Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns it. I'm just playing.

The Sister

"Looks like your ride's here, Bella."

I looked up from the register, holding the number of bills in my hand still in my head even through the distraction of hearing my name. Mike was walking in the front door, holding two heavy boxes of jam. He jerked his head to indicate that what he was referring to was behind him, waiting patiently in front of the store.

I allowed a small smile to creep across my face, knowing who I would find standing still and easy, leaning against a silver car.

"Thanks, Mike," I said with a nod, looking back down to the money I was holding, clutching tightly in my hand. "I'm just finishing up here."

Mike set the boxes down on the counter beside me and stepped around to the back.

"You go on, I'll do this," he said, plucking the money out of my hands with a grin. I opened my mouth in protest, but before I could say a word, he had snatched up the bills I had already counted, mixing the money together to start counting from the beginning.

My protests were cut short and my face fell, slightly dubious. "Are you sure?"

I couldn't help but feel a slight twinge of guilt every time Mike offered help me with the job he was paying me to do. Even with a smile on his face and kind intentions in his heart, it didn't necessarily seem fair.

And I didn't want to be anything but fair to him, after all he had done for me.

Whenever I mentioned it to him, he would brush me off. He explained that he would already be doing everything himself if it wasn't for me. I could see him relying on me more and more – giving me shifts alone, assigning more challenging tasks – but that having me around hadn't changed how he felt about his work, his store.

He still cared, he still loved to run it.

I could see his face relaxing into counting the register, focusing with contentment.

I thought I could understand it.

"Of course," he said, with a predicable wave of dismissal. Then he looked over to me once more, his hands never halting as they slapped bills down to the counter with practiced speed and accuracy. His expression became mock-hard and exasperated. "Go."

My small smile turned into a full bright grin.

I turned to the side and reached under the counter, grabbing my bag quickly. I put my hand on Mike's shoulder as I moved past him, back around the counter. A silent gesture of gratitude which Mike took in stride without comment.

His smile mirrored my own, although his was accompanied with a slight roll of his eyes.

"See you tomorrow!" I called to him as I made my way over to the front door.

"Bye, Bella," he replied, attention already divided.

As I neared the door, I felt my happiness flicker slightly as a familiar anxiety crept upon me.

It was the same every day.

For the past week – ever since the day I had gone to the hospital, ever since the night Edward had kissed me – he had insisted on driving me to work every morning and picking me up every afternoon. That usually meant that he would stay the night in a room only a few doors down from my own. At first he had insisted he was staying because I was not to be left alone with a concussion. As the week went on, he had lost the excuse but had remained in the house.

How's that for context?

The past five days had been measured only by my nights aching and my mornings in his company, laughing and friendly.

It had been an easy adjustment, effortless and comforting.

Our words remained in the cold room, amidst respite and safety as we talked about poetry, our lives, ourselves. Our excitement lived outside with the horses as I watched Edward ride Dollar silently while I lay draped across Santana's back, learning how easy it was to trust him again in the stillness. Our comfort was found in the library, where Edward would play quietly on the piano for me or for himself. Our happiness was in the start of each day, spending it tentative scared but together.

Edward hadn't touched me since that first night. Not spooked, but slow. I never pushed him, never tried to force contact – not sure I wanted to. Not aggressive, but longing.

Yesterday, in the morning, I had burned our eggs and he had kissed my cheek when I had tried to apologize.

As I stepped out into the afternoon light, thinking of his lips brushing against my skin softly, reassuring, I allowed my eyes to search for him immediately. Expecting locked gazes and wide smiles.

Every day the silver car sat directly in front of the steps to the store, adorned by Edward's tall, lanky body leaning against the passenger side. His arms folded across a broad chest, his eyes attentive on me, ready to open my door as I stepped down to meet him.

There was no silver car.

I quickly scanned the area around me, thinking that perhaps he had parked in a different place. I walked down the steps slowly, thinking that perhaps he was late. Then my eyes turned to the vehicle waiting out front, thinking perhaps he had bought a new car.

Cherry red, shiny, and small.

I halted, unsure, and looked around one more time.

I heard a car door open and my eyes flicked forward once again at the sound.

I found myself face of face with Edward's beautiful blonde sister, leaning towards me, arms crossing on the roof of the bright red vehicle, looking at me expectantly.

"Bella," she greeted with a slight nod, her voice impassive.

"Rosalie."

I was frozen as I said her name, my eyes wide and my heart suddenly racing a pitter-patter beat against the walls of my chest.

The last time I had seen her had been the night Edward had slid divorce papers, reluctant unwanted, into my hands. She had been cold then, before curious and almost caring. Her revulsion had transformed, as I watched, to apathy and to what I suspected now was a mild interest. I had no idea the reason for the change in her, but it couldn't be denied that it was there in her demeanor, at her party and after.

Still, no matter what I told myself to attempt to remain calm, I couldn't seem to stem the rush of adrenaline, panic coursing through me. All I could think of was her anger, cold ice whenever she looked at me. I remembered when I had first come here, how I had thought she and Edward were so similar, their passion so consuming. So much fire, his with years of reason behind it and hers only looking on my face.

Then there was her hand on my arm as I clutched Edward's divorce in my fist like a life-preserver, her eyes flashing question, concern.

Kindness and lovely lips as she kissed her mother, looked at her husband.

So always, always expressive and she looked at me over her car and I had no idea what she was thinking.

Her face was entirely blank.

She could see me wavering, watching my stutter steps without surprise or interest, and she didn't smile or frown or scratch her head. Her mouth was a single straight line, her eyes were trained and without answers.

"Edward got stuck at work," Rosalie said at last, a small sigh in her voice. "He asked me to come pick you up."

I was momentarily taken aback by the normalcy of her answer, struck at once by the fact that I had been unconcerned about Edward's whereabouts, why he had not come.

"Oh. I…you shouldn't have…" I mumbled quietly, dropping my eyes and ringing my hands, teeth tugging on my bottom lip.

Rosalie shrugged, ignoring my awkwardness completely. "I don't mind. I've been meaning to come up here and talk to you anyway."

I blinked. "You have?"

Rosalie's impassive mask cracked for a moment as she smirked at my question.

There was no real humor in her expression, only a momentary amusement.

"Why don't you get in the car, Bella."

It wasn't a question.

"Oh…sure…I mean, of course," I started to answer, forcing my feet to carry me forward, my rushing slightly fumbled as I reached for the passenger door. Rosalie had already slid smoothly into her own seat by the time I tucked myself in beside her. I looked straight ahead as I continued nervously, my words pouring out a stream. "I'm sure you must have places you want to be. If I had known I would have driven my truck today but…"

"Hey, Bella," Rosalie cut me off as she turned the keys in the ignition.

"Yes?" I asked jerkily, on an inhale.

"Relax," she commanded. Then she turned to look directly at me. "Edward didn't know he wasn't going to be able to make it in time. He called my mom, I volunteered."

I exhaled.

"Oh."

Rosalie's smirk grew as she turned back to the road, pulling out and away from the store.

Then she said calmly, "Just ask me, Bella."

"Why?" I blurted out, before I could stop myself.

I expected Rosalie to laugh at the question, find entertainment in my shock. Instead she replied, "Like I said, I've been meaning to come talk to you."

That again.

I couldn't begin to guess.

I could only fear.

"About…anything in particular?"

Rosalie sighed at the question, her eyes flicking to me briefly, then back to the road. There was definite emotion in her face now, although I found it almost impossible to interperet what it was that troubled her.

"Alice likes you," she said curtly, at last.

There was a short pause.

I hadn't expected that.

"Alice…?" I began, my brows furrowed in confusion.

"Emmett likes you," she continued - not allowing my question - as if she hadn't stopped. "My best friend and my husband like you. My mother likes you. My brother…" she hesitated.

I wished she wouldn't.

I wanted to hear her say it.

I wanted to hear anyone say it – anyone who knew us, who knew him and me.

I wanted to hear the words, out loud and for real that Edward still cared about me.

"I had my mind made up about you, Bella," Rosalie said after a beat. "Long before you got here, when I heard that you were coming, I had decided who you were and who you were going to be to me. Alice and Esme were determined to like you, determined to love you. They were so ready to accept…and forgive. But me? I was going to be on my brother's side."

Her words were familiar, not anything I hadn't thought about her a million times. Preconceptions and expectations and judgment. I knew it, and yet every single word, every sideways glance she threw towards me as she said them, stung bitter against my skin.

"I suppose the most important thing was that I wanted to come to you and apologize." I heard her words, saw her beautiful mouth forming them, but they were the last I had expected to ever hear from her. "For my behavior towards you when you first moved here," she elaborated after a moment. "I barely knew you and it was…inexcusable."

My hands were clutching at my thighs, fingers digging into denim over skin, as I listened to her apology. I could feel the rigidity of my body, clenched up and unable to move as a million thoughts, a million memories poured in from around me, suffocating me.

At last, I said the only thing that could be heard over the din.

"No, it wasn't."

Rosalie turned to me quickly, her head whipping around, her hands steady and keeping the wheel straight, her eyes sharp.

"Bella, no one should ever treat you like dirt unless they have a reason."

I shrugged helplessly. "You did."

"Oh really?" Rosalie barked a humorless laugh, still music. "And what was that?"

"Edward…"

"My brother," Rosalie cut me off flatly. Then she shook her head, sighing once more. "Of course it's my nature to be protective of people I love. But from where I was standing, when you both arrived, he wasn't the one who needed protecting."

The cold room and the starving and the silence, the anger and the hate and the solitude.

Everything he had put me through, every way he had admitted to torturing me and enjoying it, every day I had spent locked in a struggle to keep my sanity.

Edward's hard words and cold looks, his fire rage screaming and hurling me from the house.

His hands hard and gripping, bruising me with fear.

And it was still nothing compared to what had been done to him.

"I think you might be wrong about that," I whispered, my voice unable to pull any louder.

Rosalie was silent for a long moment, dragged out and exaggerated in the thick quiet of the car. I waited, eyes on my hands, hands on my lap, for her to speak.

At last, she turned to me.

"You really hate yourself, don't you?"

My eyes flicked up to hers immediately. She was watching me carefully, one eyebrow arched. She was questioning, unsure and graceful and certainly not smirking now.

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to argue about all the ways that my life had changed, about how much I had grown and how much I could see myself, see a person in me that I could love. I wanted to speak of confidence and courage, convince her that I was not the same girl she had first met, so long ago.

The words were not there.

There was only the truth now.

"I try not to," I told her, admitted quietly as I looked out the window and away from her. The highway stretching before us, telephone poles whipping past too quickly to see. "It's so hard to forget everything that I've done. Who I was before." I paused. Then, "And Edward says that no one ever really changes."

You haven't changed, not one bit.

"I think you've misunderstood him." Rosalie's voice was very soft.

"It wouldn't be the first time," I said with an apologetic smile.

Rosalie's answering smile was sad, barely there.

A suspended quiet fell upon the car, humming engine and controlled breathing the only sounds to fill the space. Rosalie's presence at my side was loudest of all, every inch of her radiating strength and feeling, depth and wondering. I had never in my life known anyone quite like her, all my old friends – Jessica and Lauren – like watered-down versions of what a person could be. All their emotions were felt by degrees of moderation, all their actions guided by anyone but themselves. Until I had met Rosalie, I hadn't even known there was a difference.

Now she pierced into my life, at my side in the quiet, every inch of her attuned to me, to my words and my actions.

I watched the lines on the road until they faded to dirt nothing.

Sliding easily into the driveway.

We sat, quiet parked in front of the porch, looking at each other and back out at the house. I was unsure whether or not I should get out, thank Rosalie, and go inside the house without looking back. Everything dictated that to do so would be the next move, the plan in the game of niceties and society. Something kept me rooted in that seat, though. Some unspoken, tense and unbearable connection, waiting to be voiced. She wasn't done yet.

She hadn't said everything.

White paint shone brilliant and blinding in the sunlight, brand new shingled roof and all put back together home before our eyes. I felt a small stirring as I looked at it, a strange sense of pride warming from the inside and calming my racing pulse, putting an end to the tension.

With the house before us, put back and whole, I turned to face the silent blonde beside me.

"Rosalie, why are you here?" I asked her, sudden and needing to know.

Rosalie's eyebrows were raised slightly, speculative, as she met my gaze. With a small sigh she took both her hands from the steering wheel and turned her upper body, twisting in her seat so we were face to face. No distraction and no barrier.

"It would be a lie if I said it wasn't because I'm…concerned." She spoke the word with stress and significance.

"Concerned?"

"Like I said, I can be very protective of my brother," she elaborated quickly. "He's been spending all this time up here recently, Esme says he hardly ever comes home anymore." There was a small pause before she finished pointedly, "He's spending his nights in this house with you."

My eyes widened.

"It's not…"

"I'm not here to judge you," Rosalie insisted, holding up her hand to silence my shocked protest. "Or reprimand you. Or scare you off."

"You're not?" I asked slowly, hating how incredulous I sounded to my own ears.

"I may be a heartless bitch, but I'm not an idiot. I know when there are things going on that are beyond my control or understanding," she told me with the barest hint of a smile. As soon as I saw it, it faded into a frown, hardened with steel eyes to match. "I also know who's fault that is."

My heart skipped a beat. "I'm not sure what you're saying," I hedged.

"Edward and I talk," she told me, as if it could explain everything. Her hands were folded on her lap gracefully, calmly, but her entire body was strained towards mine. Humming and fluttering with an emotion I couldn't read. "Not much, not for a long time. But occasionally, on the phone. And…whenever something big happened in his life." She hesitated, then added, "That usually had something to do with you."

"Oh," I breathed.

I couldn't see the purpose, couldn't see the end, but her words, her confession was captivating me.

Hearing her speak, commanding her interest, was electric. It was the same way I felt when I spoke to Edward, that absolute clarity in every syllable. Cryptic, vague as soon as it was passed…but so crystalline clear as she spoke.

"When you two moved here, I thought it would only bring us closer. I thought I could help him. And at first, it seemed like that meant helping him get rid of you," Rosalie admitted, not a single ounce of remorse in her face. She looked at me fiercely, daring me to defend myself.

I remained silent.

She continued, as I knew she would. "But he didn't want my help." Bitter words and sad eyes. "He shut me out. Although, not before making it clear that driving you away wasn't something he wanted."

"What did he want?" I found myself whispering, pleading.

Rosalie studied me for a moment before shrugging, leaning back slightly, exhaling weary hours of endless theories that were the same as mine.

"If you don't know the answer to that, then he's still the only one who does," she told me.

I took in her words, turning away at last. My eyes drifted out, past the house to the hills beyond, to the sun sinking lower and deeper and still so bright. My hair down around my shoulders making me sweat, fighting the urge to shiver.

"Listen, Bella, all I'm saying is…I'm here because I love my brother. And I want to understand. I know now that what he told me about you was only pieces, only parts of the picture. Otherwise there's no way you two would be…" Rosalie stopped.

I could hear in her voice that she was still looking at me, still watching me.

Suddenly, her voice got quiet, nervous when she said, "I want answers, Bella. I want to know what happened."

"What has he told you?" I asked, keeping my back to her.

"I thought…everything. Now I'm thinking that it was an abridged version."

I felt calm, as if I had known this moment had been coming all along.

There was no way to keep it from her anymore, there was no reason in the world why I should.

She was every inch Edward – her beauty and her anger and her desire and her desperation. She was one that I owed answers to, one that deserved to hear every word, from me, if only because she knew what to do with it.

And I still didn't.

"What do you want to know?" I sighed, braced for the fall.

Rosalie was quiet again.

Then, "Do you know why I hated you so much? After only meeting you twice, do you know why I wanted you gone?"

Slowly, carefully, I turned to look at her.

Just as I had known, she was still looking straight at me. Her gaze direct and without fault. I didn't need to shake my head, the easy tilt from side to side, for her to know that I couldn't answer her.

I didn't want to try.

"Come here," she said, a simple command that could not be contradicted.

Before I could reply, Rosalie was outside the car, closing her door, shutting me in. I opened my own in response, stepping out after her with barely a hesitation. I turned to look at her over the top of the car. Just as they had back at the store, our eyes locked over shiny blood red top.

Then she was moving: away from me, away from the car, towards the house.

I followed her around, past the porch into the backyard. The day was beautiful mild and temperate. Blonde hair bounced in flowing flicker waves down her back as she moved ahead of me, her stride quick and calm with purpose. My stagger step trailed behind her glide until we stood in front of the large, blackened tree.

Edward's tree.

I stopped beside Rosalie, my shoulder reaching only halfway up her arm where we stood.

My eyes trailed up the tree, taking in the charred trunk piece by piece, moment by moment until I reached the crackbreak. My eyes locked on the large fissure, splitting the tree into two twisting, mangled arms. I felt my breath catch in my throat for a moment, in the silence and the vision.

I felt nothing of this sadness before, this betrayal.

I remembered Edward's words, scrawled so quick and frightened in his journal.

I looked over to Rosalie, not sure what I was expecting to see.

She wasn't looking at the tree.

She wasn't looking at me anymore, either.

She was looking at the ground.

My eyes followed hers to a small stone pressed into the dirt and grass, surrounded by roots.

"What…?" I began to ask.

Then I saw.

I saw words etched into stone.

I leaned closer, narrowed my eyes against the light to make out the carved shadows. My entire body had grown cold, realizing that it was a grave that lay at the base of this shattered tree.

A monument to death.

Jacob Anthony Cullen

I jerked back, a horrified noise escaping my lips as I stumbled away slightly, my eyes still riveted onto stone; to the resting place of my son.

The place I had not even known existed.

"Edward," Rosalie said quietly, motioning to the stone. She was looking only at me now, at my reaction.

He did this.

I felt the sudden, overwhelming flood of memories, years and years stuck behind a calm face and an impassive heart, and inch and a breath from breaking free. My eyes stung, dry sandpapery rather than tearful. Every inhale and exhale was shallow, quick, like I was afraid to breathe too deeply. I wanted to reach out, feel the cold against my hands, trace his name with my fingers, but I remained still. I forced myself to simply look at it; at him.

"You didn't come with him, so I thought…" Rosalie trailed off, her meaning clear.

Clear as I imagined a day I hadn't ever seen.

Edward standing beside a broken tree, hand clutching sister or mother instead of wife. Struggling to say words, to form a prayer, to keep his head above water as he placed the ashes of a child into the earth; as near to his home, to his love, as he possibly could.

"You thought right," I said coldly. My very bones were ice.

"No, I didn't, Bella," Rosalie protested, with a vehement shake of her head. I saw her reaching out for me long before I felt her fingers graze lightly, comfortingly, against my forearm. Hanging limp at my side. "I can see that now."

I shook my head. "You can't see anything."

Rosalie swallowed, I heard more than saw. She took a step towards me and light fingers turned into a bracing grip, so tender and so desperate. I could barely feel it.

"He buried his child alone and I thought it was because you couldn't be bothered…" She tried again, her words full of self-derision and self-castigation.

So, so painful.

"I couldn't be bothered." I willed my words to sound harsh, to lash stinging blood against my own body. They came, instead, just as even and temperate as the rest.

"Bella…"

"I never held him in my arms." I spoke around her, forcing the words out for the first time, forcing the truth that she had so wanted.

I looked away from the grave finally, only to drop my eyes down to my arms. I bent at the elbows, holding them up. One still weighted down by Rosalie's steady hand. I looked at my own pale skin, the muscle and bone beneath and I couldn't imagine him there.

"I blamed you," Rosalie said quietly.

"I blame myself."

"Edward doesn't," she stated frankly. Sad and without agenda. "Even when he was so angry with you, even when he hated you, even when he blamed you for everything else that was wrong with his life, he never blamed you for that."

I felt a small, perverse smile threatening to steal across my features. Humorless, dank and dark as a cellar, but still a clown curl of the lips unable to be contained. The irony and the tragedy so striking hot against the chill.

"He's wrong," I told her, not an inch of me was afraid of her anymore.

"Tell me what happened, Bella."

She couldn't hurt me, couldn't touch me. There was nothing she could do to me that would rip through my entire body like the pain of ignored and festering wounds, no salt to pour. She was simply ears and eyes and heart and – inexplicably – on my side.

So I told her.

Images clear as the day they happened rose up before my eyes.

My left hand in Edward's left hand, my arm stretched across his entire body. I could feel his right at my back, wrapping around the largeness of my waist. The night was too beautiful, too warm for me to feel self-conscious. He was looking at me with too much adoration for me to feel anything but lovely attractive. Every playful comment I would make about my weight and he would whisper low and sincere against my neck and my hair how much he wanted me, how much he desired me, how torturous the waiting was before he could take me to our bed once more.

He sat me down, gently and with a kiss to the part of my hair, at the candlelit soft glow of a French restaurant table.

Edward's smile was brighter than the room as he sat across from me, still tanned brown from our week spent on our very own desert island. Paradise beginning rough and rocky harsh and ending in blissful passion. Insisting that we go out to dinner for our first night back on the mainland, eating gourmet and too pricey, to make up for all the hideous cooking we'd had to do ourselves.

Our fingers, palms stretched across the table, clasped and lying left of the flicker flame at the center. Edward ordered for me in flawless French and I watched him, fascinated, with my hand pressed to the violent kicking in my womb. I smirked and nodded my approval when he turned back from the waiter and he flushed slightly before eyeing my lingering hand.

There was a faint breeze of people passing us, flicking over my bare shoulders as the waiter led another party to a table.

I looked up only for a moment, but it was enough to shatter everything.

Jacob and Renesmee sat five tables to my right, their hands stretched across the table.

Her hand on her stomach.

The same as mine.

"She was pregnant," I said plainly, the word so foreign frightening on my tongue. "And they looked…so happy together. They didn't even see me. Jacob didn't see me. He was too caught up. In a way that I had never been with Edward, in a way I felt like I would never be again."

Even with Edward and my seemingly incandescent happiness, I had still seen Jacob the moment he had arrived. But he had never looked up, never looked away. He never saw me and I was always, always looking for him.

Jacob was happy and I was only pretending.

With a sigh, I continued, "I told Edward to give me the keys to the car."

"Bella, honey, let me drive you home," Edward's voice was so soft, he was standing at my side now.

I had risen, terrified and electric shock the instant I had seen them, the instant I had realized that she carried Jacob within her as well. He had planted his seed in her because what was in me wasn't his. No matter how the child had started, it belonged to Edward now.

The thought made me sick.

"I don't want to…I just…" I stuttered, jerking myself away from my doting husband as quietly and quick subtle as I could, terrified that Jacob would look up and see me. He never did. And so I said plainly, tears tracking down my face as I started for the door, "I want to be alone."

"Hey, it'll be okay…" Edward began, starting after me, his hand falling on my shoulder to slow me down.

I whipped around to face him at the door, my eyes flaming with anguish and anger and not a single ounce of that passion directed at him. He must have seen, must have known, because his words died on his lips and he simply looked at me. Stared. I could see the pleading, imploring behind his silent calm. The hopelessness he felt so obvious on his face.

He had married a woman who didn't love him enough to stay, who loved another enough to leave.

"Give me the keys," I demanded, my voice acid and impatient as I held out my hand.

I felt the cold weight of metal in my palm almost immediately.

Edward hadn't hesitated, hadn't blinked.

Without a word, I walked out the door of that restaurant into the heavy warm Seattle night. The click of low, desperate scared running heels sounded against the sidewalk as I made my way to the car, listening for the strided shoes of a worried husband behind me.

I heard nothing.

I never once wondered how he would get home.

Rosalie had released my arm and I was looking at her now. She had gone pale white as a ghost, her lips a tight, thin line without color. She was staring back at me, her eyes searching and darting around my face, the horror and understanding growing with every passing moment.

"The accident," she whispered. Those words, so quiet and harmless, now weighted with the knowledge of revelation. She said them with significance, as if she was relearning what they meant. Their definition, their place in the world suddenly shifting in her mind.

I nodded. "Right."

"Edward never talked about it. Not after that first night, when he called to tell us," Rosalie said, her voice one single shaky exhale of words. "I was the one who picked up the phone. He told me that you'd been upset, driving erratically, you hadn't seen the truck. I thought…we all assumed…you had been drinking."

I nodded, expecting it.

Along with her understanding came my own. The hate and resentment that had grown simply out of painful miscommunication. Edward's inability to talk about something so painful, wrongful conclusions left to marinate for years and years.

I didn't blame Rosalie, didn't blame the family.

They hadn't known me and I hadn't let them.

I felt a tentative smooth hand reach my own, fingers curling tight and trapping my own against a soft, hot palm. I looked down at Rosalie's hand as it covered mine completely and crushing. I felt strength and solidarity in the action.

I looked back up to her, slight wonder crossing my expression.

She didn't smile reassuringly, didn't nod comfortingly.

She simply looked back at me, steady and waiting.

Finally, after decades of silence, she finally asked the question we had both been waiting for.

"Do you…do you remember?"

"No...and yes."

There were only bright lights, burning red and searing hot against the backs of my eyelids.

There was only the murmur of voices, soft at first and muffled, growing steadily louder as I surfaced until I could hear them yelling, shouting with urgency their commands. Doctors telling nurses, nurses telling doctors.

There were only words that I knew but didn't understand.

There was only blood and car accident and baby and placental abruption and more blood and caesarian and more blood and hysterectomy.

Words, words, words.

There was only a kind face, a woman looking down at me as my eyes adjusted to the light.

"Isabella. Isabella, can you hear me?" She called to me from a great distance.

"I…"

"Isabella, you've been in a car accident. Do you remember?"

"I…"

"Your baby is in distress, Isabella. We have to deliver now if we're going to save him."

"I…"

"Isabella, do you understand me?"

"Edward…"

"Edward? Who's Edward?"

"I…"

"We'll find him for you. We'll get him here."

"They must have found his number in my phone. They called him. He was there when I woke up," I told Rosalie slowly, the murky memory of that horrifying day coming back with a jerky slowness, the same surreal dream state I had been in at the time. Under water and unable to break into clean air, gasping for breath and burning lungs as I tried to understand what that woman had been telling me. It still felt like it wasn't real. But it didn't matter, now or ever, what it felt like. It had happened just the same.

"He was the one who told me…he told me that the baby had died." My voice was so quiet now. Whispering two words I had never spoken before. "My son."

I blinked at the pain, the sluggish eyelids heavy on my face, struggling to open. Everything was blurred and muted colors first, strange like looking through a filter. Moving my eyes – just my eyes – was excruciating.

Everything was excruciating.

As slowly, as smooth as I could, I lowered my head and eyes down to the warmth that was covering my left arm. The warmth of both Edward's hands, clutched tightly around my hand. His arms pressed up against the length of mine, our pulses matched up and beating boom together. His head was turned down, looking at my wrist or the bedspread, copper hair in my face and an entire body hunched in prayer.

My fingers twitched against his.

Green eyes immediately flashed up to my face, wide and terror hopeful.

"Bella?" His tentative voice grew loud, his eyes filling and brimming. "Oh, God. Bella."

He stood up then, dropping my hand and moving his own to my face. Then his lips were on me, so gentle fast and urgent, covering my cheeks, my hair, my lips, my jaw, my neck. Every breath he took was expelled with a murmured curse, my name and 'fuck' escaping his lips in equal measure.

His relief was so palpable, so present.

I felt so empty.

"How long…?" I managed through a scratchy throat, around his caresses and salt tears matting my hair.

Edward pulled back reluctantly, his hands falling once more to my own, lifting it to his lips and then holding it, pressing it firm against his chest.

"It's been almost two days," he told me, his voice betraying a certain weariness, weak and pained, muting his happiness at seeing me awake.

I nodded once, but the motion was so painful against the throbbing of my skull, so I stopped.

I could feel the bruises, cuts and scrapes, broken bones. Each pain and ache coming to me slowly, one at a time, and remaining. Compounding. I felt them all as I looked at Edward, as he held my forearm up against his beating so fast heart.

With one deliberate move, my right hand jerked up from the bed where it was lying limp, cold, and unattended. Smooth and splinted my palm fell on my stomach, still and hollow.

Edward saw the motion.

His face crushed inward, immediate and cascading, all his love and happiness and relief gone in an instant. I had never seen anyone's face twist in such a way, until it was almost too tragic to be considered human. Looking at him in that moment, it was impossible to remember him happy, inconceivable that there had ever been a time where he had smiled.

Or laughed.

"Bella…" he whispered my name, beseeching.

"He's dead." My voice was calm, it wasn't a question.

I didn't want to hear him try to answer it. I didn't want to force him to say the words.

The last kindness, the last mercy I ever showed him.

Instead of responding, Edward dropped my hand, his head with it. My palm pressed against the sheets, his lips against my knuckles, holding all his weight against me at that one point of contact.

I breathed and didn't cry.

"I couldn't talk to him after that," I said, my voice subdued, whispering as if I was back in that room, not wanting Edward to lift his head and look at me. Unable to bear looking at his face, his sad and weeping eyes. "The doctor came in and told me about the accident, about the abruption. That I had almost died, almost bled out on the table. He told me the only way they were able to stop the bleeding was…That I…that I wouldn't have any more children."

Tears were tracking quiet and beautiful down Rosalie's face. Both her hands were on me now, holding me up as I spoke. One on each shoulder, stretched across my back and pressed to my side.

She said nothing.

"They told me that I needed closure, that I could regret it horribly for the rest of my life. I didn't listen. I couldn't hear them. I just felt so, so empty. Like nothing, none of it could touch me," I confessed to her, feeling my own voice quiver and shake to get the words out.

I swallowed.

I felt like that still.

"I never saw him, Rosalie. I never saw his face. I never said goodbye."

I dropped from her arms as I dropped to my knees, my hands hitting the grass that blanketed the earth around his grave.

Edward sat in the chair in the corner of the room, his face so blank, so calm. Completely devoid as he watched me.

There was a kind woman, whose voice made me want to scream, or vomit. There were several doctors. They came in, a parade, one after the other and at last together, asking if I wanted to see my son. They could bring me to him, they could bring him to me. I should hold him, meet him.

I should meet my little corpse.

I was so calm, so level-headed when I refused.

How could they argue?

Maybe if I had thrown something, raged around the room, ripped out my IV and threatened to walk out of the hospital, yelled and screamed and cried and begged, maybe then they would have known what to do. They would have known the passionate grief, the incomprehensible ache of a mother who had lost her child. Not a widow or an orphan, but a nameless griever, struggling with the most horrible of tragedies in the long, eternal list.

Anger and denial and anguish they could understand.

It was what they wanted.

They didn't want a woman lying in bed, childless, with a silent husband, bruised and broken, telling them that she simply didn't see the point.

Her choice.

My choice.

I felt Rosalie standing over me, I could imagine the tremors in her body the same as if they were my own. And maybe they were. Every word was like extracting poison from a wound, hearing them aloud and admitting them to myself.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

"It was easier to pretend it never happened, to act like I didn't care. I was so sure that letting it in would kill me." My hand reached out at last to connect with the stone. My fingers fell into the grove of the 'A'. It was so cold against my skin. "I'm still not sure it won't."

"It won't." Rosalie's response was almost immediate, surprising and strong.

I felt her lower herself to my side, not touching me but close enough that she could. Her gold hair curling in the breeze tangled gently, quietly with mine.

"Maybe…maybe what you did was…" she struggled. Then she shook her head. "There's no guidebook for how to act. No way you could know how to handle it. All you can do is move forward."

I dropped my head, chin to chest, wishing that I could believe her. Rosalie and her cutting blunt and honest words, a stalwart strong and even. Everything in her life so clear, so simple in her view, that forward wasn't something to be feared or avoided; it was all there was.

But I had tried that once.

Forward had changed my life, had shifted and moved me forever. It had made me different, forced me to grow. Moving on, putting one foot in front of the other, was the hardest thing I had ever done. It was a fight, a battle every step of the way. And in the end, everything I had done had not made anything better.

It had destroyed me.

It had destroyed Edward.

"Edward?"

"Bella?" He was at my side in an instant, his hand gently cupping my arm.

I wondered if he ever slept.

"Will you do something for me?" I asked him, trying like hell to ignore the desperate, sad look in his eyes. The way he watched me, the way he waited so pathetically for some small word from me. Any indication that I remembered he was there, in my hospital room, every day and night.

"Anything," he breathed eagerly, just as I knew he would.

I looked at him firmly, lifting my chin. "Take me away."

I could see it had not been what he had expected.

"What?" he asked politely, his brows furrowing, creasing his forehead in confusion.

"Take me away from this place," I commanded him again, knowing that I didn't have to ask.

"Bella, you're not being discharged until…"

"No," I snapped, cutting him off quickly, impatiently. "I mean, permanently. Let's move. Let's leave this all behind us."

I saw understanding cross his features, replaced almost immediately by trepidation. Fear. He was always so afraid. Of anything, of everything I said.

"I don't know if that's such…"

"Edward, I want to get out of this place," I told him. The calm of my voice was wavering. I hope he couldn't hear the desperation. The undiluted need growing stronger inside me for him to agree.

He had to agree.

"But your school. My job. All our friends, your family…our lives…"

"Please, Edward. Please." I begged him suddenly, my voice bursting out louder than it had in days. "I can't be here. Please."

I heard my own words without really understanding their root. I only knew the gnawing ache inside, the panicked desire to run away, to cut loose, to be gone from rain and school and apartments with nurseries and French restaurants.

"I'll do anything you want," Edward said soothingly, his hands resting hot against my cheeks as he looked at me, willing me to be calm. He didn't want to see me beg. He could refuse me nothing. "Where do you want to go?"

My hands covered his and I exhaled.

"New York, Edward. Take me to New York."