Chapter 30 – The Loneliness of Grief

We go out for an early dinner after the gymnastics meet, taking up two tables at the Italian place near the gym. Angela comes too, Carlisle joins us after he's finished at the hospital, and then Edward and Bella and Eliza arrive and pull up another couple of chairs. It's a big, chaotic family gathering with all the children, noisy and messy and full of laughter, and I try and let it soothe over the ache in my soul. I'm not sure how well it works.

Alice and Jasper come back to my house afterwards. They play with the kids and help with bath time, and then curl up with the older kids to watch a movie. I watch for a little while, and then lie down with Bram and Zeke and settle them in bed. They're exhausted after only napping briefly at the gym and it doesn't take long before they're sound asleep. I swap out some laundry and empty the dishwasher, and then bathe Holly in the kitchen sink while Alice and Jasper finish up the movie and then shepherd Daisy, Mac and Noah up to bed.

I lay Holly on a rug on the living room floor to dress her and then stretch out beside her, holding up a set of plastic keys. She grabs at them, kicking her legs and rolling from side to side, although she can't quite flip herself over yet. I nudge her until she tips over onto her belly and she immediately pushes up on her forearms and smiles at me.

"Look at little baby muscles here!" Alice jumps down the last of the stairs and comes on to the floor beside me and starts making faces at Holly. The baby strains upwards to look at her, enraptured. "Are you going to grow up and be a gymnast like your big sister?"

Holly straightens her arms and leans sideways, until the weight of her oversized head tips her sideways and she rolls onto her back. She smiles at me and reaches for the keys, and I hold them until she can grip one and bring it to her mouth.

"She might have to take a few lessons before she's doing what Daisy does," I say dryly, as Holly misses her mouth and bonks herself in the forehead with her toy.

"Daisy is absolutely amazing," Alice declares, sitting up and hugging her knees. "Watching her today was so cool – I can't believe how good she is!"

"She did great today," I say with a grin.

"So what's her goal here? Are we going to be watching her in the Olympics in a few years?"

I groan. "Alice, she's eight. Who knows? I can't even think ahead to the end of next week, let alone plan out Daisy's gymnastics future for the next decade."

Alice giggles. "I know it's asking a lot…but she's really good!"

"Yeah, she is," I acknowledge. "And if she keeps on the way she is, I guess elite gymnastics could be a possibility for her…if she doesn't get an injury, if puberty doesn't do a number on her body, if she gets noticed by the right people, if she stays focussed, if she doesn't want to go and try cheerleading or basketball or theatre or chess or swing dancing or raising prize winning miniature donkeys or…"

"Okay, okay, point taken!" Alice shakes her head.

I grin. "Right now, this is fun for her. She works really hard at it, but it's all her call - she wants to do gymnastics more than she wants to do anything else, so I do what I can to support her. I'm not pushing this. And realistically…I mean you saw what it was like today, trying to wrangle all the boys and the baby while Daisy does her thing. It sucked. So I don't even know if, practically…well, I'll figure it out if I have to, but it would be a massive commitment that would impact everyone."

I look back down at Holly, not saying the rest of it. I never wanted to be doing this by myself. Six of them…there is so much to do and I don't know how it's possible for me to do it on my own. It's hard enough to get the laundry done and make sure there's always peanut butter and formula in the pantry, without having to plan out a fucking elite sports career for an eight year old!

"Mom and Dad will help you. And if you need help with extra coaching, or getting her into some good training clinics or whatever, just let us know. We'd love to help!"

"Like you have any money," I snort.

"Well, no," Alice grins. "Admittedly Jasper and I didn't choose the most lucrative of careers. Costume design is something of a labour of love at this point! But if you ever needed anything, we'd try."

"I know, and thanks. But financially I'm okay for now. Actually," I pause. "The truth is, I've got more money than I've ever had in my life. It feels really weird. Rosalie died and I got her life insurance payout and all her retirement money and even access to her trust fund...it's kind of disgusting."

"Rosalie was always practical," Alice says. "She'd be glad that everything she put into place worked out and you're all taken of."

"Oh yeah," I say hastily. "I mean, it's good and everything, because I certainly need it – I pay Angela more to watch the kids than I make at the moment. I don't even know what I'd be doing if I couldn't do that." I pull a corner of the blanket over Holly's face for a moment, then lift it in a game of peek-a-boo. "Hey Jellybean? We'd all be grifting in the streets without Mommy's money, wouldn't we?"

"Weren't you lucky to find Angela though?" Alice says, taking over my game of peek-a-boo and making Holly laugh with her exaggerated faces of surprise. "I've heard all about her from Daisy, and Bella says she's amazing too, and they were absolutely right! I was so happy to meet her today."

"She's great," I say. "The kids love her, and she's really good with them."

"You guys all seem to be doing pretty well with her here," Alice says.

I nod. "She's really helped me pull it together here at home. She takes great care of the kids, which is the most important thing, but she's gone above and beyond in a lot of other ways. She likes cooking, so she's written up a monthly meal plan and organised a system for grocery shopping, and she's really good at helping the kids through their homework and teaching the babies how to be real people." I grimace. "They're not chewing each other's faces off on her watch."

"What about you?" Alice asks, a little hesitantly. "How are you really doing? You seem a little bit…better."

"I guess you get used to anything," I say, a little bleakly. "Even this."

"Oh Em, I'm sorry." Alice shakes her head. "But it is getting a little bit easier to live with?"

"Well, I don't wish I was dead every day now, so…" I half laugh and then take a deep breath and say seriously, "It's different now. And yeah, some parts of it are easier. I'm busy enough with the day to day routine that I can't dwell in the past even when I want to – when I've got three dirty diapers to change and a bottle to make up and five kids that need toast and oatmeal and clean clothes before the school bus comes I can't afford to let the grief swamp me. So mostly, I don't; I just suck it up and get on with things. But sometimes…sometimes I can't, and that's…"

I don't finish. I can't tell her about the dreams, about the rage, about the howling monster of grief that sometimes rears up and seizes me in its claws and rips me open all over again.

"I wish there was more I could do," Alice says.

"Look, it's okay, and I'm glad you guys are here tonight. It's really nice to have company…that can talk, I mean!" I say, looking down at Holly who kicks her legs energetically and smiles at me. "Not that you're not good company in your own way Jellybean, but you're not exactly a conversationalist." I look back at Alice and say slowly, "I just really miss her. Like, it's not always as brutal and sharp and savage as it was at the start, but when it comes down to it she was my best friend and I miss her. We shared a life, and now it feels like half of me is gone too. I mean, we were together since we were sixteen, and in that whole time I think the longest we were ever apart was five weeks. And that was only once, that time I broke my foot when we were skiing and I couldn't drive up to visit her at college! All the time she was at college we had weekends together, and since then we only ever had a few days apart because of conferences or something like that. Now it's coming up on five months that I've been on my own and that's just…sometimes it feels like I lost her yesterday, and sometimes it feels like I've been living this way for a thousand years."

Alice looks troubled. "It sounds so lonely."

I shrug, because she's right. It is lonely. A strange kind of loneliness, when I'm surrounded by the needy company of my children most of the day, when I have friends and family all willing to do anything…and yet no one can quite touch my solitary grief.

"It's okay," I say at last. "Esme and Carlisle are here a lot, and work's picking up now so I'm spending a lot of time at the shop with Jonah and with clients. The kids keep me busy, and during the week Angela usually stays until the boys are in bed. By the time I read with Daisy and play with Holly and get her settled, I pretty much just head to bed myself. I'm dealing with it."

Alice frowns slightly. "What about Edward and Bella? Has something happened there? I noticed at dinner that you didn't really talk much to either of them."

I shift uncomfortably. Alice always sees so much. "Nothing's happened."

"But…?" Alice prompts. "Come on Emmett, what's going on?"

"They're busy, I'm busy, and…and I know that I'm being fucking stupid, but right now I can barely stand being around them," I say defiantly. "And I know how fucked up that is. But Bella is getting bigger now and I can't see that pregnant belly without thinking…remembering…and I can't do it. I can't." I feel my teeth on my knuckles. "Right now, I look at Bella and I think about death. I see her belly and I see…I see blood in a birth pool and Rosalie cold and still, and I think about babies without their mommas and that's too hard Alice. I don't have it in me to deal with that. So I avoid it whenever I can. And I know it's not fair. Not to them, and not to me because damned if I don't miss them…but nothing about this is fair."

I lay my head back against the sofa wearily. I hate this emotional minefield! Because I didn't just lose Rosalie when she died – I lost whole huge pieces of myself too, and the raw places left behind are torturous.

"I'm sorry," Alice says softly. She crawls over and sits beside me, leaning against my arm. "I love you."

"It's all right. And it's not like Edward and I don't still talk and text a fair bit. It's just a bit more distant and…well, it's just one more fucked up thing in this fucked up situation, but at least this one has an end point. In a couple of months Bella will have the baby and we'll go back to normal," I sigh. "I'm sorry to lay all this on you! Really, I just wanted to hang out and have some fun with you this weekend, not start spilling my guts all over the place!" I smile ruefully.

Alice laughs. "That's okay – it's what I'm here for! Gosh Emmett, how much crap have we gone through together in our lives? We'll get through this too." She picks up Holly and kisses her, smiling at me over her curly head. "Do you remember telling me once, right after Daisy was born, that you loved me first? That before everything else, you loved me first…well the same is true for me. I loved you first, and I'll always love you. So spill your guts all you want; I'm here to listen. And only listen," Alice says guiltily. "I was too quick to jump in with the advice and believing I know best back at Christmas time, and I'm sorry for that."

"Don't worry about it. You were right…about the drinking at least." I give her a shamefaced look. "I was falling pretty hard and I didn't even care; all I wanted was to not feel anything for a while, and that was the easiest way. But you were right that I had to stop it."

I don't tell her how hard it was. How hard it sometimes still is, when the kids are all asleep and I'm alone in the quiet house with the dreams of Rosalie looming ahead of me in the night, not to reach for the one easy source of numbness that I have available to me.

"Well I'm glad about that," Alice says. "Because while I'm sorry I gave you a hard time, I actually do think I was right about everything! Okay, maybe it was a bit too soon to bring up the idea of you dating again, but you just don't seem like the kind of person who's meant for a life of singlehood and celibacy."

I half laugh and then sigh. "Well, that's the way it's going to go I guess. Because as much as I miss having sex – and you're the one who brought this up, not me! – I can't even imagine it with anyone but Rosalie. And really Alice-I'm a thirty-five year old dad of six, with a currently half-assed career, a broken heart and enough baggage to sink an aircraft carrier…who would even go there? I'm not exactly a great catch!"

"Oh, I think you'd be surprised," Alice says lightly. "There are all kinds of people in this world Emmett, and I can pretty much guarantee that when you open your eyes and start looking around you're going to find more women than you expect who will want everything you have to offer."

I know she means well, but I can't see it. Rosalie was my world – how could anyone, ever, replace her?

Before I can tell her that she's wrong, Jasper comes wandering in from the kitchen. "Brownie?" he offers, passing me a bowl.

"I have brownies?" I take it eagerly.

He grins. "You had a box of brownie mix and an oven, and I have two hands and the ability to read a recipe. Add in some hunger to motivate me and here we are."

"Delicious," I say through a mouthful. "If ever you decide academia isn't for you, you could open a brownie bar…for god's sake Alice, Holly can't eat brownies or ice cream yet so don't even try."

We drift into other subjects then, talking and laughing and playing with the baby while a game plays on the tv in the background. It's relaxed, and fun, and easy in a way that so little in my life is.

Alice was not wrong when she said my life was lonely. Sometimes it is. During the day I'm so busy, and there are the kids and Angela and Jonah and Carlisle and Esme and work, I don't have time to think that much. But the nights, when the big kids are asleep and I have only the tv and baby Holly for company, can be hard to get through when I have nothing to distract me from my memories and loss. I treasure the respite Alice and Jasper offer me, even if it is only for a weekend.

I don't want it to end, but eventually Alice yawns and stretches. "We should go to bed," she says. "I'm really tired…will you help me make up the bed in the guest room?"

"Sure." I hand Holly over to Jasper and follow Alice to the spare room. There's a bunch of crap on the sofa bed, school projects from the kids and a pile of outgrown clothes from Bram and Zeke and Holly that I've thrown in here because I couldn't be bothered dealing with them yet, and I quickly begin bundling everything together and moving it out of the way.

"Sorry, I meant to do something with all this before you got here," I say, slightly embarrassed. "I need to go through the clothes and figure out what to do with it. What do I keep for Holly to grow into, what do I chuck, what goes to Goodwill…Bella might want the baby clothes, I don't know. It's just another one of those things that I wouldn't have done, before…" My voice fades.

"It's all right, don't worry about it. I can help you go through them tomorrow if you want – you know I'm good at organising clothes!" Alice says, reaching into the closet. "Do I use these blue sheets? Or the…oh my god!"

I drop a handful of clothes at her sudden shriek. "What?"

"Is this…are you…are you keeping Rosalie in the linen closet?" Alice backs out of the closet, her eyes like saucers and the copper and brass urn containing Rosalie's ashes held gingerly in her hands.

It's not exactly funny, but Alice's shocked face and the incongruity of it make me laugh anyway. "Yeah, why? Is that wrong?"

"Well, it seems a little…undignified?" Alice says with a giggle. "I mean, the linen closet? This urn is a work of art, it really looks like it should be on display."

"A work of art…that holds the remains of my dead wife." I shrug, picking up the dropped onesies and tossing them onto the desk with the rest of the clothes. "I didn't know what to do with it. I put it on the mantlepiece when I first got it back from the mortician, but Bram and Zeke kept trying to get it and it really bothered Noah to have to look at it all the time. So I put it in here, out of the way."

I don't say how much it had bothered me too. The urn sitting there on the mantlepiece had been a constant, inescapable reminder that the body of the woman I loved, the body I had cherished and adored, was now nothing but ash. The truth was I had been relieved when Noah asked me to take it away and I'd had an excuse to hide the urn where I didn't have to see it anymore.

Alice turns the urn thoughtfully in her hands. "I never even thought about what you actually do with the ashes if you keep them like this."

I reach past Alice into the closet and pull down the sheets, unfurling them over the sofa bed. "I didn't either. It all seems kind of macabre…am I keeping them as a souvenir?"

"You could scatter them somewhere?" Alice suggests.

"I've thought about it." I tuck in the sheets and spread the quilt over the top. "I thought maybe I'd do something with the kids, spread them out by the river or something…I don't know though."

It's another decision that seems too hard to make. Too weighty, too final…I'm still not ready to say goodbye. Not really.

I take the urn from Alice and gently replace it in the closet.