A/N for 2019-05-08: For those of you who've been wanting answers from Edward, I think this will satisfy you on a few points.

Many, many thanks to Eeyorefan12 for the stellar editing.

~ Erin

Edward was sitting in the passenger seat when her eyes fluttered open.

She was submerged in the murky ocean of half-remembered truths: the ones that let her think this was all a delusion. As her mind found its way to the surface, her eyes squinted, taking him in. He still looked worn, bruise-like shadows topping his cheekbones.

She stopped herself before she extended a hand to touch them.

This Edward was real, she reminded herself.

This was the Edward that had left her.

"Have you been eating?" he asked. "Drinking lots of water?"

Huh?

"What?"

"You passed out again," Edward said.

Right. The day's events were returning.

"I think so," she said. Had she? The day had been another blur, classes, and then meetings and the psychiatrist. The phone call. The missed appointment.

She blushed at the recollection. She hated to be indebted to him more.

"Why don't I drive you home?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He frowned. "If you're fainting, you can't drive."

"I'm fine," she repeated.

"If you start the car, I'm phoning 911."

"You wouldn't," she all but hissed.

"Watch me."

She was being stupid, she knew, but it was like an emotional bomb went off in her head every time he was around.

"Fine. You drive."

He was at her door before she could step out, a hand held out for hers. She ignored it and stood up, feeling herself wobble. When his arm braced her waist, she resisted the urge to pull away.

"Who else is here?" she asked abruptly. He had said there were two of them always nearby. It seemed ridiculous that they were hiding.

"Jasper," he said softly.

"Why don't I ever see anyone else?"

"I didn't think you'd want to, after what we did."

She should move, she knew. Get back into the car. Go home. But his scent was thick and intoxicating. She let herself breathe it in.

God, it hurt, being so close, knowing there were unclosable miles between them. And she hated herself for still being attracted to him. What kind of special self-loathing was that, craving the man who had so thoroughly rejected you?

"Where do you stay, when you're nearby?"

"Out of sight." He hadn't moved. She didn't dare look at his face.

"Outside?"

"Yes."

"So you're all hanging around my neighbourhood—what, stuck in trees or behind buildings or what?"

"It depends," he answered.

She could have sworn she caught a hint of humor in his voice but purposefully ignored it. "That's risky," she concluded.

"It's fine," he murmured. His arm nudged gently, clearly wanting her to move or sit down again.

"I get if they don't want to spend time with me," Bella said, "but it's stupid for them to have to wait around outside. The basement isn't finished, but it's better than someone thinking you're a bunch of peeping toms."

Edward's body stiffened. "You think—no. They want to see you Bella. I just—I didn't want to make this difficult for you, or for them. The choice to leave was mine. They'd love to see you again, but that's entirely up to you."

She swallowed, knowing he would've heard her heart lurch. She could practically feel her own facial expression morphing from confusion to disbelief as a mixture of emotions swirled through her. They hadn't wanted to leave. He had chosen for them.

They hadn't rejected her. Not completely.

"Then," she started, her voice only slightly hesitant, "Jasper may as well join us, if he wants."

Edward's frozen posture remained. "Are you sure? You're alright having my family near your children?"

She knew what he was asking. It was a risk. His kind were always a risk.

Jasper had been the precipitator last time, but it could easily have been any of them. She remembered Alice's, and then Esme's pained faces as they'd fled the room during her only, and most disastrous birthday with the Cullens. It felt like yesterday.

Then she remembered Victoria.

"If something happens," she said. "If you need to get Josh and Mer away, then it's better they know everyone. It wouldn't help if someone tried to stop you because they thought you were abducting my children."

If something happens. It was as close as she wanted to come, in that moment, to verbally acknowledging what the stakes were.

"Alright," Edward said.

After he helped her into the passenger side, she fastened her seat belt. When the door behind her opened, she didn't turn around, but caught sight in the rear-view mirror of Jasper sitting there, giving a polite nod in her direction.

"A pleasure to see you again, Bella," he said softly.

"You too," she managed. Her voice was thick with emotion. She noted that her unsettled feeling remained, and she gave him a half smile in the mirror for not trying to alter what she knew would pain him. "Thanks."

He returned the expression as Edward pulled away from the curb.

Marsha's car was gone when they arrived. Bella realized she would be out picking up the children.

Jasper got out first, moving to the back yard, nostrils slightly flaring occasionally.

Edward's hand reached out to help her up. Either from emotional exhaustion or acclimation, she didn't resist taking it, and stood, feeling another wave of dizziness.

The hand became an arm around her waist, and they walked into the house together, Bella trying not to let her body betray her with its reactions to Edward's touch.

He's only here to deal with Victoria, she reminded herself.

She sat down, folding her arms on the table and resting her head on them, aware that Edward was rifling through her cupboards and fridge.

"Here," he said, presenting her with a glass of juice and a sliced apple.

She ate and drank, and the dizziness receded slowly.

"Is light-headedness normal for you with your pregnancies?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. Never had it before."

He frowned, murmuring something she didn't catch.

"Pardon?"

"Sorry. Just talking with Jasper. Third pregnancies are a bit of a wild card."

"What does that mean?"

"They tend to not follow prior patterns."

Great. Just what she needed. An unplanned and unpredictable pregnancy. Feeling yet another need of her condition making itself known, Bella stood.

Edward did too.

"I think I can make it to the washroom on my own, Doctor Cullen."

There was the briefest flinch on his face as she stressed his title.

Coming into the dining room, she found Jasper deftly smacking a piece of broken dishrail back into place.

She stared. Matt had said he'd fix it for months. Of course, Matt had been meaning to fix a lot of things in their very fixer-upper house for a long time, with very few of those jobs actually getting done. Now she looked at the piece of wood, and at Jasper, who looked a little sheepish.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I should have asked—"

"No, no. Thank you," she said. "It's needed doing for a while."

She caught his gaze sweeping the rest of the room, where many other small and large projects clearly needed attention. "Fill your boots," she chuckled. "If you want."

When she returned, he was doing just that—Matt's toolbox on the dining room table.

"I was joking, Jasper," Bella said guiltily.

"I know," he said, hammering a piece of loose trim into place. "I wasn't."

Crud. "Jasper, really, it was a joke. You've all uprooted your lives to deal with Victoria. You don't owe me anything, and I can get someone to fix these things—"

Jasper's face was all seriousness. "I think we might have disrupted your life slightly more before, and after, we left you."

His eyes rested on her briefly, and she looked away, uncomfortable with the memories his words had resurrected.

"As for having someone come in to do these things, well, pardon my saying so, but I doubt you can, or will do that right now. I'll feel better knowing there's nothing sharp around that might nick someone." He had turned his attention back to the piece of wood he was holding.

Oh.

"Exactly," he murmured, apparently feeling her acquiescence. "Just making sure things are . . . safe. For you. For your children."

As safe as they could be, with a coven of vampires guarding you.

"Can I talk to you for a moment, Bella?" Edward asked, coming around the corner. His face was carefully neutral.

They made an odd trio in her dining room, Jasper with his back to them, fiddling with another piece of trim.

"Sure," she said sitting at the table there.

"Who's authorized to pick up Meredith and Joshua from daycare?"

"Right now, me, Charlie, Marsha, Eric and Jan."

"Family friends?"

She nodded.

"Can you update that list to include all of us?"

The question was a punch in the gut, but she was getting used to those, she realized. "Yes. I can."

"You also need to stress that no one else is to pick them up from daycare. Ever."

"Okay," she said, curling her hands into fists at his tone.

"Enough," Jasper muttered to his brother.

There was a tense set of looks between them. Edward turned his eyes away first.

Jasper pretended to clear his throat.

After a moment, Edward spoke again. "No, it's not a bad idea at all."

Bella had forgotten what it felt like, hearing these one-sided conversations between Edward and members of his family. She couldn't say she'd missed it. "What?"

"Your house still needs work."

"Yes," she bristled. She and Matt had worked hard on the renovations, taking out the old plaster walls and updating the plumbing and electrical work, adding insulation in parts and putting in drywall. None of it was painted though, and the final coat of mudding shed dust every time it was disturbed.

"It's not a comment on your home," Jasper assured her. "I was just thinking it would be easier for us to blend in if we looked like we were continuing the work. It'll reduce the gossip." He shrugged.

"Some of your neighbours are already suspicious," Edward said.

"I don't really know them, so it doesn't really matter."

"You don't?" Jasper asked, frowning.

Bella shook her head.

"It still matters," Edward said. "All of us have enough expertise with renovations that we can do the work, and make it look plausible."

She was fine with the ruse, but there was simply no room, financially, to make it work.

Jasper, either sensing her discomfort, or legitimately being thrifty, spoke to this. "We have a lot of leftover supplies from our current house renovations. Emmett and I can bring those over tomorrow and make things look convincing."

There was a thumping up the outside stairs.

Edward stood, moving towards the kitchen quickly.

"Man!" Josh shrieked, as the door banged open with his entrance.

Bella followed at a more sedate pace. "Hey!" she called, catching Josh's little body as it thudded into her. Mer's was next, accompanied by its own verbal volley. This became an abrupt silence as soon as she caught sight of Edward, and then Jasper. She stared.

Josh kept exclaiming, "Man!"

"Who're they?" Mer whispered to Bella, eyes still wary on the strange men.

"This is Dr. Cullen and his brother Mr. Hale," Bella said. She repeated the introductions for Marsha, who nodded politely, and then began emptying the children's backpacks.

"Pleased to meet you Miss Meredith, Mr. Joshua," Jasper drawled while he returned Marsha's nod

"Man!" Joshua said, bouncing up and down. He ran from the room and came back with two trucks. He handed one to Edward, looking at him hopefully.

"Do you need me to take care of anything else, Bella?" Marsha asked, hanging Josh's backpack by the door.

"No, we're good, thank you," Bella said. Marsha said her goodbyes, and Bella watched her departure with mixed feelings.

"You talk funny," Meredith was saying to Jasper.

Bella's head whipped around, and her face flushed. "Mer, that's rude. Mr. Hale has an accent. He's from the Southern US."

"Oh, like Mrs. Cho," Meredith said, nodding, as if understanding.

Joshua had pulled Edward down to his level, where they were driving the trucks over the lines of the wooden floor. "Vroom!" Joshua was saying, mouth working hard over the tricky consonants. He stared at Edward. "Man, vroom!"

Bella's ears perked up. It was so rare to hear him put two words so closely together.

"Can you say my name?" Edward asked him, flicking his gaze over to Bella, and then back to her son. "Edward."

Joshua shook his head. "Man."

This elicited a snort from Jasper. "You're the man, Edward."

Bella didn't laugh.

"We should go," Edward said. "I'm sure Bella has things to do." Then to Joshua, he said, "We can play next time, okay?"

Josh pouted, but didn't whine, and Bella released a shaky slip of air at this tiny reprieve.

As the men donned their shoes and coats, Jasper nodded his farewell and stepped outside, leaving Edward to have a final word with Bella. "We'll be nearby. If you still want answers, let me know."

"I will, after they're in bed," she said, avoiding direct eye contact, only looking up when she heard the door click shut behind him.

- 0 -

Her pregnancy was becoming more apparent in its symptoms, and she'd struggled to get the children to bed without falling asleep herself. Joshua had refused to stay in his playpen, insisting on crawling into her bed. She had tucked pillows around him before leaving him to sleep, hoping they kept him from falling out of it. Like Bella, he was an agile sleeper, and she'd woken up more than once with his toes up her nose when they shared a bed.

She'd already hopped in the bath with Josh, so she had her own pajamas on. They had been a gift from Matt: a simple cotton jersey set of blue shorts, with a matching spaghetti-strap top. He'd laughed and called them Bella lingerie. They were hardly that, but they were comfortable. She felt warm—another sign of the pregnancy—and couldn't be bothered to put a robe on over top.

She decided Edward could see her that way too. It wasn't like it would bother him.

He knocked almost immediately after she messaged him.

Bella deployed her verbal armour as she opened the door. "Did you decide that windows were passe? Up there with watching people sleep?"

He raised his eyebrows a bit. "It was hardly respectful then, and I didn't think you'd find it so now."

"Are you coming in?" she asked levelly, ignoring what had sounded very close to an apology.

He did, a wary look in his eyes.

She settled into the corner of one of the two sofas in the living room, then watched Edward make his own choice. When he selected the opposite end of the same sofa, perching just on the edge, she felt a flutter of satisfaction, and was immediately annoyed with herself.

Her internal reprimand was instant: don't be an idiot. You're so chock full of pregnancy hormones you wouldn't know a real emotion if it walked up to you and smacked you on the head. Edward's here to make good on a promise to let you be. And you can go right back to falling apart over your husband's death as soon as this business is taken care of.

Suitably self-chastised, she launched into her first question. "Have you told me everything you know about Victoria?"

"The basics, but not everything. What do you want to know?"

"She was wounded badly, from what I could tell. How—?"

"We heal, but slowly. Parts of our bodies will regenerate, but it takes a very long time. That's why all the pieces need to be burned, for things to be final. Apparently, that's not what happened."

"And she's had enough time to . . . regenerate?" The idea was horrifying.

"Yes," he said nodding. There was more in his tight jawline.

"What?" she asked.

"If the wolves had told us, we could have made certain of her ending."

"You left," she said, frowning. "No one knew how to reach you."

His scowl deepened, but then he nodded, and his passive mask returned.

"Is there more that I need to know about her? About anything she's done, or you think might do?"

"Could you be more specific?"

"What the hell, Edward? DId you go to law school, too? Just answer the damn question!"

She was on her feet now, arms folded awkwardly over her cast, glaring at him. Her breasts were tender from the pressure her posture put against them, but she stubbornly held her stance, waiting.

"She killed your husband."

Her breath came out as a whuffed, "Wha—?" the rest of it taken by a sob. Her arms fell to her sides and she sat down, blinking rapidly, her stomach sinking. "But—how—? I saw his body. He—"

"The car crash was real. We caught her scent on the wreck."

"You were here," she whispered. "When he died. You could have—you could have warned me." The depth of his betrayal was sickening. "You let him die. You—"

"No. I didn't. We didn't know she'd go after him," he said, his expression fierce. "I would never hurt you that way. Ever."

"What fucking planet do you live on?" she hissed at him, incredulous, "That you could even make that claim . . . You left me, and you knew, you fucking knew when everyone thought that I was insane, that I wasn't. Then you found out she was back and after my family and you let my husband die before you said anything to warn us—!"

"I PROMISED YOU!" He shouted, and then stopped himself. When he spoke again, his voice was several decibels softer, though not lacking in fervour. "I promised you would never see me again. And if I'd known, if I had even suspected she wanted to hurt you, that she would come here, I never would have left!"

"Why? So you could stay and enjoy your distraction?" The last word was spat out, as she pointed to herself.

She watched conflicting emotions play across Edward's face. He seemed to swallow hard before he answered her, his voice still quiet. "I lied, Bella. I never stopped loving you. I lied so that you would let me go and wouldn't come after me. So I could strip all the monsters from your life. All of them." His voice cracked over the words. "I just never expected you to believe the lie so easily."

A brief period of silence stretched between them, marked only by the now-audible ticks of her watch.

"We didn't know she would go after Matt. Alice only saw—" Edward put his head in his hands, a gesture so despairingly human that she briefly fought the urge to console him. "She only saw what she would do to you and your children. We came right away, once we knew. We were following all of you, but Victoria must have known about Alice, because her decisions changed that day. We had moved to protect you and the children but Matt . . . " His voice trailed off and he was still looking down into his lap.

Bella watched him as he spoke, her mind struggling to make sense of what he was saying as memories and emotions clouded her brain.

Edward looked haggard when his eyes again met hers. "You were right. I have done nothing but fail you, which is why I will do everything I can to make sure I don't do it again."

There was a small whimper on the stairs. The lightest of her sleepers, Josh was standing by the door, his blanket in one hand, stuffed pig in the other. The sound was high-pitched. It was the kind that preceded a meltdown.

"Hey, hey," she said, breaking out of her near-trance and walking to him to pick him up. "Sorry. We were too loud. I'm so sorry we woke you up."

For once, Josh didn't acknowledge Edward, burying his head in Bella's chest.

"I need to tell you more. About your son," Edward said. He sounded almost hoarse. "I promised I would tell you everything I knew."

"Okay," Bella said, this time with much more uncertainty. Her head was already spinning.

She carried Joshua back to the living room, her arms tight around his little form. Sitting back on the sofa, she wrapped him in his blanket, tucking him against her chest.

This time, Edward directed his words to her boy. "You're special, Josh. You know that, right? That people don't always understand you?"

Josh nodded, peeking at Edward from the nest of his mother's lap.

"I'm kind of special, too. I can hear people in a different way. I can hear what they're thinking. I think you know you can't tell people that. Right?" Edward watched Joshua, whose gaze was just as scrutinous. "No, not even Meredith."

His little head nodded again, this time more erectly, more solemnly.

"I've heard thoughts like yours before. They're different from most people. Not better, not worse, just different. Sometimes people call that Autism."

Bella had suspected it, deep down, but never named it, and now she experienced the additional grief that came with the confirmation. She didn't doubt Edward's diagnosis. What better way to know, than to be able to hear a mind and its workings?

Edward looked at Bella, and she nodded, keeping her mouth closed and her feelings in check.

She could cry later, when Josh couldn't hear.

"No," Edward smiled a little. "Sorry, I don't think you'll be able to read minds."

Joshua didn't nod, but pressed his head harder into Bella's chest. His fingers dug into the fabric of her shirt, yanking it lower.

When Bella tried to loosen his grip, Josh squawked his displeasure, pulling at her flimsy top down even more. She was sweating, and not only from the added heat of his body.

Edward had at least averted his eyes.

"You tired, sweetie?" she whispered to Josh.

She got a heavy blink in response.

"Can Mama put you back in Mama's bed?"

Another blink, this one less resistant than the last.

She stood carefully, Edward suddenly beside her before she could understand why. Then the dizziness hit. His arms were a cold cradle around her, and she stiffened.

This was all too much.

"No," she said. "Put me down."

"Can I put him back to bed for you, then?"

She took in a tight breath, releasing it slowly, before answering. "If he'll let you."

Joshua had reached the ultimate rag-doll stage of toddler sleep. His only response was a sleepy but contented, "Man," as Edward carried him.

Bella focused on breathing as she followed them up the stairs. She pulled air in through her nose and pushed it out again, trying to keep herself contained by the predictable expansion and contraction of her lungs.

The layers of difficulty in her life had been manageable, but this last one needed to be just that—the last. She'd managed to keep going when Matt had died, then navigated the horror of Victoria's return, figured out how not to fall apart with Edward's appearance, and had even wrapped her head around the unplanned pregnancy. She'd also dealt with a new job, a broken hand, a car accident, and crap, she still hadn't paid the gas bill.

And now her son was Autistic.

And Edward said he had always loved her.

If there was a time when she wanted to hide and cower in the refuge of a psychotic diagnosis, it was now.

But she couldn't. So she kept focusing on the air moving in and out of her lungs, hoping that this small act of self-preservation was enough for the moment.

Author's Post-Script: For those of you want to know a bit more about the Autism spectrum, I've put up a short post about what 'being on the spectrum' actually means on my personal FB page (Erin Affleck), as well as up on my FB writer's page, FlamingMapleWrites. As a teacher of many, and parent of several children (a few of whom are on the spectrum) I can legitimately tell you that NO two Autistic people are the same.

DISCLAIMER: S. Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.