The color of his hair, so much like her own used to be, was enough to shatter Esme's self control. Her tears weren't the controlled pouring of adults, but rather the unselfconscious expression of grievance usually reserved to childhood. Her slender shoulders shook with loud, gasping sobs interspersed with the incoherent speech of the inconsolable.

Only in Carlisle's embrace did Esme find the much needed strength to calm her despair, letting her tears subside and eventually run dry. Making a spectacle of herself wasn't a prospect Esme relished, but Carlisle didn't have the heart to remind her of their audience. She needed to exorcize the pain in order to deal with her brother's loss.

"Carlisle, my heart is broken."

The small, almost childlike voice that reached his ears hurt him to the core, for it was a stark contrast to her usually self-assured tone.

"Then let me mend it for you."

It was a cheesy line, he was aware of that, but it wrought a smile out of her tortured features. To Carlisle, that's all that mattered, bringing a little bit of sunshine to Esme's darkest hour.

"I've always wanted to have a brother, you know that?"—fighting off a new wave of tears, she continued—"I wish I had known him. I wish I had known about him. But know he will forever lie in silence, his thoughts and impressions forever unknown. Do you think he would have liked me?"

Carlisle didn't know what to say, for he had run out of cheap lines and witty comments. So, he simply hugged her and rocked her gently, for he knew that she was going to heal.

And then forever waited.