This is just a sweet little moment I wanted to write out. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all... see you in 2019!

Christmas Eve, 1963

Edward POV

If vampires were in the habit of sending Christmas cards, surely our living room could have served as the idyllic picture. A roaring fire in the hearth, beloved carols playing on the radio, mother and son decorating the glistening, colorful tree. The fact that said mother was dangling confidently by her ankles from the chandelier to reach the higher branches gave it just the right touch. It blew the humanity right out of the whole thing in a way that was entirely charming.

"Oh there's no place like home for the holidays..."

Curse Perry Como! Why did that song have to come on so often? Just like that, Esme's smile soured and she looked away, carefully straightening a candy cane that didn't need to be straightened. Our family wouldn't be complete this Christmas; Alice and Jasper were off on their first extended trip alone since their arrival thirteen years ago. Esme wasn't worried the way she had been the first time Rosalie and Emmett had gone off on their own—to say nothing of the grief I'd put her through back in the late twenties and early thirties—but she sorely missed her two newest children, now more than ever at Christmastime.

"They'll be back before you know it," I said gently, handing her up another ornament.

"I know."

I dug through the box, finding one of the wooden ornaments that Jasper had carved by hand. This one was a wolf. It was a Christmas tradition now for someone to make the annual wisecrack whenever this ornament went up: was it a carving of an elegant animal that often shared our habitat, or had Jasper jokingly made her a representation of her favorite food to hang next to the inedible candy canes?

"Your dinner, Ma'am," I teased, handing the wolf up to her with a wink and a bow. She laughed and swatted at my head before taking it, succeeding only in making the entire chandelier swing around with a tinkle of crystal.

"It's good for them, you know," she insisted, finally coming down to land lightly on her feet. "Alice has been working so hard with her stocks lately, and Jasper's been aching to get away with her for a while now."

"A long while," I said. "I'm sure you're right. Still, it wouldn't have hurt them to come back for Christmas, even if it was just for a day or two."

"Alice suggested it, last time she called. But I told her not to bother, of course. It's a terrible time to travel even for humans, and there will be many more Christmases all together. Besides, it's such a romantic time of year. Perfect for a belated honeymoon. I told her that while they're in Europe they might like to spend Christmas at the cottage in Switzerland."

"Yes, that'd be nice," I said wistfully. It was the most picturesque property we owned—more of a chalet than a cottage, really, and of course it'd be gorgeous this time of year in the Swiss Alps. Meanwhile I was stuck writing an essay about the social and economic issues that had led to the first world war, and the forecast was a steady rain cloud from now until New Year's. "Carlisle's home," I added, hearing the first whispers of my father's familiar thoughts out on the highway.

"We saved the angel for you," Esme told him when the front door opened, but he stayed out on the front porch in the rain.

"I'll be back in a few minutes, darling. Emmett!" he called. "There's a package waiting at the post office, but they said it's quite oversized. Could you meet me there with the truck? And bring along that green tarp."

No sooner did we hear Emmett's booming "Got it!" than he crash-landed right beside us in the living room, having taken the stairs in one jump.

"Not until after Christmas!" Esme scolded him. "I have all kind of breakable—you stop it! Emmett!" she shrieked when he picked her up and joyfully swung her around in a circle, barely missing the tree.

Rosalie came into the living room just as Emmett slammed the garage door going out. "A package? Do you think it's a gift from Alice and Jasper?"

"I hope so!" Esme said. "Or it could be from the Denalis... Eleazar was going to send us one of his carvings from this year. Edward, would you clean up while we finish the tree?"

I cleared away box after box, empty but for the wrinkled tissue paper that had kept the Christmas ornaments and knickknacks safe throughout our travels. I settled down to the piano afterwards, tinkering with a new arrangement of "The Holly and the Ivy" while Esme and Rosalie put the finishing touches on the tinsel and lit the red candles that were now tastefully scattered around the entire downstairs.

... bet it's a coffin! burst into my mind a half hour later.

"Emmett's back," I announced, closing the piano lid. "And it's a big package, all right. Rosalie, would you get that other chair?" We cleared an even bigger space, and a good thing too; Emmett and I were barely able to set down the gigantic crate, and that was after performing some considerable acrobatics to fit it through the front door.

"It's gotta be a coffin," Emmett said again, cracking his knuckles eagerly and looking for a way to open it. "Crowbar or bare hands?"

"I seriously doubt that anyone has sent us a coffin, Emmett," Carlisle said when he came in a moment later, shaking his head in fond exasperation. It didn't sound like the first time he had said it, either.

"Who's it from?" Esme asked.

"There was no name," Carlisle said. "They only know it was shipped from a town near Paris."

Alice and Jasper, we all thought at once. Emmett, to his great disappointment, was sent to get the crowbar so that the crate might not be damaged. The instant we pried the lid off, the room was filled with the unmistakably sweet aroma of another vampire—whoever had sent the package, presumably.

"Who is it?" Rosalie asked.

After a brief instant of recollection, Carlisle broke into a grin. "Alistair! What on earth..." He began to dig down into the straw, releasing its moldy odor to mingle with Alistair's lingering scent.

"Who even packs things in straw anymore?" Rosalie said, wrinkling her nose.

"Alistair has always preferred to stay a bit behind the times... here it is." Carlisle tugged gently upward at an awkwardly-shaped object wrapped in cloth. I unearthed the far end of the mysterious bundle and we heaved it up out of the straw together. Carlisle sliced through the twine with a fingernail and the cloth fell away.

"... Oh my."

He stilled for a moment, quite paralyzed under the sudden weight of his memories. He reached out a tentative hand and touched the ancient wood. It was an enormous cross, beautifully carved from oak. And there was no doubt about its origin; the onslaught of pictures in Carlisle's mind showed the very same cross hanging on the wall of a familiar church.

"Your father's cross," I said in wonder. The others drew closer to examine it.

"I can't believe Alistair found it," Carlisle murmured, tracing his fingers over the grain of the wood.

"Found it?" I said. "Was he looking for it?"

"It would appear so. You recall that Alistair is a tracker?" We all nodded, though we didn't know much more than that. Alistair was an intensely private man, and Carlisle had respected that privacy by telling us very little about his friend's background. I had gathered enough from Carlisle's memories over the years to piece together something of a narrative about this mysterious vampire I had never met, but it was a frightening, disjointed tale—all darkness and evil faces and flapping wings—so I had never pried either.

We had hoped to find Alistair back in the forties when we had traveled through Europe and British Isles, but we hadn't come across so much of a whiff of his scent, even at his favorite haunts. This was the first I'd smelled of it. Carlisle had guessed that Alistair was avoiding our crowd of a family, instinctively avoiding the places that we would travel.

"His gift is a strange one," Carlisle went on. "Unlike other trackers I've met, he can track things as well as people, but it's very roundabout. He's occasionally found people by directly seeking them, and even objects like this. But he's also found people long after he had stopped looking for them. His gift seems to have... well, a mind of its own, in a way. He'll just end up where he needs to be."

"Or avoid where he'd rather not be," I put in, half joking. "So he's been keeping an eye out for the cross this whole time?"

"For nearly two hundred years. I only spoke of it in passing, really... wishing I could have taken it with me somehow. He mentioned the possibility of his finding it someday, but I never really thought... this is most remarkable."

"What a wonderful gift," Esme said, shaking her head. "I don't suppose we could write and thank him?"

"I don't see how. I just hope we'll meet again someday." He had once told me that he and Alistair had sworn an oath of eternal friendship—a common enough form of alliance between immortal acquaintances, I supposed, but this was one Carlisle had thought of often. He had been deeply disappointed when we had been unable to find Alistair on our travels, particularly because of the possibility that he was avoiding us and what that might mean. It might be all hogwash; it was possible that he could have sensed Carlisle's impending visit, but how would he know about the rest of us? In any case, whether or not his gift was really that enigmatic, it seemed that he still honored their oath with all his heart.

Oh, I have a feeling... will, came a cheerful, high-pitched voice inside my head.

"Alice?!" I whipped my head around in the direction of the highway. The others gasped and clamored for me to confirm it, running to peer out the window at our empty yard. I shushed them and closed my eyes to listen harder. My gift strained out westward, sifting through the new voices that blinked in and out of my range from other passing cars. Sure enough, the eager thoughts of my brother and sister soon came in loud and clear. Esme shrieked with joy and streaked out the front door, barely remembering to open it first. She knocked them both right off their motorcycle with her enthusiasm, and soon we were all out in the rain, exchanging hugs and kisses and friendly punches and laughter at their surprise.

.

.

.

Just there... no, a little higher...

I impatiently hefted the cross up a couple of inches higher against the wall, using Carlisle's point of view to make sure I had it straight up top. We were lucky that the cross was large enough for its weight to be spread over three studs, but it had been difficult to find a spot big enough for it. Carlisle and Esme had finally settled for the second floor hall just by the stairs. It gave us a good stretch of wall space, but Carlisle had changed his mind on the exact placement at least seven times by now.

Yes, there—that's perfect.

I sighed in relief, holding myself and the cross steady while Carlisle gingerly climbed up to stand on my shoulders with a hammer and a mouthful of nails. While he worked, I listened to Alice's chatter downstairs. It turned out that their surprise trip home had actually been inspired by Alistair's surprise gift, which she had foreseen over a week ago.

"We just thought it'd be funny for you to get two surprises right in a row," she said. "And on Christmas Eve, no less!" She thought for a moment. "I wonder if Alistair's gift had something to do with the timing, too?"

"Having you two home is the best gift of all," Esme said warmly, "for as long as you can stay."

"We almost didn't make it," Jasper said. "The sun did its damnedest to keep us in Europe. We finally had to find a different airport, one with a covered walkway."

"And how did you do? On the airplane?" Rosalie asked him.

Jasper winced, though his eyes were a healthy, buttery gold. "Let's just say I'm not in a hurry to do that again." He shared a commiserating grimace with Emmett before turning back to Esme. "Anyway, it's good to be home. It's not a visit—we're back for good. " Esme shrieked again and swept Alice and Jasper up in another of her bone-crushing hugs. Alice continued to chatter on, telling us about their travels and passing around the pictures they had taken.

Carlisle was finally satisfied with the cross and climbed down, standing further down the hall to inspect his work. "It really is beautiful, isn't it? Did I ever tell you that my father carved it himself?"

"I can't quite picture him doing that," I admitted.

"Neither can I. But I remember one or two people in my village telling me that he hadn't always been... the way I knew him. He had once had an eye for beauty, and a talent for creating it. That he had once looked for the good in his fellow man, not the evil."

He grew quiet again, and the old struggle sputtered to life in his mind. The stern-faced preacher was alive once again, shouting his condemnation from the pulpit despite the beautiful cross hanging right behind him. His biting words flooded through both our minds at once, as they had not done in years: Your mother gave her life for yours! But what are you doing with it!? Nothing!

"Maybe keeping it out in plain sight isn't such a good idea after all," I said.

Carlisle tilted his head, considering. The spectre of his father didn't seem to haunt him often nowadays. His life, ironically enough, was fuller than those of most humans now. It left little time for wrestling with his father's expectations and sour faith; this reminder might bring that struggle up more often. Beautiful or not, maybe the best place for his father's handiwork was in a dark corner of the attic.

But Carlisle's mental struggle took a different turn this time. The vindictive face grew younger in his imagination, bent in careful toil over the unfinished cross with a soft-eyed young woman looking on. I knew never what she looked like, Carlisle thought to himself with regret, and so her face shifted with possibilities that hinted at Carlisle's own. I suppose I never knew what he looked like, either, when he was still himself. He tried to alter the image of the man's face as well, contorting the righteous grimace into a loving earnestness, a hopeful expectation when he glanced from the raw wood over to his wife, smiling in curious wonder at the soft roundness of her belly.

Carlisle left the hall abruptly, going to fetch the old Bible from his bureau. He flipped the ancient, brittle pages with care as he went back downstairs to join the others, and I followed him down. He laid the Bible open at the Christmas story, leaving it on the mantlepiece for its reading later tonight. For now he was quite content to listen and laugh and examine the pictures of Alice and Jasper's adventures. I headed back to the piano, tugging it round in a quarter circle so that I could more easily see the others while I played.

The idyllic picture of our living room was all the brighter now that our family was once again complete. Alice's vibrant energy, collided again with Emmett's, made the whole house feel more alive. Jasper, who had always struggled to truly feel like a part of the family, radiated the peace he felt at returning home. Rosalie had him busy already, picking over her newest robotic creation with him. The distinct combination of all our scents together was just right—as comforting a fragrance as the cinnamon and cloves that warmed the kitchens of our human neighbors.

Carlisle was also standing back in his mind, considering the picture we all made together. Esme quietly slipped her hand in his even as she continued her conversation with Emmett, who was stirring the fire with renewed vigor. Mind-reader or not, somehow she always knew when Carlisle was stewing over something. He squeezed her hand and for a moment they shared, without even looking at each other, identical smiles of contentment and twin thoughts of gratitude as they watched their "children" all settle in together once again. There was a moment's fond thought for the faraway Alistair, who had surprised us all today with his own thoughtfulness, and that made Carlisle think of several others in his bizarre collection of friends. Then he glanced over to the stairs, seeing the lower portion of the cross.

It's all so very different from what he wanted for me.

"Like I said," I murmured, transitioning into a quieter song, "maybe it'd be better to put it away."

No, don't you see? It's all so much more than what he wanted for me. I can't change the way he was in the years I knew him... and you're right, having it up does remind me of things I'd rather forget. But it also shows me who he might have been. His craftmanship was a true act of loving worship, and it was the loss of a great love that left him vulnerable to defeat. Just because he had no love left for me doesn't mean it wasn't beautiful at one time. I'd like to remember him this way instead. Let it redeem him, in this small way.

His eyes drifted back to the mantlepiece, and the Bible laying open there. After all, isn't that what we're remembering tonight? The story of a great redemption, humbly born out of the greatest love.

"I suppose so," I agreed. Come midnight, we would all listen to the story as usual, moving along and leaving Carlisle to his usual contemplations. His faith was his own; none of us shared it, at least not in a way that compared to his, and even that had been rebuilt as he had grown into his second life. But it touched all of us, nonetheless, because it was what gave him his extraordinary capacity for forgiveness—a readiness to look for redemption in each of us, so that we might come to see it too. Even in ourselves.

And that was very much worth celebrating.