Ephemera announcement!

Lizzie Paige is incredibly talented and incredibly generous, and she made the cover image for this story! I absolutely love it, and I appreciate her work so much. Thank you, Lizzie!

Also, because fic goes so well with music, I'm building a Grassroots playlist. I'll add probably a song or two per chapter that's related directly or tangentially to something happening in the story. The list was officially started by NixDucky, who upon reading "Who the fuck is Alice?" in the first chapter, immediately thought of Smokie.

The links are in my profile.

3 The Rookie

Alice fussed all the way through the drive home. She didn't like the seatbelt, she couldn't see out the window, and Edward suspected that she was probably cold, since she'd refused to wear anything but a diaper. She didn't actually cry about anything, but the constant whining was wearing on him.

He was relieved at the absence of emergency vehicles when he pulled up in front of his dad's house. The chaos from the previous night was more than he could take right now. He carried Alice up the ramp to the front door, then keyed in his code and let himself in. The house was quiet and orderly, showing no sign of the traffic from the night before.

"Daddy!" Alice called out, looking around the room. "A-home!" She wriggled until he put her down and hustled to the kitchen on bare baby legs. "Daddy!"

"He's not here," Edward said, hearing the weariness in his voice.

If Alice heard, she gave no indication. Not finding her father in the kitchen, she wandered back through the living room to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. "Daddy!"

Edward let her go through the bedrooms searching, not knowing how to convince her that she wouldn't find what she was looking for. She returned in a moment looking puzzled.

"Ose Daddy?" she asked him.

"Alice." He sighed and reached for her, but she dodged him.

"Wan Daddy."

Edward slumped down on the sofa. "I know, kid. He's gone. He can't come back anymore."

Her little face crumpled and her lip quivered, threatening to cry. "Yes. Wan Daddy." She darted back down the hall, searching the bedrooms again, and then hurried back to the kitchen and the adjacent den. She called for him, her voice thick with sadness, and Edward just watched helplessly. He didn't know how he was supposed to explain to her that the person who had always been there . . . wasn't anymore.

Finally convinced that Edward Sr. was nowhere to be found, Alice plopped down on the living room floor and howled.

"Aw, c'mon." Edward stood and scooped her up, and this time Alice curled into his chest and wailed her discontent. He patted her back and settled down into a rocking chair which, now that he thought about it, he probably should have noticed before. It was a little incongruous with the Louis Philippe antiques that his father favored.

Or, had favored. He didn't see any of the pieces that he'd helped arrange when his dad had first bought this house. They'd been traded in for mass-produced Furniture Warehouse specials. Edward thought briefly of Alice's sticky hands and charcoal-stained shirt and figured the change was probably for the best.

"Are you cold?" he asked, noting the temperature of her skin as he rubbed her back.

"Uh-huh." She rubbed her face against his shirt, leaving a streak of snot across the fabric. Awesome.

"You want to get dressed?"

She pushed away from his shoulder and looked up at him with pleading eyes. "Pity jwess?"

"Yeah? Shall we get some clothes on you?"

She wriggled out of his lap, her tears all but forgotten, and started hurrying down the hallway. Edward obediently followed her to her bedroom, though he took a quick detour to the bathroom, where he grabbed a tissue and dabbed the mucus from his shirt. He took a second tissue into the bedroom with him, where Alice was standing in front of a closet door. She managed to dodge him twice before he got an arm around her and held her in place so he could wipe her nose. Once he was satisfied, he let her shake him off and push open the bypass closet door.

"Whoa," Edward muttered, tossing the tissue into a nearby bin. The closet had a long bar stretched across the top and it was full to bursting with absurdly fancy toddler dresses. No, not dresses, gowns. These were for formal occasions. "How many black tie affairs have you been to?"

"Popo wun," Alice said, pointing.

"Show me." Edward scooped her up and held her toward the dresses. "Which one?"

She poked one of them and Edward pulled it out of the closet. It was a poofy, shimmering, purple confection that was certainly way too dressy for everyday use.

"You want to wear this one?"

"Uh-huh."

Well. So what if it was overly fancy? What was it going to hurt? He set her on a padded table near the closet and started maneuvering her into the dress. There was some confusion with the layers and layers of petticoats, but after a couple of minutes they got it all sorted out and all her limbs made it into the proper places.

"There you go," Edward said with a satisfied nod. "All dressed."

"Sum tice?" She looked up at him expectantly.

"What is that?"

"Hassum tice?"

"I don't know what that means. What's tice?"

"Ommye yaids." She leaned back on her hands and wiggled her feet in the air.

"I don't think you're saying actual words, though. Show me what you need."

Alice leaned over the side of the table and poked the top of a set of drawers beneath. Edward pulled it open to discover that it was full of little baby socks and—

"Tights?" he asked.

"Uh-huh." Alice pointed to a pair of white tights speckled with green and yellow butterflies. "Diss."

Edward plucked the selected tights from the drawer and shook them out. And then he commenced an epic battle the likes of which he had never known to be waged against fabric. He put the tights up over Alice's feet, and then pulled and tugged and dragged and yanked, but the damn things were so stretchy that they wouldn't go where he was trying to put them. And when he released the fabric, it lay so close against Alice legs that he couldn't get a grip on it without pinching her. Finally, in despair of ever getting the horrible little devices on her, he grabbed the waistband of the tights and lifted her off of the table while she clung to his arms to keep from toppling over backward.

Alice had been pretty patient through the whole ordeal, but she looked up at him reproachfully as she slowly, slowly, slid down into the tights.

"I'm not very good at this, am I?"

She shook her head.

In the end, it worked well enough. The tights were a little floppy at the toes and there was a good inch of distance between the gusset and the bottom of her diaper. But they were on her and she seemed satisfied.

"How about some shoes?" Edward asked her.

"Yes."

"Cool. Where are those?"

She pointed to the closet where, underneath the dresses, was a shoe rack that held at least a dozen tiny pairs of shoes. He selected a pair of purple ones with little rosettes on the toes and carried them back to Alice.

"No." She shook her head and pointed to the closet. "Poh-toey wuns."

He frowned. "Is that a color?"

"Poh-toey wuns," she insisted.

"Show me." He lifted her down from the table and she toddled to the closet and grabbed a pair of shiny red shoes set with rhinestones.

"They don't exactly go with your outfit."

"Uh-huh. Poh-toey wuns."

"How about we grab some purple shoes to match your purple dress?"

"No!" Her little hands clenched into fists. "Poh-toey wuns!"

And, okay, it probably wasn't worth the fight. So her fashion sense needed some work. Maybe she could deal with that after she learned to pronounce all of the letters.

"Fine. You can wear these ones." He helped her buckle them onto her feet and the two of them stood up. "All dressed."

"No." She shook her head and pointed to the top drawer again. "Yaidy wuvs."

"What?"

"Pease?" She looked up at him imploringly, and he picked her up and pulled open the drawer again.

"Show me."

Alice poked a little bundle of white lace that Edward had assumed was a pair of socks. He set Alice down on the table and picked up the bundle. When he unrolled it, he discovered that it was a tiny pair of gloves.

"Lace gloves?" he asked her. "Really?"

Alice smiled widely and held out her hands.

The stretchy lace, at least, was not as bad as the tights. With a little maneuvering, Alice's fingers all found their proper places in the gloves.

"Anything else?" Edward asked her. "The crown jewels, perhaps?"

"Hattoo pin!" She held her arms up to him and he obligingly lifted her down from the table. Alice grinned broadly, twisted at the waist, and then threw herself into a twirl that her little feet couldn't quite keep up with. She stumbled even as she giggled at the sight of her skirt billowing out around her. "Pity jwess!" she declared.

Edward smirked and shook his head. "Whatever makes you happy."

She stopped twirling and looked up at him. "Hammye pendy puss?"

"Ah, the famous pendy puss. Show me where that is." He was catching on.

She hurried over to the little toddler bed and dragged a badly scuffed black handbag out from under it. When she turned to present it to him, he recognized the angry-looking gold eyes affixed to the front.

"Are you kidding me?"

Alice ignored his question. She stretched open the top of the bag said in a low, gravelly growl. "Issa monsoo. Waaaah!"

"The toy you can't live without is a Fendi purse?"

"Uh-huh." Alice hefted the straps up onto her shoulder. On her tiny frame, it looked more like luggage than a handbag. She carried it past him and headed out the bedroom door, looking very satisfied with herself.

"I hate to break it to you, kid, but your purse doesn't match your shoes."

Still, fashion faux pas aside, she was dressed in clean clothes. That was more than he could say for himself. It looked like he was going to be here for a few days, and if that was the case, he was going to need clothes, toiletries, and some of his drawing supplies. He would have to make a trip back home.

Which meant he needed to get the driving situation figured out. He couldn't have Alice strapped into a seatbelt all the way to Olympia and back. She would need to be in something safe and legal, and he was sure there must be a child seat in his father's car.

He smiled to himself. He'd just borrow the car. It would be easier than moving the seat, and it had been ages since he'd driven that gorgeous Alfa Romeo. No problem.

Except . . . there were things to be done, weren't there? Could he spend a whole day on a trip to Olympia while his father's body waited on a slab somewhere? Was that even what was happening? Should he be calling a hospital? A morgue? And what was supposed to happen next?

"Thank god for Google," he muttered, pulling his phone from his pocket. He found a checklist on what to do after someone died and looked it over as he wandered out to the living room after Alice.

He needed a legal pronouncement of death, but it seemed like the hospital or coroner would handle that. He needed to find out if his father had made arrangements; that seemed likely. There was probably a file cabinet somewhere with carefully labeled folders. His father had been organized.

The third step was to tell close friends and family, and the thought of it stopped Edward in his tracks.

"Fuck that," he muttered, flinching away from the idea of sending out emails and texts announcing the death. His mother—she would be insufferable about it. That was too much and was absolutely not happening today, so no. That could wait.

That, it seemed, was all that had to be done right away. Well, that and finding the mother of the surprise child that the deceased had left behind, but Edward hoped the file cabinet would help him there as well.

He started to turn and head back down the hall where his father had originally set up his office, but then he remembered the pastel explosion that had driven anything business-related from the room. Right. The office must have found another place to reside. He moved past Alice, who was in the living room spinning in her awkward, toddling way to puff out the skirt of her dress. Weird kid. Beyond her he moved to the dining room, and to the left he found what he was after. His father's heavy oak desk had been moved into the den, along with a bookcase and a pair of filing cabinets. What he had missed the day before was the round-edged plastic desk that sat beside his father's. He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed its colored plastic surfaces.

But then, the previous evening hadn't been his most lucid.

The desk was adorable, though. Edward imagined his father puttering around on his computer while Alice sat at her desk, coloring with the many crayons and washable markers in the cubbies, or looking at one of the picture books that had been tucked into the side pockets. It made him hurt to think that he had been deliberately excluded from this part of Edward Sr.'s life. He wasn't sure what he had done to be shut out of such a fundamental confidence, but he knew that he had never felt more like an outsider. He shied away from the sting, turning deliberately from the little desk and pulling open drawers of the file cabinet.

A few minutes' work saw his task well under way. The folder labeled "Estate Planning" was easily found, and inside were documents and receipts regarding plans for cremation at Mount Olympus Funeral Home here in Forks. The plan included a memorial service, which surprised Edward. Without really thinking about it he'd been assuming that there would be a funeral held in Seattle, where his father had lived for most of his adult life. Didn't the better part of his friends live there? But then, Edward himself didn't really keep in touch with anyone from Seattle since he had moved to Olympia. Absence, it seemed, made the heart grow forgetful.

So. The memorial service would be in Forks.

He called the funeral home to make arrangements for the transportation of his father's body, and they seemed confident that they could locate it without his help. They asked him some questions about his preferences and then scheduled the memorial service for the following Saturday. Eight days. He would need to remember to get an appropriate suit when he went back home. After that, he located the will in the folder and called his father's lawyer to schedule a reading for the following Monday. He was, once again, surprised to be calling a number in Forks instead of in Seattle. Edward had assumed that the law firm they'd always used would have handled the estate. He was doubtful, frankly, that someone in this godforsaken hole would have the expertise to navigate the complexity of his father's financial holdings.

And then the urgent things were done and he had the bulk of the day ahead of him. Edward turned his attention back to the trip to Olympia and went cold for a minute when he realized he hadn't even thought about Alice for the last half hour at least. "Alice," he called, wondering if there were any pens around for her to be coloring the walls with.

"Daddy?" He heard her feet hurrying in from the living room, but when she saw him she looked disappointed. "Ose Daddy?"

He hoped that if he ignored the question, she wouldn't fixate on it. "You want to take a little trip? I need to run down to Olympia."

"Yimpia?" She repeated. "See Uh-wud?"

"See what?"

She turned toward the stone fireplace at the back of the room and stretched up, making grabby hands at the mantlepiece. Edward scooped her up and she pointed at the picture frames lined up on it, naming each photo in turn.

"Diss Awiss, diss Daddy, dis Uh-wud, diss Daddy, diss Tah-why . . ."

She kept going, but Edward was distracted by one of the photos she had pointed to. It was one of him and his father, he in doctoral robes and a graduation cap, his father draping an arm around his shoulder and beaming at the camera. And Alice, in her imprecise manner, had said his name.

"Who's this?" he asked, interrupting her ongoing recitation.

"Diss Uh-wud," she said, pointing to his photo, and then continued down the line of faces again. "Diss Daddy, diss Tah-why, diss Awiss, diss Chawie–"

"That's me," he said. "Edward."

"Uh-huh. Diss Uh-wud, diss Daddy, diss Tah-why."

He was pretty sure he wasn't getting through to her. "This is Edward," he said, pointing to the picture, and then he pointed to himself, "and this is Edward."

Alice stopped naming names and looked at him.

"This is Edward," he said, pointing again, "and this is Edward."

"Dis Uh-wud," she said, touching the photo.

"And this is Edward. It's me."

She looked at him for a long moment and then turned back to her game. "Diss Daddy, dis Awiss, dis Tah-why . . ."

"Where does Edward live?" he asked her.

"A-Yimpia!"

"Have you ever gone to see him?"

"Someday," she said in a sing-song voice.

"You'll go see him someday?"

"Uh-huh."

"When?"

She spread her hands. "A-no know."

Edward wanted to be encouraged. She knew about him, at least, and she seemed to have gotten the impression that a visit would happen eventually. Maybe Edward wasn't supposed to be shut out of this secret forever.

As long as they were standing by pictures, though, he thought he might be able to mine a little more information out of her.

"Where's Mommy?"

She looked at him, absently sucking her bottom lip into her mouth.

"There's Daddy," he said, pointing to one photo of his father. The he indicated a second. "And there's Daddy. Where's Mommy?"

Alice looked at the pictures and then back at him.

"Is Mommy here?"

"A-no know," she said again.

"Is there a picture of her?"

She looked at the pictures again, but didn't answer.

"Do you know who Mommy is?"

"A-no know."

Huh. That was . . . inconclusive. That might have meant there was no picture here or it might indicate that Alice didn't have much familiarity with her mother. It was hard to decode her limited communication.

He glanced at the picture of someone he vaguely recognized from his father's texts. The best friend and next-door neighbor, a man Edward had heard about several times. Carlisle was something of a protege of his father's, and Edward thought he might be able to use the name to test Alice's comprehension.

"Where's Carlisle?"

"Dis Tah-why," she said immediately, pointing to a correct picture. "Diss Tah-why, diss Tah-why." He'd made it into a few of the frames, and Alice had been right each time. She knew Carlisle but not Mommy.

Well. That was a puzzle for another time. He needed underwear. He looked back at Alice. "You want to take a drive to Olympia?"

"Yes! Hassum weentine?"

"I don't know what that means. What do you need?"

Alice wriggled out of his arms and hurried into the living room, where Edward discovered what she'd been doing all that time without him. The carpet was scattered with an astonishing number of toys, books, crayons, and papers. "Holy crap, kid," he said, barely avoiding stepping on a plastic stegosaurus. "Where did all this come from?"

"Immye pendy puss," she explained logically.

"Sure, of course. How about we put it all back in your pendy puss?"

"Um. No." She toddled over to the entertainment center and opened a door, revealing several shelves of DVDs. "Diss wun!"

"You want to watch a movie?"

"Yes!"

"But we're going to Olympia."

"Uh-huh." She put the DVD into her purse and hiked it up on her shoulder. "A-weddy!"

"You're so not ready. Let's clean all this stuff up."

"No. Iss otay."

"It is not okay, smartass. Come on." He knelt down on the floor and started gathering up toys. "Let's clean this up."

"A-wantoo, she said, shaking her head.

"Bring your purse over here so I can put these back in it."

She looked like she was getting ready to argue, but she finally walked over to him and let him load handfuls of detritus into her bag. After he'd put the bulk of the pile away, she even helped him collect a couple of stray crayons.

"Nice. Now we can go."

She hiked the bag onto her shoulder again and headed eagerly through the kitchen to the garage door. Edward followed her, smiling again at the thought of driving his father's car. He pulled open the door and stopped short, staring in dismay at the vehicle in front of him.

"What the fuck?" he said. "Where the hell's the Alfa?"

"Dit-inna taw," Alice sing-songed as she maneuvered down the steps into the garage.

Edward shook his head. "No. No. I'm not doing it. There's no way I'm driving a Volvo." He looked at it in disgust, noting with increasing agitation that it was a hatchback of all things. Had his father completely lost his mind?

But Alice was patting the car door impatiently, and there was still the issue with the carseat.

"Fine," he muttered, heading toward the car. "Fucking fine. But I'm getting rid of this monstrosity as soon as humanly possible."

He helped Alice into the car, where she climbed into her car seat and pulled a set of straps over herself. He was glad she knew what to do; it meant all he had to do was find the buckles and lock the straps in place. That was no small task, given that the buckles were hiding beneath the billowing skirts of her dress, but he found them eventually.

He was pulling the car out of the garage when Alice started issuing urgent requests.

"Pease?" she said. "Hassum weentine? Pease?"

"I don't know what that means, kid."

"Diss. Hassum weentine. Pease?"

He braked at the bottom of the driveway and looked back. Alice was straining to reach the purse that had been deposited on the seat beside her.

"What do you need?"

"Hassum chwoze," she grunted, straining at the straps.

He shifted into park and got out of the car, opening the back door to help Alice get to her purse. She pulled out the DVD and handed it to him, and he looked at it blankly for a moment. Brightly colored troll dolls gazed back at him from the cover.

"Oh." He glanced around the car. There were screens set into the headrests on the back of the front seats. "You want to watch a movie?"

"Yes!" She clapped her hands.

"That's a great idea. I'm in." After a little more inspection he found that the disc was to be inserted behind the screen, and he managed to get it started on the driver's-side player. That settled, he got back into the car and pulled out into the street.

Three houses down he had to stop again to figure out why Alice was reaching so hard for the seat pocket and demanding a "momote." He found the remote control inside, handed it to her, and leveled a stern gaze at her. "Is there anything else you need?"

"Seen a sonn!" she said happily. But it didn't seem like she was asking him to do anything. Some sort of techno concert was being played to a crowd of finned trolls on the screen, and Edward got the impression that Alice just wanted him to notice.

"Cool. I'm going to drive now, 'kay?"

"Tay."

The first hour went by fine. No passive watcher of television, Alice bopped and sang and giggled with the movie until her energy started to wane. It wasn't long before she fell asleep, and she stayed that way for most of the second hour of the drive. Edward was getting awfully tired of the relentless noise of the movie by then, so he was pleased to discover that he had a volume control for the DVD player on his dash. He cranked the volume down low and breathed a sigh of relief.

They were creeping into hour three when the car started to stink.

At first, Edward just thought they were passing a particularly odorous section of the drive. There was a lot of rural space between Olympia and Forks, and it wasn't unusual to pass livestock along the way. Papermills, too, tended to emit a pungent smell, so he barely even clocked the stink until it was kind of strong.

He looked back at Alice in her poofy purple dress, and yep. That was definitely the source of the smell.

Awesome. Another diaper change. He frowned as he started to look for a freeway exit. He hadn't thought to bring a diaper with him. He'd have to find a supermarket or something where he could stop and pick one up. The approaching exit advertised no services, and he had to crack a window despite the heavy rain that was falling outside. Had her last diaper smelled this bad? Maybe it was just the close confines of the car that made it so much worse.

He finally found an exit that promised a Safeway . . . but as he veered off the freeway he started to wonder if that was the kind of place he needed. Did grocery stores have diapers? They weren't exactly food. He tried to remember if he'd ever seen diapers in a grocery store, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually been in one. These days he ordered in his groceries, and even pre-Instacart, he'd never gone looking for baby essentials.

He asked his phone to direct him to a department store instead, and a few minutes later he pulled into a parking space in front of a Walmart. The momentum change woke Alice and she started to whine in the back seat.

"I'm coming, kiddo," he assured her as he got out of the car. It was a relief to step out into the fresh air, and he grimaced as he ducked back into the back seat to unbuckle her carseat. Damn, that diaper was ripe. He lifted her out of her carseat, and as soon as he did, he saw the source of the horrible smell. Alice's diaper hadn't contained her excretions. Poop was mashed between her diaper and her tights and seeping through onto her dress and the padding of her carseat. Edward gagged and looked away, which was a mistake because it drew Alice's attention.

She started to kick and squeal. "Mess! Mess!" She cried, trying to wriggle away, but that only squished the poop around in her tights and made it start creeping down her legs.

Edward wanted to put her down, but there was shit all over her dress, her tights, her carseat—everything. He didn't want it on anything else, so he ended up lifting her under her arms and holding her out of the car, dangling in the air while he looked for something to contain the spreading mess. Which meant she was getting rained on, and she howled in protest. He needed a towel, a blanket . . . his jacket? No, he'd left that in the other car. His shirt? He considered it, but they might not let him in the store to buy diapers if he tried to go in without a shirt.

His eyes fell on the floor mat, and . . .

Fine. It wasn't great, but he was desperate. He set Alice down long enough to snatch up a floor mat and wrap it around the lower half of her body. Which he thought was reasonably clever, but Alice was unimpressed. She screamed in protest, especially when he picked her up and started carrying her into the store wrapped in semi-malleable plastic covered in carpet.

"Nooooo!" she wailed all the way. "Mess! Pity jwess!"

"You're not wrong," Edward choked out. "It's a huge mess."

The door greeter must have smelled them coming because she immediately pointed Edward to the bathroom. Edward followed the directions and hurried inside, where he stood stupidly looking around for some place to put Alice down. In the largest stall was a frame that looked like it had once held a baby-changing station, but the door that pulled down to provide a horizontal surface had broken off. The sinks were individual porcelain units with no counter between them. There was nothing. He was going to have to get down on his hands and knees on the floor of a men's restroom and change Alice's diaper.

Except he still didn't have a diaper, and this floor mat situation was not going to get him any further than it already had. Whatever. He'd deal with the shit first and then worry about the diaper.

But the bathroom floor . . . and the mat was only big enough to protect Alice's lower half from the disgusting floor. He thought of his shirt again, and . . . well, what was he supposed to do? He'd just have to buy a shirt right away and hope that was good enough for them.

Trying not to dry heave again, he laid Alice and the mat down on the floor, as far as he could get from the urinals. He let the mat settle on the floor, but slid a hand behind her back to hold her off of the tile. Then, with one hand, he tugged open the buttons and maneuvered his shirt off of his free arm, finally sliding it down under Alice and wiggling his wrist out from under her. She was still screaming bloody murder, her face bright red, and snot bubbled out of her nostrils.

"How are there this many substances leaking out of you right now?" he grumbled.

He removed her shoes and set them aside, but it took him a long time to even start to get her dress off of her. There was poop smeared all over the inside of the skirt, and he didn't want to get it all over anywhere else, his hands included. But that was going to get him exactly nowhere, so he gritted his teeth and plunged in. And, yeah, he gagged again. It was slimy. He tried to roll the skirt in on itself to contain the poop while he eased it up over Alice's head, and he could have absolutely fucking throttled himself when he realized he hadn't even unzipped it before he started. He noticed that he was chanting a litany of muttered curses in front of the kid, but it was probably fine because she was screaming so loudly that there was no way she could hear him.

He glanced at her and his eyes widened at the color of her face. She was forcing out croaking cries, but how long had it been since she'd taken a breath?

"Alice," he snapped. "Alice, breathe!"

Two more croaks.

"Alice!"

She sucked in an enormous breath and then screamed her frustration again, and Edward's shoulders sagged in relief. "Jesus Christ, kid. Your theatrics might actually kill you."

He turned his attention back to his disgusting hands and the zipper on her dress, trying not to think about how easy it would be to smear crap in her hair. He could not deal with that. He needed to wash his hands and start again. He stood up and hustled to the sink, and immediately Alice started to roll off of the mat.

"No!" He leapt back to her and pinned her back down again. "Could you just stay here, please?" But there was no chance. She probably wasn't even hearing him. Well. The paper towel dispenser was almost in reach . . .

He managed to dart to the dispenser and get back again before Alice could escape. He wiped his hands as thoroughly as possible and then sat her up and worked down the zipper on her dress.

"Here we go again," he muttered, and started in on the dress. The rolling worked okay once he got the layers of petticoats under control. He managed to get the dress up and off of her without dirtying her face and hair, and Alice even started to calm down until she saw him stuff her dress into the trash can. That set off the screaming again as she shrieked for him to retrieve her "pity jwess."

"No," he growled. "Forget it, kid, the dress is a casualty. It's not making it through this war."

She disagreed loudly enough that he worried she was going to bust a vessel. But he had bigger problems because now it was time to deal with those abominable tights. Rolling fabric wouldn't save him here. There would be smearing. There was no way around it. He got a grip on the squishy, slippery waistband and dragged them down Alice's legs. Alice started screaming about messes again as he threw the mass of poop and tights into the trash after her dress.

"I'm going to need therapy after this," Edward muttered to himself.

"What are you doing to that baby?"

Edward might have freaked out if it hadn't been for the loud, booming laugh that accompanied the question. He looked up to see a tall black man and a much shorter kid standing in the doorway. The sound startled Alice into silence for a moment, but then she went right back to screaming in distress.

Edward looked up at the man, knowing that he looked completely desperate and not caring at all. "I will Venmo you a thousand dollars if you buy me a diaper."

The man laughed even louder, slapping his knee. "Looks like you're struggling!"

"You noticed," Edward said drily.

The man strode across the room and grabbed a handful of paper towels from the dispenser. He moved to the sink and wetted one, handing it down to Edward.

Christ almighty, he was a saint. Edward took it gratefully and started cleaning Alice's leg. When he tossed it in the trash, another was waiting for him.

"Orion, go pee," the man said to the kid.

"I can't." He was doing a little dance and clearly straining to hold it.

"Why not?"

"There's a girl in here!"

"Oh, she's just a little thing. Go on and pee."

Orion hurried to a low urinal, turning his back resolutely to Alice, who was starting to calm down now that there were other people in the bathroom.

"You're a lifesaver," Edward said. "But, seriously, a thousand dollars."

The man chuckled. "You're not going to pay me any thousand dollars. I'll go get you a diaper. What size does she wear?"

Edward looked up at him, bewildered. "There are sizes?"

That set off another guffawing laugh. "You're new to this, aren't you."

"How could you tell?"

"Rookie mistake, not bringing a diaper bag. I guess everybody does it once, but the smart ones don't ever do it again." He looked down at Alice. "She's probably about the size of my youngest. I'll get you what we get for her."

"Pity jwess," Alice moaned.

"I'll buy you a new one," Edward promised.

"Peent wun?"

"Sure. Whatever you want."

"Ooh, be careful," the man warned. "She's going to have you buy the short-and-curlies before long."

Edward looked down at Alice's tearful face. "That ship has sailed."

The man shook his head, endlessly amused. "Orion, you finished?"

"Yeah," he started to walk toward the door.

"Uh-uh. Get over here and wash your hands."

"Habba pity jwess?" Alice asked Edward again.

"Yeah, we'll get you one after the diaper situation is worked out." Edward was trying to scrub smears of poop off of the floor mat now, since he still needed to use it until he got a fresh diaper on Alice. He didn't want any residual streaking.

"Wan Daddy," she said with a sniffle.

"You're not kidding."

"Be right back," the man said as Orion shook water from his hands.

They exited and Edward looked down at Alice. She was hiccoughing discontentedly, but the crying was basically over.

"Did you hear that? He called me a rookie."

"Wootie," Alice agreed.

"Yeah. We need to find your mom so you've got someone you can rely on."

She sniffed. Snot was leaking all over her face, and he figured it would end up on him if he didn't take care of it soon. He grabbed another wet paper towel and wiped her nose, cringing when she cried out in protest. Luckily, she stopped when he finished grabbing at her face.

"Die-doo?" she asked.

"Just hang on for a minute. That guy's going to help us out." He hoped. He really hoped. Unless he thought it would be another hilarious joke to leave Edward waiting helplessly in the bathroom for him to return. There was no way Alice would put up with that. He needed to distract her. He searched his pockets for his phone, and for a moment he worried that he'd left it in the car. But he remembered putting it in his shirt pocket after he'd asked for directions to the Walmart. He felt around on the floor until he found the hard plastic, then maneuvered it out of the folds of fabric.

"You want to watch a video?" he asked Alice.

"Poppo?" she asked, brightening.

"Uh. Maybe." He opened YouTube and tapped on the video with the dogs that she had watched before. On closer inspection, they weren't unnaturally colored, they were just wearing emergency personnel uniforms. Because that was totally normal. "How's this?" he asked her.

"Poppo!" She took the phone eagerly and held it above her head as she watched.

The man really was a saint. It was only a minute or two longer before he was back with a plastic grocery bag containing diapers, wipes, and a tube of diaper cream. He also handed Edward a plain black T-shirt.

"You're an actual superhero," Edward said, accepting the goods. "What's your Venmo?"

He shook his head. "I mean it, don't worry about it. Pay it forward."

Edward tried to protest and take the phone back from Alice so he could search for the Superhero's username, but Alice let out an angry scream when he attempted to pull the phone out of her hands.

The man just started laughing again, shaking his head as he walked away. "Good luck, man!" he called over his shoulder.

Edward cleaned Alice's butt with a wipe for good measure and then smeared diaper cream on her. He put the diaper on even tighter this time. He was still worried about squeezing Alice too hard, but once again, fully engrossed in her dog video, she didn't offer any complaint. He really hoped that meant it didn't hurt her, because he'd be damned if he was going to deal with another shit explosion today.

Finally, he put Alice's shoes on her bare feet and tugged on the shirt the Superhero had bought for him. He did a quick inspection to make sure he wasn't bringing any poop with her, then set Alice on her feet wearing only a diaper, a pair of glittering red shoes, and her lace gloves. His old shirt went into the trash and he wedged the floor mat in after it. It was with a sigh of relief that he moved to the sink and gave his hands a thorough scrubbing.

"Pity jwess?" Alice asked. The video, apparently, hadn't distracted her from what she really wanted.

"Yeah, kid. Let's go get you something to wear."

"Pity jwess?" she insisted.

"Yes, pretty dress."

She sniffled pathetically. "Tay."

He found a shopping cart and settled Alice into the front seat. She was clearly used to it because she helped him get her legs into the right places. He was grateful for even that little bit of aid. With her settled, he wandered around the store until he stumbled upon the baby section. He started looking for clothes, but he stopped when he saw a rack of diaper bags. He still had at least a half hour left on his drive to Olympia, plus however much time he spent at home, plus three hours back to Forks. He figured it would probably be a good idea to go ahead and buy a bag full of supplies.

He tried to remember what was in the one he'd left in Forks, but he couldn't. Instead, he just let the shelves tell him what to buy. He already had a few diapers, wipes, and the butt cream. Baby crackers? Yes, for sure. Bibs? God, yes. Lotions? Yep. Bottles? Yeah, he'd need those. Pacifiers? With a name like that, hell yes. Ear thermometer? He'd better have that. Shampoo? He thought about the possibility of shit getting in Alice's hair and grabbed a bottle. Rattle? Yes. Baby monitor? He wasn't completely sure what he was supposed to do with it, but it seemed like a good idea. Carseat fan? Sure. Burp cloths? He didn't actually know what those were, but having cloths around seemed like a very good idea. Diaper Genie bags? He didn't know what those were either, but again, bags. Receiving blankets? Um, okay. Nail trimming kit?

"Alice, let me see your hands."

She held them out palm up and he flipped them over. Nah, they were fine.

He loaded things into the cart until he got to the actual diaper bags and realized that none of them was anywhere big enough to hold all the gear. But that was okay because he wasn't sure whether he should get a backpack or a tote bag, so he bought one of each. That would work. He threw in a couple of other things that he wasn't really sure about but that he was worried he might want at some point.

"Pity jwess?" Alice asked impatiently.

"Yes, right, clothes." He steered her to a nearby rack of party dresses and started looking through them.

"Diss!" Alice said, pointing urgently. "Pease? Pease? Diss!"

"Wow." Edward lifted her chosen dress off of the rack. "That's a lot of sequins."

"Poh-toey wun!"

"Bright red, too. That's . . . stylish."

Alice giggled happily.

"At least it matches your shoes."

She grinned and wiggled her feet.

Edward removed the tag from the dress and poked it into a side pocket of the tote bag so he could scan it later. Then he stood Alice up in the cart and fitted the dress on her. It was too big. He started to take it off, but Alice yelled and clung to it. "No! Mine! Pity jwess!"

"It's the wrong size. We need to find one that fits you."

"NO!"

"Here." He pulled a smaller size off the rack and held it up to her. "Let's try this one."

"NO! PITY JWESS!"

Edward sighed. "You know what? I don't even care. You have clothes on your body and they're poop-free. I feel like that's as much as can be asked of us right now." He put the smaller dress back and steered the cart to the front of the store. Alice watched her Poppo while he paid for his purchases, and he almost made it out the door before Alice's head popped up.

"A-donnoze?"

"What?"

Alice pointed to the golden arches over the pocket restaurant next to the exit.

"Oh, come on. After all that, you're not really going to subject me to McDonald's are you? Let's go find someplace better to eat."

Her face screwed up and her lower lip poked out. She drew in a deep breath—

"Okay! Okay, fine, we can get you some lunch here."

She let out her breath in a shuddering sigh.

"I feel like I'm losing this game," he muttered to himself as he veered off to the restaurant. "What do you want"

"Hassum toys?"

"You want a happy meal?"

"Yes!"

"Hamburger or chicken nuggets?" He had reached the register and a staff member smiled at him and looked at Alice for her answer.

"Um. Sum appoze."

"Apples?"

"We can do apple slices," the register girl said.

"Hamburger or chicken?"

"Um. Chaw-ta mote."

"Chicken?"

"Chaw-ta mote," she corrected.

"Give her chicken nuggets," he told the cashier.

"Do you want a soda, milk, or chocolate milk?"

"Chaw-ta mote," Alice insisted.

Edward arched an eyebrow. "Does that sound like chocolate milk to you?" he asked the cashier.

"Yes!" Alice said, clapping her hands.

The cashier smiled and tapped her screen. "And for you?"

"That's all." McDonald's. Honestly. He'd eat real food when they got home.

He got Alice settled at a table and spread her food out in front of her. She went straight for the apples and chewed them happily while Edward wished he'd had the presence of mind to buy a sketch pad. Waiting for Alice to eat required an absurd amount of patience, and he was running low on that right now.

She clearly didn't feel the same way he did. She played with her food as much as she ate. Her apple slices rode her rocket toy to the moon, but they were a long time about finding their way to her mouth. They eventually disappeared, though, as did the chocolate milk, but the chicken sat untouched.

"Are you going to eat your nuggets?" Edward asked.

She shook her head.

"You just wanted the apple slices?"

"Uh-huh."

"You know, protein is required for survival."

She ignored him and flew her rocket around in the air.

"Fine. Are you ready to go?"

"Uh-huh."

He got her into the cart and hurried out through the rain to the car, where he remembered upon opening the door that there was still poop all over Alice's carseat. He was about to start swearing a blue streak when he realized that he now had baby wipes. He dug through the bags to find them, but Alice didn't appreciate having to sit in the rain and she started crying. Again.

"Here," he said, opening the front door. "You drive for a minute."

She perked up immediately when he put her behind the wheel. "A-jwive?"

"Yeah, sure." He was already opening the wipes and leaning back into the car to wipe at her carseat. The plastic came clean easily, of course, but the padding . . . he scrubbed at it as much as he could, but it still stank. Fortunately, it was removable. Edward found velcro fastenings that allowed him to pull out the pad. He looked around for somewhere to stick it and was contemplating tossing it in the trash can outside the store, but then he remembered that he had grocery bags now. With the pad safely tied up inside a plastic bag, the car started to smell better. He gave the plastic carseat another thorough cleaning and then loaded all of his gear into the back hatch.

Alice was still driving, complete with car noises and plenty of "hont hont!" exclamations. Her sequined dress was drooping off of one shoulder, but she didn't seem to mind. "Okay, kid," he said, leaning in to retrieve her, "time to get in your carseat."

"No! A-jwiveen!" She kicked and screamed, trying to wriggle out of his grasp.

"We've got to go. I'm getting soaked here."

"NO! Yemmy doh! WAN DADDY! WAN DADDYYYYY!"

Edward wrestled her into her seat, and without her help it took longer to pull the straps into place and find the buckles beneath the many layers of tulle skirt. He was absolutely failing to get them locked around her without her cooperation.

"Alice," he said, placing firm hands on her shoulder and staring hard into her eyes. "You're driving me crazy."

Her answer was a scream that devolved into angry wails.

"Don't you want to watch your movie?" he asked, desperate to distract her.

She stopped crying immediately. "Chwoze?"

"Yeah. But we can only watch it after you're buckled in."

She sniffled.

Edward took the opportunity to lock the straps into place and then started the movie playing again. Alice protested the lack of sound until he slid into the driver's seat and cranked the volume back up.

"Momote!" she demanded urgently. "Momote! Momote!"

He got back out of the car and searched the back seat until he found the remote for her. She finally settled down and a very wet, very cranky Edward got back behind the wheel and steered the car out of the parking lot.