock me that he was bringing this up. I had been feeling something gnawing at the edges of my consciousness for a while, but I hadn't realized it was obvious to him, too. Ignoring it was my only strategy.

"And…I want you to consider talking to someone. Carmen has a partner in her practice, Eleazar." He took a deep breath. "Ever since that blizzard, it seems like something is going on with you, and…if you can't share it with me, well…I don't want you to feel like you need to go through it alone."

I could hear in his voice how hard it was for him to suggest he couldn't help me with whatever this was. I felt a crushing sense of guilt. "I'm not shutting you out, Edward. Not on purpose."

He took another deep breath. "Okay."

"All I know is that I feel agitated sometimes, and when things come at me out of the blue like that call from Jake…somebody wanting to put a positive spin on our situation, I just…" I trailed off, tightening my arms and his arms around my middle.

"It's okay to react, you know. Your feelings are what they are. There's no rule book." He stretched his leg again to prod the hot water knob, turning it off. "After I came to live with Carlisle and Esme, I didn't speak for almost a year. Or so I'm told. I don't remember much of it. What I remember is more like a feeling, a rationale I kept repeating to myself."

I turned myself around in the tub so I could see him, tenting my knees on either side of his ribcage. He circled his arms around my back, supporting me. After a moment I felt the warm, soapy washcloth trailing up and down my spine.

"I decided as long as I refused to acknowledge these new people, I wouldn't be betraying Edward and Elizabeth. It was this bargain I invented. I thought somehow I could be with them again…as if I was just having a dream or something." His eyes flickered to my face from time to time, but for the most part he was looking out toward the fireplace.

"Will you tell me how they died? Was it a car accident?" I felt slightly shocked that I had never asked him this before. I was so quick to assume no one liked talking about a painful loss, but surely after thirty years he would be willing to tell me.

"Uh, no, not an accident…it was the stupidest thing…they went on a silly five-day vacation to the Caribbean and contracted malaria."

I winced. "I didn't even know that was still possible."

"Well, it isn't possible in the U.S…and it's very rare in the Caribbean. Even in 1980 it was rare." He began finger-coming the hair away from my face. "That's what's ironic. These were two people who routinely did public health service work in Africa, Cambodia, India…they took every precaution. Anti-malaria pills every few months, a different regimen for each new destination. Then they stopped in order to have me. They stopped traveling, so they stopped the preventative measures."

I gulped back tears, diving in to rest my head on his chest.

"Then, when I was almost four, they went on vacation, came home, and a couple of months later, they apparently thought they had the flu. When they understood the gravity of the situation, it was too late." He hummed, soothing me. I realized I was gripping his shoulders tightly. "Um, that's how malaria kills people, you know. Because treatments do exist if you catch it in time. It stays dormant in your liver for a while, proliferating…then the symptoms seem like the flu…so it's easy to let it progress too far."

"Jesus, Edward." Ironic was a grossly insufficient way to describe what he was describing. Was this how it could be after gaining thirty years' distance from such a thing? His voice was full of tenderness and disappointment, but he didn't seem anguished. In fact, it sounded more like he was trying to keep me from freaking out.

"Yeah."

Something occurred to me that made me sit up straight. "Were you at risk? Could you have caught it? Oh, God, were they worried about you, too, when they were sick?"

"Shhh. No. No. You have to be bitten by an infected mosquito. They knew I was safe. Are you cold?"

I shook my head, but I leaned back so more of me was immersed in the warm, sudsy water. It felt a little bit odd, being this close to him and naked while we discussed something so difficult. He lifted my legs and maneuvered me so my ankles were crossed, both feet resting on his chest.

"Is this comfortable?"

I nodded, and he began absent-mindedly dragging the warm cloth up and down my shins.

"Listen…I'm not exactly sure why I'm telling you this, but I'll never forget that they fought hard every moment. Dying from malaria is ugly and painful, but they never gave up. I witnessed more than Carlisle and Esme even know about." He stilled his hands on my ankles, deep in thought. "Carmen and I have been talking a lot these days…in reference to Tanya…about philosophies of death with dignity and assisted suicide, all that type of stuff. It still seems absolutely foreign to me, the idea of giving up hope like that. And all I can think about is that Elizabeth and Edward never stopped fighting to…stay with me, you know."

I knew why he was telling me this. I nodded and looked him in the eye.

"It was terrible that they fought so hard and lost, B. But it was important that they fought."

I gripped Edward's knee. "This partner of Carmen's…I'll talk to him." I said. "I promise. I will."

~.~.~.~.~.~

On the Thursday before Edward's show opening, I stood at the window overlooking his long gravel driveway, watching for Peter and Charlotte's black Prius to appear. Peter had been sending me snapshots from his phone all morning: a road sign warning of a tractor; an actual tractor; cows. Oh, the novelty. The two of them were on the job market, and when Charlotte was asked to go to Pittsburgh for an interview, they decided to route their return trip through Clearwater.

When they finally rolled up, I was ready with the heavy artillery: warm, strawberry-rhubarb pie and hot cider with cinnamon sticks.

Peter stretched his legs out in front of him and made a show of inspecting his fork. "Such a wily and enigmatic animal, the rhubarb."

It felt good to laugh. Charlotte rolled her eyes. Peter hadn't changed a bit.

I nudged his foot with mine. "Trying to make me believe you can't differentiate animals from plants?"

"We live in the city, my dear, where it is necessary to differentiate your food from the aluminum foil it comes wrapped in, and that is all." He was facing away from the white enamel kitchen, toward the living room, but looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "Yes, I know rhubarb is a vegetable. A vegetable strangely suited to deliciously sweet pies."

I cleared our plates into the sink. "Um, according to taxation law, it's certified as a fruit."

Charlotte chuckled at my certifiable nerdiness. We moved to the couch. She filled me in on her interview and what she thought her prospects were, and Peter interjected from time to time with observations, apropos of nothing.

"Is this a local custom?" He tilted his head toward the bathtub in the middle of the room.

"No. It's an Edward custom."

"Suddenly glad I showered at the hotel this morning. Char, you didn't—whatever will you do?" He leered at her.

I figured that was as good a time as any to move the party along. "Actually, you'll sleep at my place tonight, and I'm sleeping next door at Edward's sister's. You can shower there before we get dinner, if you like."

I could see Peter practically physically stop himself from asking me where Edward would sleep. I shook my head at him.

"Edward will probably crash out on site—he'll be working all night, finishing up loose ends. I just wanted you to see this place, you know?"

Charlotte stood up as I moved to get our coats. "I'm glad you did. All this time Peter imagined you were sleeping in a hayloft."

Peter swiped his hat from my hand with exaggerated bitterness. "Let's go. The illusion is shattered now; it's no use."

Showing them around town was fun. Edward met us for dinner. Charlotte and Peter asked about putting up with the cold winters on a long-term basis, and Edward explained how the academic calendar allowed for long January vacations. In fact, he reminded me that Esme and Carlisle were headed out to Miami the next day, and then to some island off the coast of Brazil. I had agreed to check in on the chickens while they were out of town—a detail that delighted Peter to no end. Edward surprised me with talk of taking a long road trip together one day, and we all compared notes about the places we thought were worth a stop. Austin. Santa Fe. Tucson. Vegas. Then the whole west coast, from San Diego to Bellingham.

Edward walked with us to Muddywaters before heading back out to his workshop in the woods. Peter and Charlotte were only staying one night, just long enough to see the installation on Friday before the long drive back to Chicago. I was glad to see my old friends, and I welcomed the distraction of their company; I could hardly contain my excitement for the opening the next day.

~.~.~.~.~.~

The three of us arrived at the installation site in the mid-afternoon. Charlotte and Peter headed in purposefully after saying said their goodbyes to me, claiming they wanted to hit the road and make the most of the remaining light. Perhaps they sensed I wanted to be left to my own devices for this. The long path to the hidden clearing had been widened and groomed, and lanterns illuminated the undersides of the heavy cover of trees, subtly leading visitors onward. When I emerged from the woody trail, I saw a few dozen people milling around, chatting excitedly, puffs of breath floating up in front of their faces. Edward made a beeline for me as soon as he saw me.

"Good, you're here. I saw Peter and Charlotte already, and Angela."

"Of course I'm here!" I tried to read his expression, to see if he was pleased with how things were going. He seemed dazed.

"I mean, this is a good time. The sunlight…you know what, never mind. Have fun. Look around. I plan on bringing you back here at night, too. It's not going anywhere." He laughed.

I shook my head. He was wound up like a kid on Christmas. The corners of his eyes showed the tiny lines that meant he was tired, but he was happy. I realized how much I'd been missing him over these busy past few days. He patted me on both shoulders and nodded at someone he glimpsed over my shoulder. I turned my head to see an older man in an ankle-length black wool coat striding toward us with a tight smile plastered on his face.

"That's Aro, my New York gallery guy. I've got to talk to him. Go, go. Take a look before he spoils everything for you." He pointed me toward the first silo and even gave me a light shove.

I could see light spilling out from the door to the silo. My heart was beating in my ears. The placard at the entrance read Life/Gestation (Esme). Curious—I wondered what Edward had created on this topic, given Esme's infertility. I took a breath and walked inside.

For the first few moments, I was blinded. Everything was white. Then I saw a glint of light high up above, and my eyes started focusing. The shadowless, curved walls of the silo and the concrete floor were painted stark white. The hollow column of the silo, about forty feet in diameter and five or six stories high, was filled with dozens of matte white spheres of all different sizes, hanging at random intervals from the ceiling down to just a few feet above my head. They were chalky and smooth on the surface but with some bulging irregularities that made them look organic, like pods. Some of them were very tiny, and the largest were big enough that an adult could curl up inside. The sound of a water droplet made me realize they were made of snow and ice.

As I walked farther into the space, I could make out other shapes higher up. Mirrors. They hung amongst the pods, almost impossible to see, reflecting whiteness and light against white light backgrounds. I started to feel disoriented, as if I was somehow looking at light instead of at objects. At the very top, hanging from the ceiling, were several large pointy icicles that occasionally released drops onto everything hanging below, like some sort of water torture mechanism.

And then I reached the far side of the room and heard myself gasp.

One of the pods, high above and close to the light source, had melted down enough to reveal a core that was made of something brilliant, solid, and colorful, shining like a gemstone in the rough. The emerald green glass or whatever it was reflected colorful light onto the nearby pods. I felt goose bumps bloom across my skin when it occurred to me that more of these pods—most of them, all of them—might contain such a beautiful hidden bounty. I could just make out the tips of different colored shards and glass blocks breaking the surface here and there. When all the snow and ice eventually melted, the room would be transformed into a symphony of color and light. Gestation, indeed.

When I finally rejoined the crowds in the clearing outside the silo, I made out Edward across the way with Esme tucked under his arm. They were both smiling as they talked; it was obvious to me she had already seen the exhibit. Some people who had been in the silo with me pointed at them and conferred with each other, their faces lighting up. I felt so proud of Edward—and so eager to see the rest.

He made eye contact, and we exchanged nods and smiles. As I turned toward the middle building—the large, roofless rectangular field house—I noticed people passing me by, looking at me strangely. One of them pointed at me while whispering to his companion. I tried to shake it off. Angela approached, shaking her head with a knowing smirk.

"Angela, what is it?" I veered over, closer to her.

She stopped in her tracks. "You really don't know?"

"No." I thought back to the other night in the silo and Edward's comments about my energy.

"I won't ruin it for you, Bella. Just…call me later!" She giggled and walked off, leaving me there.

I shrugged and closed the distance to the field house. Even from the outside I could hear a rhythmic sound I recognized as a heartbeat. I located a placard that read Life/Survival. The entrance to the installation was a long, narrow hallway, engineered so that only one person could pass through at a time. The recording seemed to vibrate through the high walls. I blushed at the sense memory of this echo in my ears. Red light was pouring out of the gap in the wall up ahead, and the heartbeat sounds grew louder and more all-encompassing as I walked on.

When I reached the inner doorway, I reared back as if thrown by a force field.

I felt as though I was looking at the inside of my own heart—my real one, the raw and angry one I'd never shown to anyone, my dark and bitter heart of a year ago, the one I carefully kept hidden even now.

The path I stood on appeared to lead into a maze inside of that mess of hot, glaring, furious hurt, and I knew I couldn't move my feet forward. I could barely look at it. Someone behind me lingered awkwardly, waiting for me to move, and I pressed myself against the wall to let her pass. Why was she so unaffected?

I don't know how long I stood rooted in that spot. My feet sank into a carpet of red lacquered wood chips and misshapen triangles of scarlet and magenta felt. More than a few people shimmied past me, making me feel more and more ridiculous. I could hear their exclamations of delight and wonder deeper within the space. This installation was like a three-dimensional Rorschach test, and I was failing.

A new problem presented itself now: how to extricate myself. There was no deciding between fight or flight—flight was my only option. I knew that I could back away, retrace my steps down the hallway. But what about Edward? He'd see me coming out the entrance, wouldn't he? And how could I explain myself to him without disappointing him yet again, without showing him just how weak and pitiful I really was?

An answer came to me as clear as day—a future I hadn't considered, but one that seemed as inevitable as breathing now. Of course it made sense; it was perfect. Edward was healthy. He was happy. He had his family surrounding him, his success, a new semester starting, his community art project. The old self-loathing and virtual isolation that had so dominated the person I met, the person who had allowed himself to be with me, was all long gone.

He would be well, and I was ecstatic about that.

In the meantime, here I was—a hyperventilating, pink-faced mess, leaking tears onto the red-tinged blanket of scraps on the threshold of this beautiful man's beautiful art installation. It went deeper than that, of course; I had only just broken the surface, after all this time. I couldn't be healthy for him, not like he deserved. The pain in my chest sliced like knives.

This was a man who wanted a family, for God's sake. He wanted a vegetable garden and road trip pilgrimages and normal kinds of zany adventures. The mismatch was comical to me, really. I had already hurt him thoughtlessly. More than once. The idea that I could spare him more of the same jolted me out of my spiral of self-pitying despair.

I crept back down the hallway and peeked around the corner. Edward was deep in conversation with Aro again, and that reporter, Heidi—I recognized her from her picture in Art Face magazine. All that was left was to slip out unnoticed. Yes, I could do this. Peter and Charlotte were somewhere around here, with access to a car, with a destination—there they were, disappearing down the path to the parking lot.

I stumbled just once on my way out of the installation, pausing to kick the felt scraps off of my shoes. The icy path slowed me, and I was weirdly thrilled by the idea that so many people had tramped down this way for Edward. More were on their way in, small clusters here and there exclaiming boisterously, barely perturbed as I dodged and jostled them. A row of tree-hung lanterns glowed in the late-afternoon shadows.

The woods parted finally, and I emerged from the path. I made out Charlotte and Peter a few hundred yards away, the lone human figures in the snow-dusted lot. They turned back when I called to them. I could see their mouths moving as they looked my way and paused, car doors open.

My pace quickened. The snow was sparse out here, fresh and crunchy. I waved an arm frantically, needlessly, at my friends. They were waiting, and in a matter of minutes I'd be on my way.

I was practically leaping. I took two long strides, only to sense a shadow in my peripheral vision and feel a grip on my upper arm, tight and sure. And then a voice.

"Oh, no you don't. Not a chance."

And just like that, I knew I wouldn't reach that car. The window of opportunity was closing. I slammed it shut myself, melting back into the grip that turned into an embrace, sinking into the velvety warm honey tea of that voice that turned into a vibration against my skin. Any resolve I'd pretended to have crumbled away. Because it was him. And as long as he was near me, I was helpless. I needed him. I needed him. As I felt the heaviness of my body fall away, absorbed into his capable arms, that single thought consumed me: finally, finally, I needed him.