Thank you all so much for the reviews for the last chapter. It was great to hear from so many of you. I really do appreciate your reviews.

Good news — Gredelina1 has now read/heard (I double up as an audiobook for her) the full story, and she's invested in me writing the sequel. so there will be someone nudging me along. I have a story to finish for my Marvel series and two more to write after, but then I will be free to come back to Twilight to write the sequel. Extra good news — for me — she handled the brutal cliffhanger ending like a pro and did not threaten to kill me, so hopefully you won't either.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Carlisle

Jasper met me at the edge of the forest, where Alice had directed me to find Edward, his eyes wary.

"How is he?" I asked.

"It's bad. I've never seen or felt him like this before, Carlisle. It's like he's not even Edward anymore."

I thought I had more insight into what I would be faced with when I saw my son, as I had seen him in the aftermath of something like this, though far less extreme, and had seen his regret. But this was clearly worse.

The day Edward had returned to Esme and I after four years of living alone and feeding on humans was one mingled with joy and sadness. It had been a stormy night, and his knock on our door had mingled with the thunder rumbling above. I had opened the door, and his face had been thrown into sharp relief by a flash of lightning. His red eyes had been dark with pain and regret, his conscience still paining him for the lives he had taken, though his victims had been the worst of humanity. I had led him inside without a word spoken aloud, my welcome and happiness at his return given in my thoughts, and then enveloped him in my arms and held him as he accepted my happy reaction to his return.

That had been a dark day for him, but this was going to be worse. It hadn't been a carefully chosen victim whose death had been a method to save other lives from being taken and destroyed as well as to sate his thirst; it had been Bella, and the cost could have been far greater.

He had almost taken the woman I loved from me. He would have had she not been my own miracle.

"I'll speak to him," I said.

"He's by the waterfall. He won't let any of us near him now. Carlisle… try to be gentle."

I frowned. "Have you ever known me to be anything but with him? Can't you feel it?"

"No, you seem calm, and Alice hasn't looked as she thought it should be between you and him, but emotions can change in a moment, and it was Bella. He drained her. She should have…"

"He did, and she should by all rules of nature," I agreed. "And if she had, the cost would have destroyed me, but she is alive. And this is not a stranger or enemy that needs to pay for what he did. Edward is my son."

If Bella had truly died, I didn't know how I could have carried on living myself if she was gone forever. I knew that I would not have sought to end Edward, though. What had happened to Bella had been a product of a choice I had made eighty years ago when I decided to accede to Elizabeth Masen's pleas and change him. I had created a vampire, and it had been the vampire that had bitten Bella. Edward was so much more than that, and I knew he would never hurt Bella willingly. He had not been in control. I could not blame him for that; I loved him too much to hold his actions against him, even though it had been Bella that was his victim.

He stared at me for a moment and then said, "He is. I'm sorry." I patted his arm, and he said, "I'll go home and help them get things ready."

I didn't ask what he meant as my need to go to Edward was more pressing, and I didn't wait for him to leave before I set off running towards the roar of the waterfall where I would find my son.

I followed his scent, slowed my approach, and walked towards him, seeing him flinch, as I reached for him and stopped. He was sitting on a boulder, facing away from me, his head in his hands.

"Hello, Edward."

It seemed to take supreme effort for him to raise his head, to reveal his red-tinged eyes.

"Are you here to kill me?" he said, his voice cracked with emotion and barely audible over the sound of the water pitching to the river from six-hundred feet above.

"No!" I gasped. "How can you even ask? Edward, you are my son!"

"I killed her."

"I know that, but she lives now. Perhaps I would feel different if she had died, but I would never kill you. I love you, son."

He looked awed and then huffed a laugh. "Even after all these years, all you have given and shown me, I still don't see just how good a man you are. I don't think any other man or woman could forgive what I did. Carlisle, I don't deserve you."

I perched on the boulder beside him and placed my hand on his arm. "She's okay, Edward."

He drew a shaky breath, "I took her life, ended it; I drained the blood out of her and stopped her heart."

I flinched as the words sank in, and I imagined the scene, and then I summoned calm.

"And I did not even allow her the change," he went on. "I crushed her heart."

"I do not believe it would have worked," I said. "Alice told me before I came exactly what happened. The fact the venom spread and did not restart her heart means it would not have worked, no matter what injury she received in your heroic efforts to save her. Her heart failed from blood loss, and the venom did not restart it. It was a minute chance that it would have anyway. She was not changed, no, but she did not die." Not forever… I added mentally, and he flinched. "She's okay, Edward," I reminded him. "Shaken up, obviously, but better than we have any right to expect. Look, see."

I concentrated on how she had looked when I eventually left her to rest, her small smile. I didn't even conceal the kiss to my cheek that she'd given me at her door from him. I wanted him to know.

He stared at me and then seemed to come back to life with a jerk. Whatever he had seen in my mind, and it seemed to be more than just Bella, had reached him somehow.

"You really do forgive me," he said, his voice a mere breath that would have been lost to a human with the roar of the falls.

"I do," I said. "I won't pretend that I wasn't angry when I saw what you'd done, but I understand thirst and temptation. It was the freshly spilled blood of your singer. No one could have resisted, not even you with your hard-won control."

I took a breath and prepared to raise the painful topic of what had to come next, but he spoke first.

"I know I have to leave. I think I will go to Alaska."

"Tanya will be there," I reminded him.

He laughed softly. "After what I did, having the discomfort of Tanya's advances is the least of what I deserve. I shouldn't be alone, and the Denalis are the only ones that will support my diet. After tasting human blood again…"

"It might be harder for you," I finished for him. "Yes. But you will overcome it."

"I will," he vowed, getting to his feet. "I should go now."

I wished I could tell him to stay. I wanted him close to me, but he did need to leave. Delaying the parting was only going to hurt us all, and the sooner Esme accepted what was going to happen, the better. She was the one that was going to suffer with this loss the most.

We walked together out of the vast field where we had recently played baseball and then broke into a run. He kept his pace with me, though he could have outstripped me if he wanted. Even at my pace, we were soon back at the house where voices were speaking inside and the sounds of a lot of movement.

I opened the door and entered first, taking a moment to survey the industrious preparations that had been made since I'd been there last, before stepping aside for Edward to follow me.

His head was bowed and his face shamed, but he quickly looked up and asked, "What's happening?" when he saw the changes to the room.

The furniture was covered with dust cloths, and there were bags piled at the foot of the stairs. Even as we stood there, Emmett went to the control panel on the wall, and the steel shutters fell over the windows.

"What's happening?" Edward asked again.

"We're leaving," Rosalie said, a touch of annoyance in her voice.

"No!" Edward said. "You can't! I am going alone."

"You're not," Esme said, flitting across the room to him and cupping his face in her hands. "We've all agreed that it's the right thing to do. The divorce story means we have a good excuse, and you won't be left alone."

Edward opened his mouth, but Emmett said, "No point arguing, Edward. It's happening. Alice has seen it," before he could speak.

"She can't have," Edward said. "I won't let this happen."

Alice shrugged her small shoulders. "You don't get to decide. We do. We all want this. You shouldn't be alone." Her eyes fell on me and became sad. "It's for the best."

I nodded slightly. I didn't want to lose them all, but my need for Edward to have the support and love of his family with him was more important to me than what I wanted for myself. This was the right thing for them to do. It would not be forever. We would reunite again; we always did.

"We're going to Vermont—Carlisle's Burlington house," Esme said. "We've never been there before."

I last lived in Burlington before I moved to Chicago in 1917. It was perfect for them. Though smaller than our Forks house, it was big enough for them and old enough that Esme would be able to occupy herself renovating it to our usual standard of living.

For their standard of living. It would be their home. For the first time since 1918, I would be alone.

No, not alone. I would be with Bella.

"I've got most of your stuff from your room, but you might want to take a look and see if I've forgotten anything important," Alice said.

Edward stared at her for a moment, seeming to be communicating with her, and then he darted up the stairs.

I looked from beloved face to beloved face of my family and then whispered too low for Edward to hear, "Thank you for doing this for him."

"We're doing it for you, too," Jasper replied. "You and Bella need time and space, and Bella needs to feel safe."

"And we'll stay in touch," Esme said, her face sad. "We even could meet halfway for hunting trips sometimes if we have enough time. It's not forever."

I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around her. I held her close for a moment and then pulled back. "It won't be forever," I promised.

She nodded and patted my cheek. "Try not to worry about us. Take this chance to concentrate wholly on her. You can make this time work for you both."

"Yes," Alice said with an enigmatic smile. "After all, you both have all the time in the world."

Emmett laughed. "Yeah, it's definitely not going to be forever. I heard the story from Alice, but I want to hear some of it from Bella one day. I mean, being a vampire means we've been limited in what we've been able to do all these years, the things we could experience. Living three hundred years as a human means lots of stories." He rubbed his hands together. "It's going to be awesome."

"It is," Alice agreed happily.

"It will in part," I said. "But I am sure Alice didn't tell you all of Bella's story is a happy one. She has suffered. We must take care with that."

"We will," Emmett said. "But the rest of it… It's going to be great, Carlisle."

I looked at him, imagining that day in the future when my family could be reunited and Bella shared with them all, and I smiled. It was going to be complicated as Edward's thirst for her wasn't going to disappear, but we would find a way to make it work.

If I had my wish, and Bella and I were together, she would become be a part of my family.

So… Was that what you expected between Carlisle and Edward? And how do you feel about the family leaving Forks? I ordinarily wouldn't like it in a story as I love the whole family, but this isn't a romance between young people the way an Edward/Bella is. I think they needed their space.

Until next time…

Simaril xxx