Esme POV

June 1983

"Emmett Cullen, what is the meaning of this?"

My mad scientist leapt up from his stool, sending a red-hot soldering iron and half a dozen circuit boards rattling to the concrete floor of our basement. "Uh oh," he grunted, taking one look at my expression.

I flicked the letter open and read it aloud. "Dear Dr. and Mrs. Cullen, we are writing to inform you that your son Emmett has not met the requirements for graduation on June 20 with our bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. He will be receiving a failing grade in four classes this semester, three of which are required for graduation as described above. Please review the transcript enclosed. Your student may enroll in all of these classes for the upcoming fall semester of the 1987-88 school year without reapplying for admission. Enrollment for the fall semester..." I shoved the letter into his hands. "Care to explain?"

"Hmm." He studied the letter with scholarly interest. "I may have forgotten to turn in most of my assignments and take the exams this semester."

"Emmett! You were doing so well—you got straight As last semester! What on earth happened?"

"Nothing happened!" he said. He was trying not to grin—the nerve of him! "I just don't want to graduate."

"What? Why?"

He shrugged and stooped to pick up the circuit boards. "What's the point? It's not like I'm going to get a job."

"You could if you really wanted to, you know that. We have at least another year before we move on."

"Esme," he said, finally bursting into the enormous grin I loved so much. "Can you really see me sitting in an office eight hours a day?"

"Not really," I admitted. The image really did border on the impossible. "But there are other jobs you might enjoy. And even if you don't use your degree that way, you deserve to graduate a hundred times over! You've come so far academically, and we're so proud of you."

"Yeah, but still, what's the point of the piece of paper? It's not like Carlisle ever got a legit medical degree, you know?"

"That's not the point—"

"I swear to God, Rosalie, if you don't unlock this door...!" Edward shouted two floors above us.

"Anyway," Emmett said cheerfully, swinging back around onto his stool, "it's one less graduation you have to sit through. Those things have to be getting—"

"ESME!" Rosalie shrieked.

"—old by now. You're welcome!"

I huffed my disapproval and headed up the stairs. Edward and Rosalie had been at it all morning. Edward was parked in front of the bathroom door, rapping repeatedly on the bruised wood.

"Now what?" I sighed.

"I'm going to be late for my eleven o'clock," Edward snapped, trying the doorknob again. "I need my keys, Rosalie, for the last time!"

"And your keys are... in the bathroom?" I said, perplexed.

"I may have left them in the pocket of yesterday's jeans," he admitted. "But it wouldn't be a problem if some people didn't take three-hour bubble baths..."

"Or if some people would clean up their own laundry," shouted the voice on the other side of the door. "Honestly, how lazy can you be?"

"All you have to do is slide them under the damn door!"

"I'm not getting out of this bath for your stupid philosophy class! It's an elective anyway! Esme, would you please dismember him for a while?!"

"What possible reason could there be for sitting in cold water for three hours?!"

"Because you haven't left yet?!"

Edward spluttered, rattling the doorknob again. "Of all the pig-headed, immature—"

"You want your keys?!" Rosalie shouted. "Here!" There was a splashing sound and then we heard the bathroom window creak open and slam shut.

"Are you kidding me?!" Edward fumed. "It's been raining for six days straight!" He threw me an accusing look and stormed down the stairs.

"Esme?" Alice's voice drifted in the window from outside.

"Coming," I called back, exasperated, and headed downstairs after Edward.

The screen door swung open and she appeared, followed closely by Jasper.

"It's not a big deal," he was telling her.

"They're in the garden," Alice informed Edward politely. "Two rows back in the zucchini."

"Thanks. At least I have one decent sister in this house."

"My pleasure, dear brother."

The screen door slammed behind him.

"Carlisle needs you," Alice announced, looking squarely up at me with that elfin authority she carried sometimes. "He's about to pull over on the side of the road and he's upset."

I glanced up at the clock. "His shift isn't due to end for another three hours. What's happened?"

"I don't know," Alice said. "I just know that he's upset and that you should go. He'll be stopped on the shoulder in a few minutes. Route 73, mile marker 59."

"He doesn't necessarily want company," Jasper put in. From the hint of exasperation in his tone, it sounded like he had been protesting Alice's interference all the way home.

"I thought you weren't going to hunt," I said to him, frowning. His eyes were still too orange—the result of his accident back in March—for being seen in public, and Rosalie was counting on him. It wasn't every day she presented at the college's astrophysics symposium.

"I figured it'd be better not to kill her classmates," Jasper said. "I'll wear sunglasses."

"As I was saying," Alice said, glaring up at him, "You'll need to go now if you want to meet him in time. Traffic's bad."

"Not in his direction," Jasper said firmly.

I was already out the door. Any excuse to get out of this house!

.

.

.

It took me a few minutes to begin to unwind, even after I had driven well out of Jasper's range. He and Alice always bickered more after he had had an accident—whether it was the human blood putting him on edge or just the sudden reality check from the accident itself—and I knew he couldn't help but radiate the tension he felt sometimes. And whether his gift was responsible or not, we had all been a little on edge lately.

Alice might have warned me about the rain! The clouds had been threatening to burst all week, but the weather report had promised that it would blow over by now. I flipped the wiper on full blast, squinting through the drippy fog as I drove up Route 73. How could the humans see at all?

I should have brought Edward, I thought, tapping the steering wheel and counting the cars stopped in front of me. He could have found us the best route, and he'd have been able to get an idea of what was wrong long before we reached mile 59. But Alice had specifically said that I should go. I couldn't help but feel a little flattered, and perhaps just a morsel smug. Carlisle and Edward were such kindred spirits and had their own silent, private world inside Carlisle's thoughts because of their years alone together, and so often they were the ones to lift each other out of a gloomy moment. And with the day I had had with the "children"—an unfair title considering their years, but one they seemed determined to earn today—I was more than happy to take the chance for some time alone with Carlisle, rain or no rain.

The traffic only grew worse. It had been over ten minutes, and I was still stuck on mile 54. After a few more minutes of clicking my nails on the steering wheel, I edged out into the shoulder and took the next exit to cut through town. But soon I was stuck in traffic there too, unable to get back out onto the highway. Carlisle may have already been parked, alone and upset, for a while now—I didn't want to miss him. I finally parked near a quiet alley that ran up against the trees lining the highway.

I slid out of my seat and stood up into an especially heavy burst of rain. Lightning split the sky just then, lighting everything up and punctuating itself with a BOOM! half a second later. I swiped uselessly at my drenched sleeves, imagining the lightning to be Alice's disapproval at my treatment of the new cashmere sweater she'd given me for Mother's Day. "Sorry, Alice," I said aloud, and a giggle finally broke through my bad mood. We all increasingly found ourselves addressing Alice when she wasn't around. Just another way our lives weren't quite human. In any case, a sweater was just a sweater.

After checking around to be sure I was alone, I slipped into the trees and scaled a good-sized tree to peek over the pebbled wall of the sound barrier. There was no way I'd be able to climb over it without being noticed; I couldn't risk it in daylight, not even at top speed. At least a hundred humans, all immobilized by the traffic jam and looking around for anything interesting to see, had a full view of the wall. I dropped back to the ground and picked my way along until the last exit before mile 59.

There was nothing for it. I walked out onto the highway shoulder and began the last mile, pretending not to notice the heads that turned with every step I took. It probably didn't help that I looked like a drowned rat and had left my shoes somewhere around mile 56.

"Hop in, Miss," a lumberjack-looking truck driver offered a moment later, shoving open his passenger door. "I'll take you the rest of the way."

"I think I'll do faster on my own, thanks," I said politely, hurrying on. Four more offers later, I found myself spinning a ridiculous tale to a police officer that wouldn't take no for an answer.

"... we got separated, you see, and they were almost out of gas before now, so I had run back to give them a little tank of gas I had saved..."

"I'll escort you back to your vehicle, Ma'am," she insisted again. "It's really not smart to be out like this. Don't you have any shoes?"

"Oh, I see it just ahead—thank you!" I scurried on before she could say anything, picking up my splashing pace. What a day this was turning out to be, I thought, shaking my head when I happened to look down at my ruined stockings. I wasn't usually the one who got myself in absurd situations like this. I did my fair share of inventing outlandish cover story details on a moment's notice, but it was usually to cover for the children when they made a mistake or one of us had to change our plans because of the sunlight.

When I saw Carlisle's car up ahead, I forgot my own troubles instantly. Even from here, I could see that something was wrong. He was slumped low in his seat and his hair was messier than Edward's, and that was saying something.

He startled suddenly when I tried the locked handle. He let me in and took a moment to survey me from head to toe while I climbed in.

"Mrs. Cullen," he began, twisting a smile out of the corner of his mouth, but it stopped there. He couldn't think of anything funny to say about my outlandish appearance. The smile drooped.

"Alice told me," I said, reaching over to touch his arm.

"How much?"

"Just that you'd be here, upset, and that I should come. What's happened?"

"Nothing." He shook his head slowly. "Nothing," he said again.

I waited for a few moments. "Lose a patient?"

"In a manner of speaking." He stared out the windshield, over to his mirror. Down at a minuscule stain on the knee of his slacks. "There was a car accident up around Exit 70 late last night. A blue sedan. It had run right off the highway... I supposed the driver had been avoiding a truck or something like that. It must have happened a while before I saw it on my way to the hospital. None of the humans would have noticed it in the dark, it was so far down into the trees."

Carlisle finally let me catch his right hand with both of mine. I waited until he was ready to start again, rubbing his hand with my thumb.

"She must have been eighteen, nineteen. She had already bled out so much, there was nothing to be done... she must have been there for quite a while before I found her. 'I was delivering my first pizza,' she managed to tell me. 'First job.' I asked her about her family, so that I could contact them, but she just shook her head. 'Gone. On my own now,' she said. She said she felt cold, and that was all she was able to get out before she lost consciousness. Even then, she never let go of my hand. She was dead a few minutes later."

"Carlisle, I'm so sorry."

"But in those few minutes... I thought about doing it, Esme. I came closer than I have in years."

I looked up in surprise. "You almost changed her?"

Carlisle watched me for a moment, looking uncertain. "It was a rare opportunity. We were alone, she was dying, no family..."

"But surely you've had other opportunities?" I said. "After all, you can't change every dying human you come across. Our family... our coven, as the others would say, is already quite large."

"Well, a situation like Edward's isn't likely to happen again in the healthcare setting. And you know that ever since Rosalie I haven't wanted to change anyone again, not really. Oh, I don't really know, perhaps I wasn't as close as I thought. Surely Alice would have seen that. Did she?" he asked, gripping my hand harder.

"I don't think so. She didn't mention the girl at all, just that you needed company and that I was the one who should come. She tries not to watch you at work—the blood."

"Yes, of course. Well, that's that." He still looked troubled.

"What's wrong, Carlisle?"

The rain's gentle tapping on the windshield seemed to grow louder until he was ready to speak. "I let people die all the time, Esme. After so many years, I can usually tell when hope is lost before the others can. I stand there and I go through the motions anyway, because I have to. I inject the drugs. I shout for a code cart. I do CPR, I defibrillate over and over... all the time knowing it will fail, knowing how easy it would be to save them if no one were watching. It's hard, but... I've grown used to it. But this time, no one was watching. Once I decided I wasn't going to act, I just sat with her until it was over. She went so quietly."

"It sounds peaceful."

He shook his head, staring out at the rain again. "For someone else, it might have been. But with every second that passed, every time her heart managed to beat one more time, it struck me again that I was really letting her die. That there was nothing stopping me but my own choice. That silence, the absence of the frenzy of the medical team doing everything they could... it was deafening. Esme... what would you have thought if I had done it? If I had come home tonight carrying such an... unexpected guest?"

"Then I would have loved her," I said without a moment's hesitation. I reached up to comb Carlisle's hair back into place. "She would have taken her place in our family, if she chose to stay, of course..."

We caught each other's guilty glance simultaneously.

"Oh, we're both thinking it!" I burst out. "Let's just say it!"

"Yes, the thought did occur to me," Carlisle murmured, looking down at our joined hands. "Of course it did." For a moment, I could have sworn that he was blushing.

"You should have done it," I said. I was almost angry, all of a sudden. "Edward might have finally... she could..." I trailed off, well aware of how I sounded. "I'm sorry," I said instantly, squeezing his hand. "I didn't mean that. Goodness, imagine that history repeating itself."

"And that's why I didn't do it," Carlisle said softly. "When I realized that that was exactly why I had come so close in the first place. Again."

I cleared my throat in the awkward silence; it was a new human mannerism I had been practicing. "Still..."

"I've played God too many times already. Just because things have turned out well, for the most part, doesn't make it right."

I tucked up my muddied feet, leaning across the emergency brake to snuggle closer. "I know. It's just... I worry about him. I think there must be so much happiness waiting for him, if he were to find love. It's been so long... and where is he going to find it, after all?"

He had no answer to that. We had been through this before. Denali wasn't the answer, and those were the only golden eyes to be had, and that was that. At least for now—we all still hoped that someday, others would choose to see humanity the way we did.

"I just..." My fingers picked at the ruined edges of my sweater. The old grief lodged in my throat, kept swallowing my words until Carlisle reached over and lifted my chin so I could see him. "I couldn't do this alone, Carlisle, you know that, and he shouldn't have to either. He's just so... well, alone."

Carlisle lifted my hand and kissed the knuckles slowly, one by one. "I couldn't do this alone either, darling. Yet I did, for many a long year. And Edward's life is fuller by far than what I had. Who are we to say that isn't enough, at least for now?"

"I know... I know. I'm a hopeless romantic. I think everyone should wake up like Emmett and I did, smiling up into the face of your true love, and that's the end of it!" Carlisle's answering grin warmed me to my mud-caked toes. Half a second later, his pristine shirt, tie, and lab coat were wearing a good portion of the mud I had brought into the car.

"And speaking of Emmett," I said hotly, scooting back over to my own seat, "do you know what your son did? He purposely flunked every one of those classes this semester, just so he couldn't graduate! It's not funny!" I added when his smile finally broke into laughter.

"I thought Rosalie was joking," he said. "I overheard her telling Kate on the telephone that Emmett was determined never to earn a college degree, that it had become quite the challenge."

"But surely the subject matter isn't too challenging this time around?"

"I think you and I are the challenge she was speaking of, darling. Emmett considers evasion of responsibility an art, you know." He relaxed back into his seat. His eyes were twinkling with laughter now.

"I just don't see why he's determined against it," I sighed. "He should take pride in all he's learned!"

Carlisle smiled again, reaching over to touch my hair. "I think it's enough that he knows how proud we are. And I also think he enjoys our nagging, so let's keep on."

I leaned back into my seat too. Carlisle chuckled and reached down to pull the handle on his own seat, making it recline back. I shoved mine all the way back until it touched the back seat, giving him a little smirk of triumph.

"Oh Carlisle, the day I've had with those... children!"

"They're onto us, you know," he warned, dropping his voice to a conspiratory whisper. "It goes both ways. They know how much we enjoy fussing over them. That's why they're never going to grow up."

I let out a multi-syllable sigh, closing my eyes. I had heard a mother of three preschoolers make this sound once, and it was surprisingly soothing.

"Carlisle?"

"Hmm?"

"What was her name?"

"I decided not to look. I left everything as I found it and flagged down the first police car I saw down the road. I just told them I had seen signs of a car running off the road and that it had been too steep for me to climb down there myself."

"Oh. Well, I suppose that's for the best. I hope Alice didn't see anything either. It would be hard to hear what might have been."

"I agree. Esme... I'm in no rush to go home, are you?"

"Absolutely not."

He sat up to switch on the radio, fiddling with the dial until he found some easy-going jazz. He reclined back and we held hands, watching each other, lazily twining our fingers together. The rain and the music pounded on, drowning each other out. I closed my eyes again, and smiled, and decided that I was the most fortunate mother in all the world.