Chapter 65 Chapter Notes
Bella just wants a new mattress, but Esme has other plans.
The chapter title belongs to The Beatles
Chapter 65 There's a Place Friday, November 17th midnight
I stay with Bella until she's asleep, then slip out of the front door. I call Esme and she says that she, Rosalie and Emmett are on their way from Seattle. Jasper is driving Alice back in the Raptor and is expected sometime tonight.
After I hunt, I head over to the house and wait for my family to arrive. Before midnight, Esme's Tahoe pulls up and they all pile out. Emmett pulls me into a painful hug. I good-naturedly complain and he releases me and shakes my hand. "We missed you, man. When Alice lost track, we thought we'd never see you again."
Esme and Rosalie join us and we're all hugging, but Esme is still extremely disturbed about the accident in Alaska. Before we can get their luggage out of the back, Jasper's Raptor pulls up. Alice sits in the seat, her unblinking eyes staring into the distance.
Jasper catches my eye and I open her door. When I reach to pick her up, she gets out on her own and brushes past me. She walks to the door and waits for Esme to unlock it, then heads upstairs. Jasper and I are right behind her. He's talking to her the whole time but she doesn't say anything or look at him. She falls onto the bed and turns away from us, eyes still open, staring at nothing. She's not breathing and her mind is a featureless sea of gray.
Jasper motions me out of the bedroom. "She hasn't spoken or interacted with the family since Bree's death, on November 1st." He thinks about the day when the water heater exploded and the tragedy that unfolded. "I don't know how to help her, Edward. Carlisle said something similar had happened to you?"
I explain my weird trance. "It lasted for over five weeks. One day, I just woke up. Really thirsty." As we walk down the stairs, I say, "Carlisle told you about the conversation that he'd had with Tanya?" She thinks it's probably a reaction to stress." He shakes his head sadly. Nobody really knows, and it lasts for as long as it lasts.
We take our seats and the family bombards me with questions. Carlisle told them about Charlie and the final conflict in front of Jacob's house, but they want details. "I was on the reservation, looking for Victoria, when Bella drove up to Jacob Black's house. When I walked up to her, she screamed at me and slapped my face."
"Ouch." Emmett laughs. "I mean, ouch for her. Did she break her hand?"
"Well, no. She hadn't put that much muscle behind the act. We had about half a minute to talk before Charlie was yelling at me, ready to pull his sidearm. And then it all went sideways with Victoria, looking like she'd been living under a bridge, and then snatching Bella, threatening to kill her. The Wolf that attacked me was a Quileute named Brady. He swallowed some vampire flesh when he bit Victoria's leg, and then wasn't able to transform back into a human. Bella screamed and ran to my rescue. And then Charlie ran to her rescue."
Emmett laughs. "Bella ran to help you?"
I sigh. "She did. And that Wolf literally took a bite out of Charlie. His girlfriend, a half Quileute woman named Maya, who worked with Carlisle as a nurse at the hospital, phased into a gigantic black Wolf. She ran in and fought with the other Wolf. And then Jacob phased and sorted it all out."
"Damn." Emmett isn't laughing anymore.
"Bella got a nasty bite but it took only thirty-eight stitches. She had a massive bruise on her upper arm where Victoria was holding her. We're lucky the damage wasn't worse than that. It was a mess, though, and her blood…" I lick my lips and remember the taste of it, and feel ashamed.
"Were you all right?" Esme asks. "What happened?" She very badly wants to extend herself for me, even though it's apparent that it's not necessary. I take her hand, wanting to let her mother me.
"It was close. I couldn't get my muscles to uncoil. Jacob towed me to the end of the block." I don't tell them that I licked all of Bella's blood off of my hands. It's too disgusting to even think about, but guiltily, I still do.
I tell them about the damage to Victoria's body, and how the Council thought that she had eaten some of the Quileute boy's body.
"Ew!" Rosalie puts a finger under her nose and makes a face.
"It was terrible. As she was holding Bella, I could almost see her brain deteriorating. By the time Jacob dispatched her, only a dense fog remained where conscious thought should have been."
They all think about this. I've painted a pretty graphic picture, but no words could come close to how degraded her Immortal body had become, or how shocked I'd been when I'd seen it. Esme says, "Carlisle told us about Victoria's attack on the doctor and his family."
We're all silent for a moment. "That was a shitty thing," I say. "Victoria was already so far gone when she found us all in front of Jacob's house that she wasn't even thinking about what she'd just done. The only silver lining in that situation is that she didn't kill the little girl."
Rosalie fidgets in her chair. She wants to be a mother very badly, and the loss of that ability is one of the reasons she hates the Immortal life so much. In her thoughts I see images of her and Emmett walking with a little girl, Darla's age. Playing in a park. Reading a bedtime story.
An idea forms in my mind, but I'll have to speak to Carlisle first.
Jasper says, "Hey, was that you that gave away all that money? I called Jenks, and even went to his office, but he swore he hadn't seen you and didn't know what I was talking about."
"Yep. Gave it all away to charity. I have a little over three thousand dollars left."
The family is stunned that I would give my money away to complete strangers, but I didn't earn that money. It was amassed through a psychic's ability to see trends in the stock market, from properties bought and sold over the decades, and from business ventures that Alice could see making a profit. And compound interest.
They murmur unhappily about this, as if I'm now destitute and will be a financial burden to them. "I didn't cash in the investments or sell any properties, though I'll have to part with that estate I've been holding onto in New Jersey, because Charlie moved in with Maya. They're getting married soon and he agreed to sell his house to Bella and me if we get married first."
They all look at each other. "You're buying Charlie's house?" Esme says in wonder. "And getting married?"
"Yeah. Charlie only agreed to sign the papers if Maya witnesses the ceremony. We're doing it next week."
Then my siblings tell me, first in halting sentences, then in a torrent, about the accident in Alaska. I've already heard this from Carlisle, but I listen politely. Esme drops my hand and walks out of the house. It's deadly quiet for a moment. Emmett thinks, She feels responsible, and none of us can make her see that it wasn't her fault.
They talk about it for a few minutes, but it's not a topic that they want to linger on. I walk out to find Esme, but she isn't within hearing distance, and I figure that she's run into the woods. My siblings are huddled in the house, furiously plotting about how to get my bank account back up into eight figures. Like it matters.
I don't know how to make them see, to really see. It just doesn't matter.
The next morning, I get a call from Carlisle. He's at the hospital and asks me to meet him there. Bella is still asleep, so I leave her a note and take the Volvo. I wait in his office and he joins me after a few minutes.
"Hi, son. I wanted to ask you for a favor."
"Anything."
"Esme has just finished with that huge refurbishment on the mansion in Seattle, and she doesn't want to take another job out of town until Alice comes around, but she needs something to occupy her time."
I nod politely until I see Bella's house in his head. Our eyes meet and he says, "You told her last night that Charlie was selling you the house. Why don't you let Esme remodel it? She could gut it and redo it, from top to bottom." He's remembering what he'd seen of the house when we'd met with Charlie the day that I left. Clean but shabby, with worn furnishings and dated floor coverings.
"Bella and I plan to live in the woods for a few years after her change."
"You'll own the house, though. And won't you both want the services of a washer and dryer occasionally? The use of a shower? You could always come to our house, but wouldn't it be nice to have a place of your own to go back to, whenever you wanted?"
I can just imagine what Esme would do to the house. "Let me ask Bella, and I'll give you a call."
"Thanks, son. I'll be waiting to hear from you."
"I have a favor to ask of you also. Could you speak to the Council about Rosalie and Emmett possibly reaching out to Lisle James and her daughter, maybe getting to know them, helping out? A vampire killed her family, but word has gotten out that the Cullens are different. What do you think?"
Images of the woman surface in his mind. She's not coping well, having lost her mother, father and husband in a brutal attack just a couple of weeks ago. He glances at me and nods his head in a contemplative manner. "I'll ask."
We exchange a quick embrace and I drive home to find Bella sleepily regarding a bowl of Cheerios. I tell her about my conversation with Carlisle about the house. "You said we needed a new mattress. If we let Esme in, she and the family, with the aid of her company, will redo the house. What do you think?"
Bella narrows her eyes. "What sort of stuff would they do?"
"Let's speak to her about it. I'll call Carlisle and tell him to send her over."
At noon, Esme is finished evaluating the house. She's climbed onto the roof, in the crawlspace, looked at plumbing, duct work, the furnace, and examined the foundation. We sit at the battered kitchen table and she lays out her plan.
"This house was built in 1945, so it's got good bones. Foundation is secure, no leaks in the roof and the furnace is only a few years old. All it needs is updating. What do you have in mind?"
Bella looks at me and I give her an encouraging smile. "Um, well, I have no idea…"
Esme glances at me. "This is what I recommend. And Bella, money is no object. My company and the family are doing the work. First, empty it. Then we'll redo the walls, strip the molding and stairs, lay down new floors, pull out the kitchen and hang new cabinets, new sink, counters and appliances, tile in a shower upstairs, redo the closets, replace all the windows and the front and back doors. That's for the interior.
"Exterior needs painted, but we'll need Alice for that. There's a little cement patio in the back that we'll fashion into a proper patio, with wood, a rail, even a cover or an awning that could be pulled over. What do you think?"
Bella looks at her with a confused expression. "I just wanted a new mattress."
Esme laughs. "I'll come over tomorrow with my books so we can discuss color schemes and products. Think about the kind of flooring you want. This house has natural wood floors under the carpet, but I don't recommend them in this climate." She thinks about how much work she did on our floors, how she worries every time it rains. Which is all the time.
"Also, I can get the appliances, but you'll have to pick them out. I can show you what will work in your space. And as far as furniture, if you tell me what you have in mind, I can show you some pics of rooms set up, so you can see in advance what it will look like. We need to do this first, because it will take time to get it all delivered."
After Esme leaves, Bella wanders around the house in a daze. "How much will all that cost?"
"Bella, I gave away my money. Just my money. And it was a two followed by nine zeroes. They all have that much, or more. We bought Microsoft back in the 70s. We own tens of thousands of shares of Amazon. Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Toyota. Ford. Lucrative properties on Fifth Avenue and Wall Street, houses on six continents—so much that it's split up between our different names. You name it, the Cullens own part of it. So don't worry about money. We have real, tangible things to worry about, but money isn't one of them."
"Different names?" she asks, with a shake of her head.
"Ah. Well, you know us as the Cullens. But we have, ah, several aliases. It's necessary if we're going to amass huge amounts of money and property without raising eyebrows. It's all legal, but it's complicated. Once you're changed, it will be easy for you to grasp and remember."
Will I tell Bella my real name then? My birth name? Or will she always know me as Edward Cullen?