Edward stood in the vacant room that was once Carlisle's study, staring at the walls and envisioning the paintings that used to hang from each of them. The artwork was all elsewhere now. A residence in Dunkirk, New York—last he'd heard. Some fixer upper well off the busy congestion of the main roads, nestled near Lake Erie. The sort of house Esme could painstakingly resurrect and pour her whole heart into, no doubt. The sort of climate where the sky was frequently clouded, and it often rained.

But not quite so much as it did here. In Forks.

He glanced at Carlisle's desk. It was the only thing of Carlisle's that remained, and Carlisle had been reluctant to leave it behind, even after Alice suggested that allowing her to acquire something different for him could also give Esme an additional item to restore. But Alice had picked up more than clothing and accessories from her countless shopping trips over the decades. She was well-versed in sales techniques, and, ultimately, she had managed to sway him (as she had, of course, already foreseen she would).

Edward wondered whether she was employing those same sales techniques in her emails to Bella about the high-heeled boots. Surely text on a screen couldn't be a fraction as cajoling.

Down the hall, behind the closed door of his old room, Bella's breathing evened out. He knew by the steady whooshing and the slowed, regular rhythm of her heartbeat that she had slipped into the deepest stages of slumber. He had watched her sleep on more than enough occasions in the past to have a vivid idea of how she most likely appeared at the moment. He had laid next to her through many a blissful evening while she lightly snored, transfixed by the random twitching of her fingertips.

Her hair would be an endearing disaster. It would have spilled entirely across her pillowcase at this point, or, alternatively, if she had rolled onto her side, have tumbled down over her face. Her full lips would be just slightly parted. The worried crease that seemed forever etched between her brows, which had only become more prominent and deeply indented in the years since her stepfather's sudden death, would finally have smoothed out.

She would appear peaceful. She would appear too beautiful for any words to ever accurately describe.

Edward ventured a step toward the doorway.

Bella was sleeping. She would never know he was there.

He whipped his foot back into place, denying the impulse and stamping it down. Not quite as easily or reflexively as he would have liked, but he managed to remain rooted to his spot. Just barely.

Edward redirected his focus back to Carlisle's desk. It was coated in dust. Everything was, he supposed. Dull and grimy and showing evidence of long-term disuse. In most every other instance, he couldn't be bothered to care. The house was known to be unoccupied. Was that not how an unoccupied house ought to look? However, the placement of this particular dirt offended him immensely. He found he could no sooner leave the desk in its present condition than expect Bella to wrap herself in stale bed sheets or dine with grungy silverware.

Forcing himself to maintain a human momentum so as to make his preoccupation last, Edward set off in search of cleaning supplies, intent on tidying the study.

The task filled but a few lengthy hours. And only that because he did it as gradually, thoroughly, and precisely as possible. While he cleaned, Bella slept on, her breathing and her heartbeat crafting an inspirational duet in his ears. When Carlisle's desk shone almost as brightly as vampire skin in sunlight, and when even Edward's eyes could no longer detect a trace of dust on its surface, he toyed with the idea of going to sit at the piano and composing.

He had not played in a very long time. He had not felt capable of constructing a tune in even longer.

Creating music would have come with the risk of disturbing Bella, though, so he decided against it. Instead he allowed himself to become the statue his body was naturally inclined to be, retreating into a default mode of supreme stillness. Possessing a form almost entirely removed from any physical complaints (the ever-smoldering embers of the thirst not withstanding) made it blessedly simple to divorce oneself from reality.

When Bella was gone, when his phone did not ring for days or sometimes whole weeks at a time, he retreated into the precious years of happiness she had given him. The true gift of being a vampire was the ability to waltz through flawless recollections of the past whenever necessary. In all honesty, he knew his absence hurt his family—knew the exact extent to which it would wound each individual member of the household in such a way that only a mind reader could ever be privy to—but even his awareness of their pain wasn't enough to drive him back to an environment where others would require his presence and attention.

Edward had to be permitted to exist within the distant bounds of his memories. It was the only mechanism at his disposal that made the empty aching of Bella's absence a hollowness which he could survive.

A short while after darkness had given way to gray morning, Bella's vital signs quickened, and she began to audibly stir.

He dashed to one of the bathrooms and made use of the shower, then proceeded into Alice and Jasper's old room, silently opening the least expansive of the walk-in closets. An assortment of clothes he had purchased in preparation for Bella's visit dangled there before him. He selected a fresh pair of jeans and a tan shirt, changing into the latter with a twinge of regret and uncertainty.

Edward had observed that Bella almost unfailingly wore blue on the occasions when they saw each other. He wanted to wear brown for her in an equivalent tribute to her preferences. All of the new shirts in his possession were varying shades of her favored warm, earthy color, but their initial conversation the day before made him question whether he ought to have opted for more variety.

Bella was human. Bella's preferences were subject to change.

The next time she visited—if there was a next time she visited—he made a mental note to acquire something on the dark side of green.

Bella's feet fell heavily onto the floor. He made an effort not to actively listen, to respect her privacy as much as his heightened senses would allow as she shuffled about, taking what she would call several human minutes to complete her own preparations for the day.

Edward met her in the kitchen. He gathered together a bowl, a spoon, and a box of breakfast cereal, setting them on the counter as she rounded the corner. "Good morning, Bella."

"Morning, Edward." She smiled brightly, radiantly, either pleased to see him or pleased with the food he offered. Or possibly both. "Thank you."

He nodded in acknowledgment and stepped aside so that she could more easily arrange her meal.

"Did you sleep well? For the remainder of the night, at least?"

"Mm-hmm."

Bella shook some cereal into the bowl. The dry, amorphous flakes of corn or oat—or whatever factory fortified concoction they were comprised of—clattered noisily to the curved bottom of the ceramic. Their appearance was not helped by the opaque drizzling of milk she sloshed overtop of them.

Edward looked on in distaste as the ragged pieces bobbed atop the rising pool of sickly white.

Bella snickered.

He glanced up to find her watching him, the brown of her eyes seeming to sparkle with amusement.

"That still grosses you out, doesn't it?"

"Just a bit." He tried to straighten his face.

She laughed a second time, harder and longer than before.

Bella apparently considered a bowl of cereal to be a dish worthy of a table, though it did not seem any more complex than the yogurt she had been content to consume on the couch the previous evening. She strode into the dining room and plopped it down on the nearest edge of the cherry wood.

Realizing where she intended to sit, Edward wrestled with the sudden inclination to come forward and pull out her chair for her. It was the polite thing to do, the correct thing, as far as he was concerned. Some fossilized set of table manners had been drummed into him long ago, likely by the human mother he only wished he could recall. Bella had a way of drawing those sorts of instincts out of him. Aspects of himself he'd lost, aspects he'd never even known to search for. It was but one item on an infinite list of reasons why he loved being around her so very much.

However, he was too far from the chair to reach it before she did. He would not make it in time, at least not traveling at anything resembling mortal velocity, so he let the urge go unsatisfied.

"Yeah..." Bella began in a hesitant sort of tone as she situated herself at the head of the table. She flopped spoonfuls of cereal haphazardly around her bowl, wetting the contents more thoroughly. "It was actually really nice, getting to spend the night here again. I felt really comfortable."

"I'm glad to hear that. I always hope these visits are pleasant experiences for you. I want you to enjoy yourself."

"I am enjoying myself! I loved the movie we watched. That was so funny. You really know how to pick 'em, Edward."

He hadn't been questioning her feelings toward the movie, but he welcomed the diversion, just the same. "Do I?"

"Definitely. I'm going to start pestering you for recommendations all the time now."

"Pester away. I've accumulated quite a few favorites I've never gotten around to telling you about."

"How many?"

"Oh, a couple thousand. Give or take."

"You're not even joking, are you?"

"Not in the slightest."

Bella snorted and glanced down at her cereal as though she'd momentarily forgotten it was there.