Disclaimer: Don't own it.

A/N: Thanks again, everyone who read and reviewed. I appreciate it. And while I'd love to be able to give you all a chapter a day, I've got a really heavy work load right now, and I don't want to attempt to give you more material than I've got. This is an especially busy time for me, work-wise, and I don't want to give you half-assed crap. ;D

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child in my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Landslide, Fleetwood Mac

Chapter Four

September 12th, 2012

It's been almost seven years. How is that possible? Time is moving so fast these days, I can't keep losing track. Charlie called yesterday, amidst all of the construction going on over there – all that noise and hammering in the background. I could hardly hear what he was saying. The most important thing he could've said though, I heard clearly. "Bells, I think there's something over here that you should see." The way he said that, I don't know… I understood perfectly what he meant, and without thinking, I put down the phone, and went straight to the car. He and his new wife Robin were completely remodeling the house. Her idea, of course. Charlie would never think of redoing anything on his own. They were replacing all of the wooden floors, he said. And one of the workers found things hidden underneath the floorboards in my bedroom.

"I almost burned it, Bella. But, it's yours; it was in your room. Here, just take it." And he shoved into my hands the pictures, the CD, the plane tickets. There they all were, after I thought they had been lost forever.

That was just like Edward, I suppose, to be secretive, and yet try to stay close at the same time. There was an entire roll of these, at my 18th birthday, but this is my favorite. It represents him the best, I think – that half-smile, and him always looking out of the corner of his eye. I listened to the recording the other day, while Jacob was gone with Sam, doing their shift. Even still, though he's been gone for so long – that they've been gone for so long – those boys still feel it a necessity to always be on the lookout, always be alert. I had to make him promise to stop once I got pregnant. I can't risk him phasing with a baby around. That's almost too much to think about.

I don't know how Jacob would feel if he knew I still had these things, all of these things that he had ever given me. I've taken a page out of his handbook, and hidden them in places where I know Jacob will never think to look. Right underneath his feet seemed like as good a spot as any.

Sometimes I wonder how different life would be, how different I would be if Edward had come back. I don't know, maybe that's just me thinking too much about things that don't matter anymore. I can't change the past, and I don't want to. I'm happy being married to Jacob. It'll be four years in two months! Seems like a lifetime, but a happy one.

This is hard to admit. I don't like to think these things, and I don't like to feel regret. All I want is to be happy, and forget everything but my life with Jacob, and our lives together. But I don't think my heart will ever stop beating a little bit faster every time I see his face. There are just some things that even a happy life with someone I love can't change.

---

I couldn't speak. My thoughts were running rampant, wild; at a mile a minute… but none of them could push themselves out of my mouth. Sofie stared down at the yellowed paper, looking as though English were a foreign language to her.

"This…" she began, but stopped suddenly, and just pressed a long breath through her lips. "I can't read it." She snapped it shut in one of her hands, and pushed it toward me. "This is personal, this is something that we probably shouldn't know."

"Sofie, grandma Bella is dead. Whatever thoughts are written down in here, I doubt they matter anymore. I mean, it's just like said, isn't it?" I opened the musty diary back to the first page, and ran my eyes over the last lines of the entry. "…thinking too much about things that don't matter anymore." I closed it again, and held it against my chest. "This entry was made over 50 years ago. Whatever she has to say in it, I don't think it means anything anymore. At least, not to us."

Sofie sighed, and shook her head to herself. "Fine. Maybe you're right, but I don't want to read anything else. Whether or not it means anything anymore, it still feels wrong."

Sofie had placed the picture of the striking teenage boy on the dresser, and I leaned to pick it up. I held it close to my face, examining every inch of the photograph. It was apparent that it was taken in Forks, with the rich green trees and the overcast sky behind the boy's head. But what was this house? It was a beautiful, white house, not like any of the ones built like I had ever seen here. Who would build this beautiful, clean house amidst the dirty, wet atmosphere of Forks?

"Do you think this is him?" I asked Sofie, my voice small, even for me.

"Who?" she asked.

"Edward," I pressed. "The other man she talks about."

She shrugged. "Maybe. But whoever he is, I doubt he looks that way anymore."

---

On the drive back to Seattle, I found it hard to focus on the road. When Sofie and I emerged from Bella's bedroom, nearly the entire house was bare. The only things that remained were the worn blue loveseat in the living room, and the stripped wooden table in the kitchen. Everything else had been moved, divided between the children, and some of us even got a few things. Bella and Jacob never had much, but what they did have was special, and it all served a purpose. Nothing that they owned was arbitrary – all the furniture was used, Bella's jewelry worn, the books on the shelves had broken spines and faded covers, and all the dishes in the cabinets were never just for show.

"Mom and Dad never did think they needed extra things," I overheard my mother telling Aunt Tessa. "Look at this plate," she held up a plastic red plate with white flowers on it, the cheap paint decorations chipped and faded, "this was mine." A solitary tear rolled down my mother's cheek, and she quickly wiped it away with her finger. She wrapped the old plate in newspaper, and put at the top of a pile of things in a cardboard box.

I went to sit outside in the rocking chair that grandpa had built. It was plain, but sturdy. He used to always sit there, and watch over all of us as we played in the front yard, the corners of his eyes and mouth crinkled in a changeless smile. After quickly sifting through all of Bella's things, I went straight to my car and hid the diaries and the photo album underneath the backseat. I know I probably should have, but I didn't want to show them to anyone. Sofie promised not to breathe a word, but I got the feeling that she felt we should've given them to someone.

We had placed all of the jewelry we could find into an intricately designed jewelry box, and gave it to our mother. She approached me alone on the front porch, and stood behind me, with her fingers wrapped around the ends of the chain that the locket sat on. I felt my throat fall into my stomach.

"This was your grandmother's," she said in a hushed voice. "And before she died, she made me promise to give it to you on your 18th birthday." My mother dropped the cold locket around my neck, and fastened it with trembling hands. "I know it's been a few weeks since your 18th, but… well, you have it now." I looked up at her, and saw her small smile. She kissed my forehead. "Your cousin got her engagement ring on her 18th birthday, and your sister will get her wedding band."

I kept taking my hand off the steering wheel to feel the locket around my neck, and brush my fingertip over the shallow engraving of her initials. IMB.

"Remy, watch the road, please," my sister pleaded, her hand ready to dart out and grab the wheel, should I drift too close to the median. "Maybe we should pull over, and you let me drive."

"No, you're not driving my car, I'm okay." I swatted at her upraised hands. "Put your hands away."

We sat in a few minutes of the silence. The radio was turned on, but down so low that it blended into the sound of traffic. Sofie sighed, loud of gusts of air, over and over again before speaking. Her voice was cold and restricted. "So, where is that photo album?"

"Underneath the seat," I told her, pointing backwards.

She unbuckled her seatbelt to turn around and fish it out from all of the things piled in the floorboards. Once she had it, she didn't even bother putting her seatbelt back on, and opened it immediately. I heard her take in a gasp of air.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing, it's just…"

I looked over at her, running her fingers over the photographs stuck underneath the filmy cellophane with her mouth open. "What?"

"You look so much like her, Remy."

"No," I shook my head. "No way."

"I mean, the hair is all wrong. You got dad's hair, but everything else… it's all her." She chuckled to herself, and turned the page. "Oh my god," she exclaimed after a moment. "Remy, look. It's him. Again, I mean… Edward." Sofie poked her finger at the page, and ran it over his face.

I turned my head for a quick moment, and surely, there he was, but not just once. Several times. Bella was in a pretty blue gown, and he was dressed in a tux. "What does the back of the picture say? Anything? A date?"

Sofie peeled away the sticky film cover, pulled the photo out, and turned it over. "May, 05," she read. "She was 17, and these are from prom. Why don't we know about this?"

I impulsively lifted my hand to feel the locket around my neck again. "I think a more important question is, why did she keep it a secret?"

---

At home, I paced in my bedroom, waiting for my parents to come back from La Push. Waiting for the gumption to show my mother what Sofie and I had found. Waiting for some kind of sign, some other reason or explanation why it was so important to Bella to write down all of her life's memories, but never share them with her children. I took the first diary in my hands, leather-bound and forest green, and fingered the silver lock on the outside. I had placed the tiny silver key back inside the locket – it rattled and tinkled inside the space whenever I moved too much. I realized soon that I remembered that sound from my childhood. Whenever Bella would scoop me up in her arms, and sit me on her fragile lap, it was the noise that I heard, but had no idea where it came from. For a long time, I thought that was just the sound that her body made when she laughed. Always, that tinkling when she laughed.

I popped the locket open, and let the key fall into my hand. I pushed it into the lock, turned it clockwise, and it clicked open again. I flipped through the pages, and found that nearly every single one was filled from top to bottom. It covered two year's worth of Bella's life, from the day before her 25th birthday, to her 27th Christmas with Jacob.

I fell back on my bed, the diary open in front of my face. I flipped through the pages one more time, expelling all of the dust embedded there, swirling that musty, wet smell throughout the air of my bedroom. This is what I had wanted, isn't it? For the answers to fall into my lap. I was about to learn my grandmother for the first time in my whole life, read her very words, her very thoughts, and yet… I couldn't ever remember feeling a fear so great, like it was threatening to swallow me whole.