Chapter 20 – Merry Fucking Christmas

Nights are the worst. Who am I kidding, it's all the worst, but nights are their own special kind of hell. That big bed, that was always ours…I hate getting into it alone. Even though I crave the oblivion of sleep there is always a part of me that dreads it, knowing what horrors are lurking in wait in my dreams. And there is always that moment when I drift back into consciousness, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, as I reach out a sleepy arm for Rosalie and have to remember all over again that she's dead and gone and I am alone.

I feel it even more on Christmas Eve. The kids are so excited that they take ages to settle down in bed. When they're finally asleep Jonah turns up with the trampoline and I find myself wearing a camping headlight and swearing furiously as I try and assemble it in the backyard. Jonah takes pity on me and stays to help out, and then when we're still out there an hour later Jasper grabs a flashlight and comes outside to lend a hand too. As I drop another bolt and crawl around looking for it, cursing as I grope through the grass because it's too dark to see, I can't help thinking that if Rosalie were here this would have been assembled in ten minutes and I'd be inside relaxing with a beer by now.

Eventually we're done and the trampoline stands ready for excited kids to wake up to in the morning. Jonah says thanks but no to my offer of a drink and leaves for home, and Jasper and I head back inside.

"I played Santa and put out all the presents!" Alice says gleefully, waving a hand at the living room, the brightly coloured pile of presents stacked up artfully around the tree, the stockings hung on the mantlepiece stuffed full.

"Thanks, it looks great. We just need to do one final thing." I laugh and reach for the cookies that the kids left out for Santa. I stuff two in my mouth, washing them down the with now room temperature glass of milk, and then take a huge bite out of the third and leave the rest of it on the plate. "There. Now Santa really has been."

Alice giggles and gives me a hug. "This is so cute, you being all Santa-dad!" She picks up the carrot the kids left for the reindeer. "Do I nibble this artistically?"

"That's for the Easter Bunny," I inform her. "Go and chuck that out to Clementine, that'll do it…that's Holly waking up, I'm just going to get her a bottle. You guys should go to bed; the kids are going to be waking you up really early tomorrow."

Holly drinks her bottle slowly, distracted by the glittering presents and sparkling Christmas tree. I rock her gently, mesmerised by the way the twinkling lights shine on her golden hair and blue eyes. My feelings for my tiny daughter are so complicated, but sitting here in the peaceful quiet the love feels like it's winning.

"I don't look at you enough," I say softly, realising that it's true. "You look so much like your mama…you're so beautiful, baby girl." Holly smiles at me around the bottle in her mouth, and my heart catches.

I wish you could see her Rosalie. Our little bonus baby…I wish you were here to see how perfect she is.

Holly is already diapered and swaddled for the night, so once she drifts off to sleep I lay her gently in the bassinet and then take the empty bottle back to the kitchen. As I rinse it out I hear Clementine clattering on the porch and knocking against the back door, and I realise I must have left the baby gate at the top of the porch steps open after putting together the trampoline. I grab an apple and go out to my donkey.

"Shhh," I scold her gently, feeding her the apple and scratching her neck. "You're going to wake everyone up."

Clementine dribbles apple juice over my hand and whiffles agreeably. She leans heavily against my thigh and peers through the open door to the kitchen, and I laugh and push her backwards.

"You're not going inside! Come on, get off the porch." I nudge her along until she reluctantly jumps back down into the yard and I can swing the gate across the top of the steps. "Sorry Clementine," I murmur. "I know the porch used to be yours, but I can't have those little twins falling down the stairs." I lean on the gate and watch the donkey move away, nosing at the grass, a grey shadow in the moonlight as she heads away down towards the river.

I hear it then. Alice and Jasper in the bedroom behind me, their noises muted and muffled but unmistakable, and heat sweeps through me. As quickly and quietly as I can I leave the porch, closing the door behind me and blocking them out, but nothing can block out the feelings that are twisting my stomach.

Overhearing that, feeling like I'm intruding on something intimate even though they don't know I have any idea…it's awkward and uncomfortable and embarrassing, but beyond that I'm choking on the sour taste of jealousy. Because sweet fucking hell…I miss that.

I fall onto my bed, pulling a pillow over my head and jamming my fist against my mouth. Everything aches.

Rosalie, I miss you in a thousand different ways every single day, but right here and now that's a big one. I want you in my arms. I want your mouth on mine. I want your body under my hands. I want your touch on my skin. I want to taste you. I want to feel you, smooth and soft and warm and wet. I want to hear that one particular noise you always make when I do that thing to you. I want to hear you whimper and gasp and moan and then laugh that breathless laugh of contentment when you're done. I want you to touch me, surround me, overwhelm me. I want us to be together, to do all those things that we were so damn good at, to do all those things that make me feel like I'm flying and falling and burning, and doing it all with you.

I want you.

My teeth bite hard into my knuckles as the memories rise up, vivid and powerful and hurtful, of the way Rosalie and I were together. Sex had always been part of that. Hot, frequent, passionate sex – it had always been our love language, through long distance college relationships, infertility, pregnancy, breastfeeding, demanding babies and children and exhausting real-life schedules…somehow we always made it work. Always turned to each other with that same desire and fervour and tenderness, bodies naked and vulnerable, of love expressed physically. Because even though I'm thinking about sex, it was always about love. Love as deep as the ocean, as big as a mountain, as strong and everlasting as the world…love that has no outlet now, because she's gone and I am bereft.


"Santa came! Santa came!"

"He ate our cookies!"

"Daddy, get up!"

I'm jerked into wakefulness by three kids crashing on to my bed, dizzy with joy and excitement.

"We looked in the living room and there are so many presents!" Daisy bounces beside me. "Can we open them now? Please?"

I yawn, reaching for my phone to check the time. It's still pitch black outside but it's just after 6am…good enough. "Yes, okay. But everyone has to be ready; why don't you go and wake Alice and Jasper and I'll sort out the babies?"

It takes five minutes to wake Alice and Jasper and the little twins, and then another couple of minutes while Alice starts her Christmas music playlist going and turns on all the Christmas lights in the living room. Dressed in a candy-striped onesie she's as excited as the kids as they tumble into the living room and pounce on the presents. I give Jasper Holly and her bottle, and then I help the kids sort through gifts and tear off the wrapping. I very deliberately force myself not to think of Rosalie, focussing only on the happiness that's right in front of me.

"And Santa left you a letter!" Alice snatches up the missive I'd worked on so carefully, with its fancy handwriting and elaborate border and illustrations, and passes it to Daisy. "You've got one more present."

"It's a trampoline!" Daisy shrieks. "Santa gave us a trampoline too! It's in the backyard!"

There's a mini stampede as she and Mac and Noah bolt for the door. I grab Bram and Zeke and follow them out, and it's worth every frustrating minute of assembling the stupid thing in the dark when I see their glee as they bounce.

"This is the best Christmas present ever!" Mac shouts at me, and I laugh and cringe simultaneously as Daisy does a somersault and narrowly misses kicking him in the head.

"Yeah, but be careful! No crazy gymnastics tricks Daisy, especially not with the others on there with you." Bram and Zeke are making frantic lunges from my arms towards the trampoline, clearly desperate to join their big brothers and sister. I manoeuvre them in through the opening in the net. "Here, help your brothers."

I'm not sure that it's a good idea having all five kids on the trampoline. Especially considering Bram and Zeke can barely walk on flat, solid ground – what do I really think is going to happen on a bouncy trampoline? But it's hilarious watching them tumble over and roll around giggling as the older kids bounce them heedlessly all over the place. I'm really glad I bought the giant deluxe model with a net.

We stay outside until Zeke headbutts Noah and gives him a blood nose, at which point I realise it's not even 7am and it's freezing cold. Everyone's feet are purple and Daisy's teeth are chattering.

"Inside!" I proclaim, letting Noah bleed all over my sleeve because I don't have anything else to stop up his nose with. "Breakfast time!"

I crank up the heat, give Noah a face washer for his nose, and leave Jasper and Alice toasting waffles while I change some saggy diapers on Bram and Zeke. I make sure everyone's eating breakfast and then take Holly from Alice. The baby was woken earlier than usual by the older kids and is already frowning and waving jerky fists about, her tell-tale tired signs.

"I'll just put her down for a nap," I say. "Save me some waffles!"

I grin at them as I leave the kitchen, but the smile falls from my face as I shut myself in my room. Just for a moment I let myself feel it, the gaping hole of Rosalie's absence and the bone deep sorrow and loneliness and pain it brings with it.

I wish you were here. I miss you so much. I hate doing this without you.

Tears blur my eyes as I change Holly's diaper and swaddle her up like a burrito. I give her a pacifier and lay her down in the bassinet, positioning her stuffed zebra where she can see it and running a hand over her curly blonde head. She smiles around the pacifier and blinks her long dark lashes, already drifting off to sleep.

I don't go back to the kitchen. I go to my bathroom and lock the door, opening up the photos on my phone and scrolling backwards to Christmas last year. A year ago…it feels like a lifetime. My heart cracks wide open as I stare at what I had, and remember how happy we'd been. Bram and Zeke were only a couple of weeks old, younger than Holly is now, Mac and Noah hadn't started school, Daisy was missing her two front teeth…and there was Rosalie. My beautiful Rosalie with her deep blue eyes and glorious face, smiling at the camera, laughing at the kids and pressing her face against mine so we could both fit in the frame. It staggers me to remember how happy we were, and how confidently I had believed it would never end.

I had it all. And now it's gone.

My phone falls from numb fingers and I fold, on my knees on the floor with my forehead pressed against the tiles and my fist in my mouth. Trying to breathe around an agony that in this moment feels as fresh and raw as the first day.

I don't cry. Not this time. Instead I close my eyes and wait for it to pass, because that's all I can do. And by this point, weeks into my nightmare, I know that it will…if I just hold on and endure, this searing pain will ease, back to the dull bleakness that is the best I can hope for.

"Dad? Dad? Are you coming? Your waffles are ready!" Mac bangs on the door.

I swallow hard. "Be there in a sec. I'm just…I'm just having a shower, okay? Keep them for me."

"Okay, but you'd better hurry or Jasper's gonna eat them!"

And once again, there isn't any choice but to keep going. To get to my feet, to keep going moment by moment, to force myself to do what I have to do to take care of them. The same mantra that has echoed throughout my life once again running through my head.

Please let me be enough.

I have a quick shower, and get it together enough that I can smile when I go out to breakfast, and laugh with the kids as I mock fight Jasper over eating the last waffles. We play with the new Christmas toys and I jump on the new trampoline with them, although it nearly does my back in and makes me reflect that I'm definitely not as young as I once was. Once Bram and Zeke wake up from their morning nap everyone gets dressed up in nice Christmas clothes and we head over to Esme and Carlisle's for lunch.

"Mewwy Chwistmas!" Eliza lisps effusively, greeting us at the door. She's wearing an obviously new princess dress and rhinestone tiara, with glittery bracelets laddered up both arms and sparkling plastic rings on every single one of her fingers, and is teetering along in a pair of plastic high heeled shoes.

"Merry Christmas divine Miss Princess!" I scoop her up and give her a hug, smiling over her head at Edward and Bella. "I don't need to ask what you got from Santa, do I?"

Eliza beams at me. "I got this pwincess dwess! And I'm so beautiful now with all my jewels!"

Bella shakes her head. "Can you believe she's my daughter?" she murmurs.

I can't help laughing. Bella has always fallen into the 'no-fuss' category of person and finds Eliza's extravagant sense of style baffling.

"She's gorgeous!" Alice declares. "Come on Eliza, let me do a fancy princess hairstyle on you."

I follow Bram and Zeke as they toddle into the kitchen. Mac and Noah and Daisy are already there, competing to tell Carlisle and Esme everything that Santa bought for them. Jasper carries Holly for me, putting her into the baby swing that Esme has left over by the Christmas tree.

Esme takes a quick break from her cooking to give me a hug. "How are you?" she asks quietly. "Holding up? I know today is going to be hard."

I shrug. "I'm okay." I head towards the fridge. "Do you have any beer?"

"There's some in the garage fridge," she tells me, hesitating for a moment before adding quietly, "But…take it easy today. Please Em."

"Yeah, yeah," I say mildly. "It's just a beer. It's not like the rest of you aren't going to break out the wine over lunch."

I'm being deliberately obtuse though. I know that I'm drinking not just because I enjoy the taste, but because it's a means of dealing with the pain. A couple of drinks lays a gentle numbness over the thought of Rosalie, and makes it easier to laugh with my kids and smile at their happiness with Christmas. A few drinks let me relax, and makes it possible to get through this day without crying. And if Esme doesn't like it and Carlisle tries to steer me away from having another later on…well, that's their issue, not mine.

And it works, more or less. I might overdo it a little bit, and when it's time to go home at the end of the day Alice takes my keys with a very pointed look and drives. But I get through the day and I hold it together until all the kids are in bed, exhausted but happy, and I'm sprawled out on the floor of the living room staring at the Christmas tree lights.

"You need to stop drinking so much." Alice sits quietly by my side.

I roll my head to the side and look at her. "Give me a break. It's Christmas – it's not a big deal."

"I mean it." Alice's eyes are shiny with tears. "It's not just today. If that was all it was I wouldn't care, but you and I both know it's more than that. You can't do it Emmett, you can't go down that path…not after the way we grew up."

"It isn't anything like that."

"Not yet. Maybe not ever. But do you really want to risk it?" Alice touches my shoulder. "I'm not going to lecture you. I know what you've been through, and I understand why you might feel like you need it right now. But you have alcoholism and addiction coming at you from both sides of your family, and your kids need you and when you drink you're not there for them like you should be…I'm just saying this because I love you, I love all of you, and I don't want to see you spiral down any further."

She kisses my forehead and tiptoes quietly away, and I stare at the tree until the lights blur into nothing more than a smear of colour, Rosalie's stocking hanging empty behind it, and try not to think anymore.

Merry fucking Christmas.