16. Deluge

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A smile split my face as Bella's noisy truck turned off the highway onto the Cullens' long driveway. I resisted the urge to run out to meet her and tried to maintain my conversation with Carlisle and Esme, but wasn't very successful. After my fourth distracted reply I heard a smothered giggle.

"Sorry," I said sheepishly, running a hand through my hair.

"No, no," Carlisle said smoothly. "Esme shouldn't laugh just because you agreed that polka-dotted sheep are the best."

"I… what?"

He fought to keep a straight face. "After all, it was her idea to paint them so she shouldn't find it so humorous."

I transferred my blank stare to Esme. She gave up restraining herself and laughed outright. "I'm sorry, Edward," she said in an unrepentant voice. "I couldn't resist."

I was saved from having to reply by the noisy arrival of the school "kids." Emmett was insisting, "I'm just saying, Mrs. Bailey doesn't know anything about Prohibition. She has no business lumping normal people who had stills in their back sheds in with people like Capone and Luciano."

Alice said sotto voce, "Says the person who had a still in his back shed." She danced away as her tried to ruffle her hair.

"Can it, shorty. I didn't have a still at all." A grin flashed across his face. "My oldest brother did, though. And my uncle, and three of my cousins… or was it four?" He frowned, trying to remember, then shrugged. "It doesn't matter. The point is that someone needs to tell her she's wrong."

"There is no point in trying to educate the teachers, Em." Jasper sounded exasperated, as though it wasn't the first time he'd said it. "Seriously, how many times have you watched me try and fail? It's not worth the aggravation."

Bella edged past the others and looked around the room, a beautiful smile breaking across her face when her eyes met mine. She launched herself at me as I started to get up and I laughed as I caught her, the tiny, painful ache in my chest finally soothed.

"Told you he was here!" Alice sang. "Now aren't you glad you didn't go home first?"

I settled back into the couch and kissed Bella's head. I was certainly glad she didn't go home first. She'd been away too long already.

Emmett gave up trying to sway Jasper into agreeing with him. "Humph. Bells, what do you think? I should try to get Mrs. Bailey to see the error of her ways, right?"

"Hmmm?" she murmured into my neck. "Sorry, Emmett, what'd you say?"

"Oh, I see how it is. Now that Eddie's back you have no interest in the rest of us." He gave a good impression of being offended but his mind was amused.

"Edward please, Emmett," I told him stiffly, trying to decide if I should stop him from teasing Bella. "Not Eddie."

"Edward," he pronounced exaggeratedly. "Now that Ed. Ward. is back, Bella doesn't care about the rest of us anymore."

Bella sat up in my lap, distressed, as I hissed at him. He shouldn't upset her for his own amusement. "That's not true!" she exclaimed. "Of course I care about all of you!"

"Just ignore him, Bella," Rosalie advised coolly. "He's not really upset." Her eyes flicked over to me. And you know it, so calm down. He would never hurt her.

Bella looked to Jasper for confirmation. "He's just yanking your chain, missy."

"Aw, you guys ruin all my fun!" Emmett complained, his eyes dancing. I watched through his eyes as Bella stuck her tongue out at him, and marveled at her ease with him—with all of them. She was more comfortable around them than I was. True, she had spent more time with them than I had, but she was human. Shouldn't she be just a little afraid?

"Speaking of fun, come on, Bella! We have to show Edward what we found!" Alice grabbed Bella's hand and pulled her up. "Edward, do you want us to bring it all out here with everyone, or would you rather have privacy?" I don't think there's anything you would be uncomfortable sharing.

"Here's fine," I decided. There was nothing about Emilie that I wanted to hide, and really, how much information could they have found?Just knowing I hadn't killed her was more than I'd dared to hope for.

"Yay! We'll be right back!" She darted away, tugging an off-balance Bella behind her.

"She's the one you need to worry about hurting her," Rosalie said dispassionately.

"Rosalie!" Esme chided.

"What? Oh, she won't hurt her on purpose, but she's like a little kid who hugs a kitten too hard. One day she's going to get a bit too enthusiastic, that's all."

I looked in alarm at the staircase Alice and Bella had gone up and thought about going after them.

"I can hear you, you know." Alice's voice filtered to us at a pitch Bella was unlikely to be able to hear. "I'm not going to hurt her, Edward—I'm always careful." Her voice changed. "Here, Bella, is this too much for you to carry?"

Ten minutes later, I was sitting on the floor trying to absorb the details on the mounds of paper surrounding me. And to think I had thought they wouldn't have found very much! Vampire brain or not, this was just too much to take in. I'd already been inundated with information about Emilie, but there were also sheaves of paper detailing the lives of her children, her siblings and their children, and classmates and neighbors I could, at best, barely remember. Then there was close to a ream with details about my grandparents, my parents, and even myself.

I hadn't any idea they had gathered this much information. All I'd really wanted to know was if Emilie had survived her encounter with me, but even the information about her was overwhelming, since she'd more than survived.

She was still alive today.

I shook my head, trying to marshal my thoughts and decide who I wanted to learn about next. "Uh, Jack?"

"Your friend Jack?" Alice clarified. "He's this pile." She flicked through the stack to locate the sheets on which she'd written a summation of his history. She and Bella had done that for each of the major players, giving an overview of important events and listing the documents they'd discovered. It was tremendously helpful, but still…

I looked at the thousands of pages of printed out documents and typed information that caged me against the couch.

It was too much.

Bella reached across the pile of paper separating us and touched my hand. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yes," I replied automatically, then amended, "I think. I… this is just… more… than I expected. Don't misunderstand, I really appreciate all the trouble you went to," I included Alice and Jasper in my look. "It's just… a lot."

Bella bit her lip, looking remorseful. "It's too much, isn't it? I should have realized… Alice, help me find all the summary sheets?"

Jasper and Esme knelt down to help and in no time at the summary sheets were extracted and the rest of the papers were tapped into tidy stacks and whisked away to a large mahogany table in the incongruous dining room. Bella moved to sit next to me, her back against the couch, and handed me several pieces of paper stapled together. "This one is about Jack."

I slid closer to her as I took it, trying to be surreptitious about it, then watched through Carlisle's eyes as she looked at me assessingly, a small furrow between her brows. She scooted close enough to lean her shoulder against my arm, and I sighed in relief.

I read about my best friend's life, wishing I'd been there to share the pleasure of his joys and the burden of his sorrows. I sucked in my breath as I read of his wife's death. "Helen," I murmured, and tried to remember if I'd known her.

"She was a year behind the two of you in school," Bella said quietly, once again making me wonder how she knew me so well. "I don't know if you remember her. We have pictures if you want to see them. It's so sad; she was only twenty-four, and both babies…"

The image of the still, pale infant was back in Esme's mind, and in Rosalie's was a curly-headed baby who looked remarkably like Emmett.

"Even today, with all the advances in medicine, eclampsia is still a killer," Carlisle said quietly. "It's uncommon for it to strike after an unremarkable first pregnancy, but carrying multiples increases the likelihood, as apparently happened here."

"He had Johnny, his oldest boy," Alice pointed out somberly. "And he remarried eventually and had more children."

"Not that it could make up for what he lost," Esme clarified in her gentle voice. "But he recovered as best he could and continued living. He chose to live for his son, and for himself. He was happy again, and lived a long life."

The words on the paper began to swim before my eyes. Births and schools and marriages and deaths. My best friend's life reduced to mere dates in black ink.

I was on my feet before I knew I meant to stand. "Forgive me. I… forgive me."

Then I was out the door before anyone had a chance to react.

A/N: Don't worry, he's not going far. ;) So sorry for disappearing for so long- my daughter graduated, my husband got a new job, and we moved. It's been a crazy summer and I'm ready for a vacation. LOL The next chapter is almost finished and will be up in a day or two. This weekend I'll be posting a bunch of pictures and probably a family tree on my tumblr- I'm whilewewereyetsinners on there too. Just search for the love is sweeter tag. :) In other news, I'm donating a one-shot to the Fandom 4 Autism. My younger daughter is on the spectrum so I'm especially excited about it. (If you want to donate to the cause and receive a compilation of stories, you've got until 1 September to do so at fandom4autism DOT wordpress DOT com)Thanks for reading- please review!