Chapter 49:

Where Art Thou Going?


The more Esme worked by the light of candles, the more she grew to appreciate their company. In the cold stony depths of the wine cellar where Carlisle kept his sculptures, she found herself becoming fonder of the gentle glow of several golden flames. She could understand why Carlisle preferred it. The lights given off by candles appeared as though they were dancing, providing the essence of a silent company by which to work. She could imagine how Carlisle would appreciate that warmth and liveliness from the flicker of fire, feeling as though another being were sharing the room with him even when he was alone.

As she worked, her mind would wander as every artist's does. But her thoughts were not concerned with the block of wood beneath her hands. The warmth from the candles could not rival the warming daydreams she entertained in her mind, reliving every second of her New Year's Eve on the rooftop with Carlisle.

Things had been somewhat awkward between them since New Year's Eve when she had kissed his cheek. Their momentum had been fascinatingly steady until that night. Something had happened on the rooftop when her lips had made an innocent mark upon his right cheek. She had crossed a line. Now she worried that she had thrown off that momentum by what she had done.

But in the end, it was only a kiss. Barely even a kiss. A peck on the cheek. The gesture could have easily been shared between a brother and sister, yet...

There was no denying she had felt something entirely un-sisterly in that kiss. And she had been the one to initiate that magical moment.

She had understood Carlisle's reaction to the gesture, but that did not keep her from wondering what his true feelings for her now were, if they had been at all changed by her actions. She wanted so desperately to know what he was thinking now, but he had been too quiet to read by expression alone. He spoke of nothing but art now, and if he was not speaking of art, he was silent.

During the cold days of winter, Esme found a surprising solace in the soothing silence beneath the old mansion. She surrounded herself by Carlisle's art as she worked tirelessly to create her own, following the inspiration from his ingenious collection. He would often come to visit her during the hours between his shifts at the hospital, checking to see how far along she had come. Esme's work was never quite as impressive as she had hoped, and Carlisle's visits soon grew more bothersome than welcome. She tried to hide her slight embarrassment as the days wore on, and barely any progress appeared to be taking place despite all her hard work on the carving.

He must have caught a hint of her discomfort, for soon he only came to visit her once a day instead of twice or three times. His visits were always short-lived and usually he only said a few words of hesitant encouragement. Eventually he stopped speaking when he came to see her, settling to give her work a casual glance as he passed through to retrieve something from another corner of the room. Her ignorance surely fed the uneasy belly of his uncertainty, and within a week or so Carlisle failed to visit her altogether.

In her solitude, Esme found comfort only in the candles he left lit for her every morning out of habit.

She wondered if her time here were being wasted; if the possibility of creating anything that could meet his standards was even worth the effort. She stood back hour after hour to survey her work, only to find the piece looking more like a sorry wooden knot rather than a pair of gracefully clinging hands.

She dug through the upstairs library for art books filled with instructions and pictures of the human figure in dozens of positions. She even stole a few of Carlisle's anatomy books for extra studying. No matter how many times she replayed the slow motion memory of her hand being held in Carlisle's, she could not seem to reconstruct it in a new medium.

Carlisle had said wood would be easy to work with, but Esme was finding it frightfully uncooperative.

On a good day she could harness her concentration enough to form what ever so slightly resembled a single finger, rising hesitantly from the wooden block. From that point on, she managed to build off of that, slowly coaxing the shapes she envisioned from the splintery mass with her tools.

When at last she had something recognizable, she realized with some disappointment that the hand she had carved in the wood was smaller than it should have been. It more resembled the hand of an infant than her own. Could it have been some subconscious part of her longing to carve the hand of her sweet baby son?

Gabriel.

The name was now seamlessly interlocked with the unforgotten face of her infant son. It was no more than a suggestion from Carlisle, but somehow it had fit from the moment he'd said it.

Esme looked on sadly as her carving blade gently scraped away the wood shavings from the small gripping fingers of her sculpture. It was not much, but it was a start. And whatever her intentions had been in the beginning, perhaps the end result would not be the hands of two lovers refusing to let go. A new possibility was rising before her very eyes, and like all artists, Esme knew that the course of an artwork could never be fully predicted.

It could be the hand of a parent, holding the hand of a child.

Esme's small smile melted in uncertainty as she picked up the chisel. With so much time spent to reach such a small point of satisfaction, she was almost scared to touch the half-formed carving for fear of ruining what she already had.

But art was about taking risks, making mistakes and learning the many ways in which one could fix them for the better. She was not going to give up so easily after coming so far already.

All seemed to be going well with the carving until she heard Carlisle's voice speaking to Edward upstairs. The ceiling was so thick yet she could still hear so much through it. Distracted by the sound of the doctor's voice, Esme accidentally pulled a chunk of wood right out with her chisel, damaging a perfectly rendered knuckle of the hand she had taken so many hours to carve.

She froze in place, a cold sensation of devastation clamoring down her spine as she stared at the pathetic, gaping wound that her chisel had left in the wooden hand.

Tears prickled in the beds of her eyes as she stared at the destroyed piece of art. The room felt cold and empty, and everything was silent save for the distant rhythm of footsteps outside. The footsteps came closer, feeding her dread until they were coming down the cellar stairs, and the sweet musk of incense and warmth flooded her breath.

Of all times, he chose now to visit her.

"How are things coming along?" his gentle voice inquired.

She suppressed an irrational surge of anger at Carlisle as he came up behind her. Whether by intention or not, he was the one who had distracted her, causing this mishap in the first place. In her defense she was also frustrated by his poor timing; if he'd only come a little bit sooner he would have seen her progress before she had ruined the carving by one clumsy slip of the hand.

"Not as well as I'd hoped, I admit," she managed to mumble through her teeth.

"You've been down here since five o'clock," he began hesitantly. "Surely you must have made some progress."

She tried to tell herself that his intentions were good, but the nature of his words irritated her into speaking with an irreverently caustic tone.

"Oh, I have made progress all right – progress that I've only just ruined with one stupid mistake." She just nearly resisted slamming the chisel down on the table beside her, trying to keep her hands from shaking in fury. She refused to let Carlisle see her get so worked up over a simple carving.

The heat crept further up her face the longer he was silent, then suddenly he spoke.

"Let me help."

God bless him. He thought every problem could be fixed in an instant.

Esme squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to whimper in dismay. "You don't need to."

"I want to."

A little fire flared in her chest. That insistence. Sometimes she wondered if she were mistaking her frustration for attraction when he spoke that way. He just could not take no for an answer sometimes.

Normally she would have found the nature of his aid to be comforting, but right now she felt that his attention would only bloat her burden.

"Carlisle, I really don't think it's possible to fix this," she tried.

"Everything can be fixed," he said resolutely, and both his arms came around her in a strictly instructive embrace. He was wearing a plaid shirt of dark blue crisscrossed with green and gray stripes. His sleeve was rolled up on the right arm, but not on his left. He had a gorgeous smear of peacock blue ink on the inside of his right wrist that almost looked like a bruise.

Normally his closeness would have been more than welcome, but for the first time, Esme felt Carlisle's intrusion to her space was oppressive and almost...agitating.

She watched with burning shame as his hand picked up the unfortunate little chunk of wood that she had chopped out of the carving. He turned it over in his palm, examining it for a moment before he held it experimentally up to the empty space where it had once been.

He hummed a quiet note of displeasure, forcing Esme to wince and inhale angrily.

"I told you it couldn't be fixed," she muttered.

His long fingers stroked the carving almost lovingly, picking some of the splinters out of the wood. "This is nothing, Esme. It's barely a scratch. We can chisel it down and make it good as new. I'll show you."

She watched as he scraped away at the wood with his chisel until the details she had previously carved were nearly all gone. All of the little parts she was most proud of were destroyed by his hands. And all she could do was stand there between his arms and watch helplessly while he did it. His intentions were only to help her, and it broke her heart that she could not say anything.

"There," he whispered contentedly, brushing dust from the once again smooth surface of the wood.

Esme swallowed hard, trying to make the devastated lump in her throat go away as she stared at the worn down piece of wood. Thinking he was done, she was about to offer him the obligatory word of thanks, but he cut her off before she could open her mouth.

"Now we can start over," he said softly, his very presence soaking her in unbearable patience.

She gritted her teeth and resisted another urge to sob.

He did his best to show her how to best render the challenging details of the hands, how to shape them realistically, and how to properly control the tools. His hands were surrounding hers as he guided her use of each tool, but this time her fingers were twitching irritably instead of being unresisting and submissive. There had been such intimacy in the act when he first showed her the subtle techniques of carving. That intimacy was still there – stronger than ever – but now it pained her, because she did not wish to let herself feel it.

In that moment Esme could do little but wince in private anger toward Carlisle for pretending that he was unaware of her mood. He prattled on about something to do with her technique, and she could not even half-listen. His voice was sweet and agreeable, and his body was warm, and he was being so patient that it was bound to drive her mad.

She wanted to toss his hands aside and tell him to mind his own business for once. She wanted to destroy her hopeless, unfinished carving by setting it on fire with one of the candles he had lit. She wanted to turn around, take Carlisle's face between her hands and kiss his cheek again, not so gently this time.

All of these thoughts and desires escaped her lips in a violent sigh.

"I did warn you it would not be easy," he dared to say, mistaking her sigh for one of mere exasperation.

Her hands twitched in annoyance but she managed to keep calm before speaking. "I know. I just... I'm a little frustrated is all."

"Well, you should take a break for a while," he said. A maddening note of generosity tinged his voice, as if he were offering her something she had not allowed herself to consider. "You've been working for a long time."

He only knew the half of it.

"So much for making progress," she mumbled in defeat, pushing her useless tools to the side.

Carlisle shook his head as he moved to stand beside her. "For what it is worth, you've made plenty of progress. Carving is not something that you can learn overnight, Esme," he said as he began to patiently clean each of the tools she had pushed aside with a cloth. "Give it time. It will be a masterpiece in the end, I know it."

She bit her tongue but the words came out anyway. "You don't need to humor me."

He was silent for only a second, but his instant reflex was to argue against her accusation.

"I'm not humoring—"

"Carlisle, please. I understand that you want to make me feel good about everything I'm doing, but honestly, I can't help but feel you're only patronizing me at this point."

The silence hung between them longer this time, and Esme could suddenly feel her throat burning with regret over having said such words. She didn't know which would be worse – keeping her feelings locked inside and pretending all was fine or telling him the truth and having to see his heartbreaking reaction.

He looked stunned at first, then utterly lost. She had never seen Carlisle look at her that way before, with that pure, blackened emptiness in his eyes. It made her feel gloriously guilty, and it filled her with a tremendous physical pain, as if she had just been stabbed in the gut with one of his carving tools.

"Patronizing?" he repeated the word, and it sounded as empty as his eyes looked. Quickly, his defense turned to desperation. "I would never dream of—Esme, anything I have said to you has been said with sincere purpose. I swear it!"

She heaved a sharp sigh that sounded closer to a scoff, tearing her eyes away from his face. "That's just it. I know you. You don't even realize it," she said as she began to hastily put her tools away, flustered and failing to place each of them in their proper cases.

Carlisle watched her in bewilderment for a few moments before he interjected softly, "Esme, if I'd known you felt that way—"

She could not take him anymore. His voice, his face, his hesitation - all of it was maddening.

"It isn't your fault. It's mine," she said curtly, wiping her dusty hands on the cloth and turning away without once meeting his gaze.

He turned after her in a panic as she headed for the stairs.

"Where art th—Where are you going?" he stuttered, sounding completely crestfallen.

"Upstairs. To paint," she explained stiffly as she stomped up the steps. "I might as well do something I'm good at for a while."

The door shut behind her, thankfully not as loudly as she thought it might. She truly had not wanted to hurt his feelings in any way, but she was certain that with his sensitivity Carlisle would not respond favorably to her behavior.

It was his fault for being so overbearing all of the time.

So wonderfully, hopelessly, religiously overbearing.

Covering her mouth to conceal a sob, Esme rushed into the house as quickly as possible and went upstairs before Edward could inquire after her distress.

She felt out of breath by the time she reached her library, slamming the door behind her for no reason other than to give herself a foolish sense of safety. Carlisle would never intrude on her when he knew she sought privacy, but Edward might, and she did not want to speak to either of them right now.

It had been a long while since Esme had let herself fall prey to the unpredictable swings of newborn emotions. She remembered suffering from them nearly every day when she had first been changed, but lately she thought that her situation may have been improving.

Shaking her head forcefully in shame, she tore open the drawer where she kept her oil paints and scooped them up to carry over to her easel. It had been too long since she had painted. Sculpting was eating all of her time lately; it would feel so good to be able to hold a paintbrush between her fingers again.

But the moment she took the paintbrush and dipped it once into the pigment, she felt that it was weighed down too much to even lift. Her hand barely managed to carry it up high enough to touch the canvas. With one disgraceful stroke, she left a watery line of dark green paint on the good white surface. She watched in idle bemusement as the paint began to drip down the canvas, leaving several murky tears behind.

Tossing her paintbrush back into the glass of turpentine, she swept from her library across the hall and around the corner to find the mysterious bedroom where Carlisle had kept his own oil painting hidden from her.

She cautiously creaked open the door to peek inside, but the place where his painting had once been propped against the wall was now empty. She turned her head to allow her eye to scan the rest of the floor, searching along the wall for any signs that it had been moved or replaced by another. But there was nothing.

She wondered where he had taken it – that beautiful painting of the moonlit lake.

She wondered if the painting had ever even been there at all.

What if he had somehow discovered her intrusion? Would he have found this offense appalling enough to have moved the painting from one room to another where it would be safe from her prying eyes?

The thought made Esme's emotions sweep from angry and irritable to fearful and sad. She hung her head morosely as she closed the door to the bedroom and sulked her way back downstairs, following the sweet smell of pine to the parlor.

The Christmas tree that had once stood proud and tall by the fireplace was losing its life slowly as time wore on. They had kept it in the parlor since Christmas, and nearly a month was too long for a tree to survive out of the forest. It had lost some of its enchanting pure green color, replaced by a dull brown on the tips of its sagging branches. The only ornament that lingered still was the small crystal dove that Esme had hung on the uppermost branch. Even its sparkling seemed fainter now that the holidays were over and done.

With a mournful ache in her arm, Esme reached fruitlessly for the little dove, unable to reach it no matter how hard she strained. She tried again and again, knowing that it would never be possible. Just like everything else in her life, she tried but never succeeded. Not on her own.

Then a pair of quick and strong hands suddenly lifted her from the ground, and her fingers caught the golden thread of the ornament she was reaching for. The hands lowered her carefully to set her back down.

"It's about time this tree came down," Edward said softly.

Esme turned to stare gratefully up at the boy's tender eyes. He smiled slightly, in a beautifully crooked way that made her maternal heart melt.

"I'll miss it," Esme added with a nod toward the once magnificent evergreen that she and Edward had chosen together.

She looked sadly back down to the crystal dove that lay in her hand. "Where should I keep this?"

"Carlisle gave it to you, didn't he?" Edward's words were innocently presumptuous, causing Esme to turn her head down in chagrin.

"Not really..." Esme recalled the way Carlisle had opened the box to reveal the ornament to her on Christmas Eve. His behavior had been odd that night, so wonderfully rushed and excited. But he had not given her any reason to assume that the crystal dove did in fact belong to her.

"Well, you can probably assume that he meant it for you," Edward said simply as he reached up to begin tucking the tree's branches down two at a time.

Esme reluctantly set the tiny dove on the mantel and joined in helping him to bind the tree. Her movements were fast and accurate but her mind was miles away, wondering if Edward's words could be believed. The last thing she wanted was to take advantage of Carlisle's kindness under the guise of an honest misunderstanding. He would never say anything if she simply took the ornament as her own, but if she were forward enough to ask him, he would just as likely assure her that it had been meant for her all along.

Edward sighed softly on the other side of the tree, and Esme took it as a subtle hint to quiet her thoughts.

"It's a bit sad to see the holidays end," she remarked. As she tucked two limp evergreen branches down, a cluster of pine needles rained down forlornly on her feet.

"Before you know it they'll be here again," Edward said, brushing some fallen needles off his shoulders. "The years go by quickly around here."

The thought made Esme nervous as much as it delighted her. A whole year with Carlisle and Edward would have seemed so daunting not but several months ago. Now it sounded like the greatest blessing she could ask for. She dearly hoped that Edward's words would prove true. Compared with eternity a year was nothing, but to her mind it still seemed a frustratingly long time to wait for another Christmas. The few days of yuletide magic she had followed until New Year's had been some of the best she had known. Nothing could have been more perfect.

Considering her more recent tension with the doctor, Esme now felt that perfection was slowly fading.

"Esme, you shouldn't' let Carlisle pressure you into doing anything you don't want to do," Edward abruptly interrupted her thought.

"But he wanted to teach me how to carve as a gift," she stated sadly, swallowing hard to suppress her guilt. "I can't refuse his gift."

"You practically already did."

Edward's words stung more than an insect bite and burned more than a flame. Her guilt tripled as she thought back to the things she had said to Carlisle in the cellar earlier that morning, a hidden blush spreading over her cheeks at the realization that she had in fact turned him away without precedent.

"I don't have the patience to do what he does," she admitted with shame, picking idly at the loose pine needles until they fell. "My hands just weren't made for carving."

"Then explain that to him."

I tried.

Edward stepped around the side of the tree to face her, eye to eye.

"Esme, you know Carlisle by now. The way you might explain something to me is far different than how you would go about explaining it to him. Sometimes, with Carlisle, you need to be a little more..." He gave a small shrug. "...blunt."

Esme crumbled a few pine needles in her bare hands, releasing their intoxicating scent into the air. The memories of their Christmas together blazed before her like a new fire in the hearth, taunting her with the joy that now seemed so unattainable.

I'm so afraid of hurting him any more than I already have, she murmured through her mind.

Edward smiled in understanding. "He'll get over it as long as he knows you don't hate him."

Everything he does makes me feel guilty, she thought hopelessly.

"He feels the same way about you sometimes."

Edward's response was not so unexpected, but for some reason it still surprised her. More than that, it heightened her regret.

Why is this happening? She wondered, resisting the urge to toss a branch on the ground in her frustration. We were all doing so well...

"That's what happens with families, Esme. They have problems," Edward said, his voice effortlessly carrying the tone of wisdom that his father so often displayed. "No family can please you every day, especially when you have an eternity to live with them."

An eternity to live with Carlisle. How could she forgive herself for mistreating him in the slightest way when they had such a long life ahead of them?

Esme's head fell into her hands.

Oh, I wish I hadn't refused him the way I did. What came over me?

Edward came up beside her with a warm hand on her shoulder. "If I know one thing about Carlisle, it's that he's always willing to forgive." He chuckled to himself and gave her arm a teasing poke. "In fact, he may beg you for your forgiveness if you aren't quick enough to ask him for it first."

They shared a moment of soft laughter, careful to remain quiet enough that Carlisle would not hear them from the cellar. Esme's laughter was genuine but quick to fade, leaving Edward to stare at her hopefully before making further conversation.

"Would you like to go hunting with me for a while?" he finally asked, nodding in the direction of the snowy window. "I was thinking of running up to Ottawa this morning."

Esme cast a longing glance out the window where the frozen lake shimmered under a faded watercolor sun. She knew the fresh blood would be likely to help her irritability, but her fear more than pride was what kept her from accepting Edward's offer.

"I'm not sure that I can... It's just that the weather has been warmer..." She struggled to imply that people may be walking about in the forest, hoping that Edward would catch the message in her thoughts before she had to finish her sentence.

"It's alright," he assured her quickly, cutting off the subject before she could feel uncomfortable. "I can bring you something on my way back if you'd like."

She offered him a small smile of relief. Thank you. I would appreciate that, Edward.

He kissed her softly on the side of her forehead, and the gesture shocked her with its unexpected sweetness. With one last word of goodbye, he grabbed his jacket and bound the final branches of the Christmas tree before dragging it out the back door with him. She watched from the threshold as he trudged through the snow with their dying tree, carrying it back to its old home in the forest.

A peaceful cloud of silence settled into the room as she savored the last whiff of sweet pine scent before it trailed away. Turning back into the house, Esme's feet carried her right back to the place where Carlisle's crystal dove ornament was still perched on the mantel of the fireplace. It seemed appropriate to be displayed at a greater height where it could watch the room from above. On top of the fireplace it was perfectly placed to catch the flickering lights from the fire and the soft light from the curtained windows across the room. She watched for a while as it sparkled in shades of bright blue and fiery orange, and the longer she watched, the more she liked its new location. It may not have been the top of a tree, but it was a nice place to keep it for the rest of the year. There it could sit from its high perch with the promise to keep the subtle spirit of Christmas through the months ahead.

That crystal dove was the only way Esme felt she could cling to the beautiful times she had spent with Edward and Carlisle during the Christmas season.

With the parlor looking so empty without the tree in the corner, she was reminded of how difficult moving on could be.

As she took in another deep breath of the lingering pine, the rich scent began to change, becoming softer, more stirring...

Esme braced both hands about her cheeks in surprise as the doors to the parlor flew open, and Carlisle stormed into the room, clutching a letter in one hand and an envelope in the other.

He did not spare her a second glance as he entered, heading straight for the fireplace. The flames shuddered anxiously at his approach; even the fire seemed to be frightened at his uncharacteristic entrance.

Taking a step back, Esme found a safe spot behind an armchair and cautiously asked, "What is it?"

Carlisle's shoulders rose and fell with a drastic sigh as he abruptly tore the letter into tiny pieces and tossed them along with the envelope into the flames.

"The Volturi," he answered darkly. "Again."

Having never heard any news of the Volturi before, Esme's face scrunched up in confusion. "What do they want?"

"Me," Carlisle replied, the word nothing more than a deep black hole. He leaned closer to the fire, hands gripping the mantel as he watched the papers burn. "And they're curious about Edward."

"How do they know about him?" Esme demanded.

"I've revealed in my letters to Aro that I'd found a companion," he said, the regret evident even in his profile. "I thought it would stop them from asking me to join them if they knew I had company here."

A shiver of fright touched the back of her neck. "Do they know about me?"

"No," he said with a severity that shocked her. "And I won't be telling them either." He watched the letter burning to ashes in the fireplace with a frightening gleam of carnality in his eyes. His demeanor was dark, brooding, so unlike how she had ever seen him behave before.

"For Heaven's sake, Carlisle," she exclaimed breathlessly, her voice still tinged with regretful irritation at him from earlier. "Their letters must not be very polite for you to become so hassled over them."

He let out an ironic laugh. "You don't understand Esme; the only reason they want Edward and me is out of their own fear." She noticed his knuckles swelling as he tightened his hold on the mantel by his head. "They fear me being out in the world this way. They fear that my lifestyle will spread."

"That's nothing to fear at all!" she argued.

"For them it is! They cannot have vampires like me, waltzing around in all parts of the world, pretending to be human. It puts our kind at risk, and I am not denying that. It does put us at risk." His voice lowered as if only now realizing the seriousness of that risk. "Every day I show my face at the hospital I put us at risk."

"Then the Volturi want you to join them so that they can...convert you," she guessed, knowing and dreading that her guess was correct.

He nodded solemnly, his fingers brushing the place where the crystal dove sat on the mantel above. "For decades they've been trying."

"So send them a letter back!" she said vehemently, rushing up to the fireplace beside him, waving forth a wild hand for encouragement. "Tell them to hell with it!"

His face showed the faintest bit of shock at her use of language, then after a short moment he chuckled with derision.

"I've sent letters, Esme. Every time I've written them, I've declined Aro's offers. But it is impossible to reason with Aro once he has his mind set on something." He turned towards the fire again, watching the flames with a disturbingly intense look in his eyes. His face blazed in the golden light, and though he may have looked twice as handsome, he also looked twice as threatening. "I do not believe Aro is an evil man by any means," he continued, "but his lust for power keeps him from sympathizing with anyone but himself."

Esme began to grow more uneasy as his accent strengthened, and the more he spoke, the less contractions he seemed to employ in his wording. Carlisle's anger, among other strong emotions, seemed to manifest itself through a retreat to an old-fashioned manner of speaking. It was not by coincidence that every time he perceived a threat or was faced with a stressful situation, he began to sound ever more like the 17th Century Englishman he truly was.

Though it made him frustratingly attractive in the face of distress, seeing him such a flustered mess also broke her heart.

"I understand that, Carlisle," she began compassionately, "but that doesn't give you any reason to be so angry about it."

"Forgive me for what I am about to say, Esme, but I do not believe you do understand this. My situation is far more complicated than what you believe it to be." His voice was shaking slightly as he turned to face her, his eyebrows drawn in pity. "You have no idea how deep this goes."

"Well, you could tell me what's really bothering you so much, and maybe then I could help you," she said forcefully. It was a risk to speak to Carlisle in such a manner, but she felt in that moment that it was the only way to get through to him. If anything, she hoped that by helping him with this problem she might redeem herself for her behavior earlier that day… but she wasn't off to a very good start.

He gave an irritable little sigh – such a small sound, nearly insignificant – yet it felt like she had been struck by a knitting needle in the heart. "I know you're trying to offer your aid in good respect, Esme, but I cannot accept it. Not for this." He shook his head hopelessly, hiding his fingers in the back of his hair. "It's...it's simply too much to explain to you."

Hurt by the way he had verbally brushed her aside, Esme backed slowly away from where Carlisle stood. Part of her supposed that he only wanted to spite her for how she had refused his help earlier that day in the carving studio, but she did not wish to believe that Carlisle could be capable of resorting to such immature means for revenge.

Immediately he saw how his hastiness had affected her, and his face became twisted in painful apology.

"I didn't mean it like that—"

"No," she interrupted in a dry, calm voice she barely recognized as her own. "You don't have to justify anything. You've made yourself perfectly clear. You don't need any help from me." Her back straightened rigidly as she smoothed her hands coolly over her skirt and backed toward the door. "Excuse me."

Before she could hear the plea she knew was coming, she was upstairs, behind her bedroom door with her hands firmly locked around the handle, breathing hard.

After roughly a minute of silence, the sudden, shocking sound of the back doors flinging open urged her to race toward the window. The last thing she saw was a distant fleck of bright blond hair as Carlisle disappeared into the forest.

She should have been angry with him for leaving her in the house all alone, but she couldn't help but fear that through her behavior she had sent the message that this was what she wanted.

Hadn't that been what she had desired from the beginning of the day? She wanted Carlisle to leave her in peace, and now that was just what he had done.

The house felt so empty without either Carlisle or Edward inside it. The coldness from outside seemed to seep through the windows, creeping like fingers of ice into her heart. She thought she could see shadows moving towards her, thought she could hear disturbing noises from the attic. Every gust of wind set her on edge, every change in the air's scent made her panic.

She thought of running out after him, but her pride was already too wounded for that.

Instead, Esme's feet carried her right back down two flights of stairs into the cellar that was still alight with candles and the aroma of freshly carved wood.

What she saw on the table she had abandoned that morning made her stop in her tracks.

Every last wooden shaving had been scraped away, leaving behind a flawlessly smooth surface of wood. A perfect pair of hands now blossomed out of the wooden block, the curves and details of the fingers and knuckles exactly as they had been before she had made the one mistake that ruined them. Her eyes roamed over the piece of art in utter amazement, blinking repeatedly every few seconds to be sure that the sight was not just a trick of the unpredictable candlelight.

In a final beckoning for proof, Esme reached out to let her fingers touch the carving Carlisle had finished for her when she had given up.

And she began to sob.


A/N:

You may read Carlisle's POV of this chapter in Behind Stained Glass, "Chapter 28: A Dungeon with Velvet Curtains".