*BPOV*
Thirty-eight days. What was it about the passing of Halloween that made the rest of the holidays come barrelling down the track behind it?
My journal went with me everywhere I went these days as I wracked my brain for every last memory, thought, and dream that was worthy of preserving.
Edward always wore a look of curiosity mixed with concern whenever he saw me scrawling away. I knew he wanted badly to ask what I was remembering, but he left me to my thoughts.
Today was Thanksgiving. Charlie was disappointed but not terribly surprised when I told him that I was staying put for the holiday because "finals were coming up, and I needed to study."
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the truth either. I just couldn't face saying goodbye to Charlie again.
The last time I caught up with him, he had updated me that Billy had clapped him on the shoulder in congratulations and told him that of course he would be welcomed by the tribe.
Billy had also cautioned Charlie that Leah had made no secret of her disapproval of the union so soon after her father's passing. And that she wouldn't appreciate being asked to participate in a large tribal ceremony that was customary according to Quileute tradition.
Taking that into consideration, their future elopement made perfect sense.
Naturally, Esme insisted on making a whole Thanksgiving feast just for me, which I only consented to once she agreed to let me help in the kitchen, clean up afterward, and donate the leftovers to the food kitchen in town.
I valued the opportunity to be able to spend the day shoulder to shoulder with Esme chatting about literally everything.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I got called into the principal's office because Edward and Rosalie's bickering got so bad that even their teachers began to notice?"
My eyes widened in shock. My flawlessly polite Edward had been in trouble at school?! "No!" I gasped in disbelief.
She tucked her chin and made a stern face, imitating the deep male voice of some long-dead school principal.
"Is everything alright at home, Mrs. Cullen? Edward and Rosalie can't seem to get along. We can't make any sense of it. All Rosalie has to do is look at him and they erupt into vicious name-calling matches. Maybe you ought to have Mr. Cullen get that son of yours back in line…"
I imagined Edward and Rosalie sitting outside the principal's office while Esme was outwardly mortified and inwardly furious as any parent would be to sit across the desk from a politely concerned school administrator.
Rosalie would mentally taunt him while Edward hissed and snarled. And then the door would creak open and Esme's heels would click in measured steps across the linoleum floor. She would take them both by the ear and drag them home behind her. I giggled hysterically at the absurdity of it.
"We need to hang out more, Esme. You have the best stories," I threw an arm around her waist and hugged her to my side. She froze for the briefest of moments, surprised by the casual contact, but then hugged me back as tightly as she dared.
"There's plenty more where that came from," she chuckled as she took a piece of butcher's twine and tied the legs of the immaculately dressed, enormous 24-pound turkey.
"In she goes," Esme murmured as she slid the bird into the hot oven and shut the door.
"I don't know how you humans have the patience to wait eight hours for a single meal to finish cooking, but who am I to argue with tradition?" She laughed lightly as she started peeling a sack of potatoes.
The vegetable peeler moved in a shapeless blur in her hand. The brown peels seemed to fly off the spuds as if of their own accord.
"Do you ever get lonely with Carlisle at the hospital so much and the others off at school?"
Esme looked thoughtful for a moment before she answered. "I used to be envious of the amount of the human contact the rest of them all get. But then I watched them all having to take the same tests on the same subjects...year after year, school after school, like Groundhog Day on repeat. I realized that I'm the lucky one.
"I only ever have to do what I love. I've owned several of my own successful businesses over the years. And sometimes I also sign up for classes in college if I have a new interest I want to learn about. So I keep busy, too," Esme smiled brightly.
"May I ask you something, Esme?" Keeping my eyes on the can of pumpkin purée I was opening.
"Of course!" Esme replied automatically as if that should be obvious.
"Are all vampire couples just so...in love all the time? Do they ever split up? I'm trying to form my own opinions about marriage, but my mom kind of raised me to believe that most marriages were doomed to fail."
"That's true of most human marriages, but when a vampire finds their mate, that bond is permanent. So no, no one 'splits up.' Not willingly anyway. That's why…" she sighed, "That's why we were so against it when Edward made the decision to leave you. Because we knew what it would do to him to be apart from you."
"So that's what he meant when he says he can't leave me," I mused. Esme nodded gravely.
"I hope that's not something you still worry about," Esme looked over at me with wide eyes and concern worried into the set of her mouth.
"It's gotten a lot better. But I'm not sure that fear will ever totally leave me until I'm like you. I know it's silly, but it feels like as long as I'm human, he could still have another one of his attacks of conscience," I said with a slight frown.
Esme opened her mouth to disagree but I wouldn't let her. "It's silly, I know. I'll just feel better in 38 days," I smiled.
*EPOV*
Like every other American family, we also had a Thanksgiving tradition. The Cullen men went hunting while the Cullen women made sport of the Black Friday shopping phenomenon.
And this time around, my sisters were planning on making up for the fact that shopping trips would be a rarity when we moved to Admiralty Island in little more than a month.
Black Friday shopping for my sisters, however, didn't look like lining up at a department store to score a cheap big-screen TV.
No, Black Friday for the Cullen women looked like trunk loads of Tiffany blue boxes, designer shoes, entire racks of clothing, and a Birkin bag or three.
The only difference this year was that my mother insisted on staying home with Bella to bond over the meal preparation instead of shopping with Alice and Rosalie, and I was grateful for it.
This trip I'd had my arm twisted into going further to hunt than I normally preferred to in search of tastier game.
"What kind of Thanksgiving would it be if we settled for 'fast food?'" Emmett argued.
Remembering the quip Bella had made about drive-through moose, I laughed harder than his joke merited but didn't bother to correct Emmett who was feeling rather good about himself.
So I relented and we ran to upstate New York and gorged ourselves on cougars, a couple of black bears that unfortunately waited too long to bed down for winter, and a herd of elk.
Although I wasn't thirsty anymore, when I was assailed by a familiar scent, I sprang. I nabbed a tawny brown wolf out of a childish sense of retribution.
The wolf's high-pitched yelps of panic were even more delicious than his hot blood spraying down my throat. As the life faded from his eyes, I smiled and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, satisfied.
I mockingly patted him on the head and muttered "There's a good dog," before I tossed his body into a shallow grave.
"Well that was cathartic," Jasper snickered, reveling in my satisfaction as I rejoined the others lolling in the snow in a small opening in the trees, thoroughly glutted.
"I was about to say 'you have no idea,' but I guess you do," I said with half a smile. Jasper just winked at me with a knowing smirk on his face.
"It must really burn to feel so indebted to someone you'd just as soon kill and throw in a ditch," Emmett added with as much tactlessness as only he was capable of.
"Not as bad as it must burn him to know that Bella loves leeches more than dogs," I said with a grim smile. Emmett and Jasper laughed appreciatively.
If I wanted to be really crass, I could go on and on about the things that burn...in the most pleasurable way imaginable. But I'd never disrespect Bella for the sake of an inflated ego, not even if Jacob Black were right in front of me.
"Now, now," Carlisle interceded as I knew he would. "Edward you won the day and got the girl. What sense does it make to beat a dead-"
"Wolf?" I finished for him when he'd been about to say horse. Carlisle smiled despite himself.
"With all due respect, Carlisle," I said affectionately, "I doubt you'd be so gracious if Esme's work necessitated a 'hot hubby week,'" I challenged with an arched eyebrow.
"Ohhhh," Emmett crowed at my boldness, hiding his amusement behind a meaty fist.
I didn't have to read Carlisle's thoughts to know he was imagining his wife being hounded by would-be suitors in the offices of a male-dominated architectural design firm.
Carlisle's kindness and compassion knew no bounds except when it came to someone messing with his mate.
"Fair enough, Edward. Fair enough," he conceded with a thin-lipped smile and a reluctant nod of his head.
My family was very sympathetic to the plight I found myself in when I'd reunited with Bella and ended up in the middle of a self-inflicted supernatural love triangle. More sympathetic than I had any right to expect.
But none of them could truly empathize because none of them had ever even come close to losing their mate, not to death, and certainly not to a rival.
When I'd told Bella that it felt like my heart was gone when I'd left her, a more accurate description would be to say it felt like someone-no, not someone- I forcefully ripped it from my chest and left it under her floorboards with the mementos I'd taken from her.
I bristled at the all-too-recent memory. It is very hard to kill a vampire, but some things were worse.
Edward, you're killing me, man. Jasper grimaced and clutched the fabric of his sweater over his heart like it was suffocating him.
I smiled apologetically and tried to think of the future instead of the past.
I knew Bella loved me, more than I ever thought possible. But her feelings, strong as they were, were still just as weakly human as her body.
In thirty-eight days those bonds would be cemented and neither man nor mother nature could threaten a separation ever again. It was a heady feeling.
Then Bella could finally grasp without a shadow of a doubt what it meant when I told her that her hold is permanent and unbreakable.
Jasper sighed in relief and sent a grateful nod in my direction.
I knew how much harder it was for Jasper to control his bloodlust, and subsequently, his thoughts, which he did for my sake just as much as Bella's. The least I could do was try to temper my heavier emotions in return.
My brooding was interrupted by the shrill ringing of Carlisle's satellite phone, the only one that worked way out here. The sound of it made the animal blood coursing through my body run cold.
I was on my feet before he could retrieve it from his pocket halfway through the first ring. Nothing good ever happened when Carlisle's phone rang.
"Nobody panic," Esme's calm voice rang through the speaker, but it was too late for that. "Bella had a minor kitchen accident. No need to rush home, but I wanted to ask how I should treat it?"
"Is Squirt bleedin' again?" Emmett chuckled, unworried, ignoring my glare.
I listened as Esme described the injury. "She was taking the turkey out of the oven and that big ol' bird shifted in the pan, redistributing the weight, and some of the hot cooking liquids spilled over on her bare foot."
I winced. Scalding burns were far more painful and slow to heal than a simple cut.
"I had a tray of sweet potatoes in my hands and was just half a second too slow to stop the pan from tipping," she said guiltily. I could hear Bella in the background insisting it wasn't her fault. Carlisle reiterated the same assurances.
He then analyzed the sound of Bella's voice. Slightly strained, but not crying or screaming from the pain she'd be in if the burn needed immediate treatment.
"Have Bella run her foot under cool running water for 20 minutes, and then apply a clean, dry bandage. You know where I keep the first aid kit."
As a doctor, he'd always kept one around, but when I began courting a very accident-prone human, he frequently teased with wide, disbelieving eyes about how often he needed to restock it.
"We're all done here. We'll start heading back now and I'll check on her as soon as I get back."
I held my hand out to Carlisle for the phone before he could hang up. "Would you please put Bella on? Edward would like to speak with her," Carlisle added and then relinquished the phone.
*BPOV*
Esme handed me the phone, and I cringed, feeling like a kid who knew she was about to be scolded.
"Hello?" I greeted into the phone. Even I could hear the nervous edge in my voice.
"Are you alright?" Edward asked in a flat, slightly chiding tone.
"Fine, fine," I said in a more normal tone of voice. "It's nothing, really. You know me, clutz to the end," I laughed it off. "I told Esme not to bother you guys, but she wouldn't listen."
"To the very end it would seem," he muttered. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you purposely waited until I was gone to do these things," he sighed.
"Don't be ridiculous. It's just that not everybody can be as hyper-vigilant as you are when it comes to saving me from my own idiocy," I tutted.
"Don't say that. You're not an idiot," he was definitely chiding now.
"I think that might be the first time we've ever disagreed on that point," I teased cheerfully.
I could tell he was about to deny it, but then he remembered the same conversation I was remembering.
"I'm here…which, roughly translated, means I would rather die than stay away from you." I frowned. "I'm an idiot."
"You are an idiot," he'd agreed with a laugh. "...And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…"
"Not an idiot," he reiterated with emphasis. "Definitely ridiculous. I'll see you at home. Take care of that foot." And then the line went dead.
I rolled my eyes. "Is he always such a drama queen?" I asked lightheartedly as I handed the phone back to Esme.
Esme snorted and raised an eyebrow at me. "With you, I think he's earned that right."
*EPOV*
By the time we got home, it was early evening and Bella was napping on the sectional couch with her bandaged foot elevated under a few pillows.
After Carlisle took a quick peek at her blistered foot, I stooped to pick her up and take her home.
I smiled, smelling the sweet, slightly metallic scent of jellied cranberry sauce on her breath. We'd had to go to two stores to find a can since she insisted it was the only kind worth eating.
I think it's what the humans call a food coma Esme thought, not wanting to wake Bella. She slipped the rim of a plate of leftovers between my fingers. For your fridge. Let her know we donated the rest of it to the Hanover Food Pantry.
Esme smiled down at Bella in my arms "Happy Thanksgiving, Bella. I am so very thankful for you," she murmured, affectionately squeezing one of her hands before slipping out the door behind Carlisle who toted shopping bags of steaming hot Tupperware containers in both hands.
As I carried Bella at a human pace down the path to our house, I heard the crunch of tires and the roar of Emmett's jeep charging up the gravel driveway.
I shook my head incredulously at the sight of what was at least a 15-foot Christmas tree secured to the roof of the Jeep only by Alice's arm hanging outside the passenger window. The stereo was blaring "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas."
"Jesus, Alice, the turkey hasn't even gone cold yet," I muttered under my breath as the Jeep pulled into the garage
Hefting the tree over her shoulder, Alice called back "I know! I'm so behind!" before disappearing inside.
*A/N* This chapter was inspired by true events when my husband burned the top of his foot off when he removed a sheet pan of bacon out of the oven and sloshed probably 8 ounces of boiling hot grease on his bare foot. 😬 He still cooks barefoot. Hope you're all having a lovely weekend! Thank you for reading and reviewing!