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The car accident that killed Carlisle and Esme Cullen was so catastrophic that they could only be identified by dental records. The car had essentially exploded on impact as it crashed through a guardrail and falling 80 feet below. It had taken more than a day to find their scattered, charred remains.
I read article after article at work Monday, trying to piece together what really happened. It was a rainy night and they were driving to their house outside of the city. Their son was home, studying for his final exams, and they were anxious to get back to him, witnesses say. They were coming from a fundraiser downtown and everything about them seemed normal. The whole night felt very routine.
Until, you know, it wasn't.
The worst part of searching through all these articles are the pictures of eighteen year old Edward in a black suit, looking absolutely and completely broken at their funeral. It's obvious that he had been crying and hadn't slept. Rosalie Hale is next to him, eyes red, clutching a tissue in one hand and Edward's sleeve in the other.
My heart aches for him, so intensely that it's hard to take in a full breath. I know what it's like to bury a parent. To be alone and lost in the world after they're gone.
It makes me wish I'd found him sooner.
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I download a police scanner app on my phone, listening to where Edward might be headed next when the moon is high in the sky.
Domestic disturbance at …
….fire at 6th street…
10-71 at 8th and High…
It's hard to hear all these terrible things happening around me and doing absolutely nothing about any of it.
I turn the scanner off, sick of it and sick of myself, as I collapse into bed, eyes trained on the ceiling above me.
A shadow is cast there, from outside my window. A silhouette of a human figure.
When I twist to look outside, it swiftly vanishes.
"Edward?" I say aloud as if he can hear me.
As if it's him, and not a stranger skulking outside of my apartment.
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"I haven't seen you for a while," Alice says as I enter the library one night after work. "I'll admit that I've been worried."
She's so pregnant and swollen and I feel bad that she's been thinking about me at all.
"Sorry," I tell her. "I've just been busy, I guess. I wanted to renew these."
She scans the books on the Real Ones, eyeing me strangely.
"You look different."
"Oh?"
"Not in a bad way," she adds quickly.
"That's good," I say with a smile, trying to ease the weirdness that has settled around us.
"Are you hanging around for a bit?" she asks, changing the subject. I nod. Edward is out in the city somewhere and I know that if I'm at home, I'm just going to listen to the police scanner and worry about him all night.
Instead, I settle into a chair on the third floor near a window with my books, trying to distract myself with my obsessive research on the man who never leaves my mind.
It's hard to focus, though. I think that my senses had been so dulled with all the medication, the fog kind of kept distractions away. Now though, on half doses of everything, I'm hyper aware of every sound and bit of movement.
Like the man pacing the shelves nearby, looking for a book with no sense of urgency. He's merely strolling, his pants swishing with every step.
It's bothering me enough that I move to another section of the library, closer to the circulation desk where Alice is scrolling on her computer silently.
It takes about five minutes for the man to grab a newspaper off a table without looking at it and settle into a chair near mine.
And this is when I start to feel nervous.
There are people out there who would do terrible things to you because of what you mean to me, Edward had said the other day, and maybe I'm being paranoid, but this average looking man in nondescript clothes is totally freaking me out.
I tell Alice goodbye and head outside, walking up the block, crossing the street and then heading back down towards the library again.
The man is behind me, but keeping himself at a distance.
"You know," I say, my voice rising in the quiet darkness, shaking just a little. "If you're trying to follow me without me knowing about it, you're doing a piss poor job."
He says nothing, just continues to tail me as I go back to the library. This time, he has the sense to at least loiter outside.
"Is he bothering you?" Alice asks quietly, standing up from her desk. "I can call security or even the cops."
I almost say no, but there is real fear crashing over me at the thought of him following me home and then I remember the shadow outside of my window.
I realize that they might already know where I live. Where I work. Where I go.
Panic bubbles in my throat as I choke out a yes.
Alice is dialing when there's a commotion outside, and the man who has been following me is suddenly sprawled out on the sidewalk, unconscious.
Edward is there, masked and clenching his fists, as he steps over the man and makes his way into the lobby.
I nearly cry at the sight of him, at his ragged breathing and wild eyes.
"Let's go," he growls and I don't even look back at Alice as I move to join him.
"Bella?" she calls from behind me.
"I'll see you later," I respond, waving a shaking hand over my shoulder. Edward tosses me a helmet and gestures for me to get on his bike.
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