Chapter One

Mary Arnold

I don't really know what to write, no one will ever see this diary so I suppose it does not matter much. I fell in love with a strange young man, the doctor's son. Now he's gone and I don't think I will ever see him again. We met at the church picnic by the river when my mother Evangeline and my father Samuel Arnold went to speak to the pastor. The doctor had only recently arrived after our old doctor fell from his horse and broke his leg. Dr. Adams was going to be in bed himself for some time and Dr. Cullen was here until he was better.

I preferred our new doctor as did most of the girls in town because he was far younger and more handsome, and he was a widower, therefore, available and handsome young men without wives or fiancees were very rare in this town. He brought with him his teenage son Edward, a very serious young man who had been reading a book in the shade of an old oak tree when he happened to look up and catch my eye.

After that first meeting, he walked with me in our garden a number of times when visiting with his father who became a family friend but always under my mother's watchful eye. He seemed so well educated and so gentle yet I felt he could be both serious and dangerous should the occasion arise. For a little while, I thought him the most wonderful young man in the whole world and found my innocent heart beat faster whenever I was in his company. His father approached mine about the possibility of Edward and I becoming a couple and I was thrilled but the more I was in his company and the more I found out about him the less I felt he was right for me. I know I should have been grateful for the opportunity I was being given to marry well and have a good life, but it wasn't enough.

I wanted more though I couldn't say what, and I think he must have read my mind because he told me very sweetly that although he loved me very much he didn't think I felt the same, that he wasn't the right man for me. Then they were gone, just like that, with no explanation, no goodbyes, they just disappeared as if they had been but ghosts allowed to walk our earth for a short while. Although I regret his leaving I know it was for the best, my parents and his father would have seen us married within the year and I felt I was too young to be wed. I wanted to see something of the world before I settled down to life as a wife and mother even though I knew this was but a fantasy.

Bella

I put the faded and shabby diary down that I had found while going through some old boxes that had been in the attic. Obviously it had been forgotten about over the decades which was probably just as well considering the contents! I thought about Mary's words and how much like my own experience hers had been. She went on to travel the country with her husband, a preacher and had six children one of whom, Esther, was my great grandmother. Had the story come full circle? Was I destined to relive Mary's life? Why had the Cullens come to Forks? And did they know who I was before we met? Did they now? Somehow I doubted it, there was nothing to tie me to my ancestor who had lived in Albuquerque all those years ago.

I had a faded photograph of her and we were nothing like each other, our names were different, everything about us was so utterly different, except our feelings for Edward Cullen. Only there did we converge and this evening I would have to tell him very much what Mary had thought all those years ago. The only difference was that this time he couldn't read those thoughts, he would have to hear them from my lips.

Our romance had been a fairytale, two pairs of eyes that meet, and a heart that flutters, a chest that gasps for breath. I had fallen in love with Edward Cullen the first time I saw him and despite Jessica's warning that no one was good enough for him I had captured his heart. He was kind and gentle and loved me very much, but our path wasn't a smooth one. First his sister Rosalie had hated me and made it only too apparent, then James the nomad had tried to kill me and almost succeeded if not for Edward and his siblings. The birthday party was the next stumbling block although I had no fear that Jasper would kill me.

I thought he had been overwhelmed by the thirst that poured from every vampire in the room at the scent of my blood and still he fought it or none of the others could have held him back, he was the ultimate fighting machine after all. Edward left me then after saying such terrible things and I thought I would never be whole again, the agony almost more than I could bear. Thinking I was dead, he'd tried to persuade the Volturi to kill him and it was only with Alice's help that I saved his life. When we returned I know he thought we were back where we had left off but he was wrong and I was starting to realize it just as Mary had.

His whole family stood against Victoria and her newborn army to save me and defeated them, the wolves even putting aside their enmity to join the Cullens, but it was the final straw for me. Edward had asked me to marry him as his price for changing me, not because he didn't want me to become a vampire and stand at his side but because he wanted the certainty that a wedding ceremony gave him of my love for him and my devotion too. I had asked to wait until after the fight to answer him, a cowards way out but if he were to die at Victoria's hand. At least he would do so thinking I loved him, and I did in a way, but not the way he thought I did.

There were so many things that told me my love wasn't strong enough for eternity, my feelings for Jake for one. How could I love two men so deeply yet marry one and let the other go? True love should surely be so deep it could only be given to one, to your true heart's companion. There was also the problem of Jasper Hale. In that hotel room in Phoenix when we had been alone and he had told me, I was "wrong, that I was worth it" I had felt something, a something that even today scared me. Whatever it was, and I still wasn't sure it had been love, but whatever it was I shouldn't have been able to feel it, not if I truly loved Edward. I had to set him free to find another, to find his mate, not settle for second best in me. If I was wrong and I never found love again that would be my problem, but I loved Edward enough that I couldn't do it to him, he deserved far better.

It was almost time, he was taking me to dinner and then he would expect my reply to his proposal and I had to be ready with my answer however much it hurt him. I was terrified and felt sick to my stomach, almost but not quite, wishing that he could read my mind as he had read Mary's so I wouldn't have to say the words that would cause him so much pain. I was dressed and ready well before he arrived and Charlie knew something was in the air, he didn't ask me what but he gave me a few strange looks before leaving for work, leaving me alone to wait for Edward, possibly the last time I would ever be alone with him or talk to him.