19. Return

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I got out of the car and froze, staring at the façade of my childhood home.

We'd been all over the city today, visiting places that should have been familiar to me. The school I'd attended for a decade barely stirred any memories, although according to the information we had the exterior of the building was the same. Landmarks which were in existence during my youth were nevertheless unrecognizable. Even this street: the trees were so changed, as were many of the houses. I wouldn't have known where I was by appearance alone. But my house…

Memories swamped me, no less precious for being fragmented: long-forgotten glimpses of my parents, the life I'd had, my friends… For a moment I could see Jack's face, hear his laughter. He was laughing when he shoved my shoulder playfully as we walked together through the front door, making me stumble into the doorframe. I shoved him back, then we both straightened guiltily as my mother glided out of the parlor. Now, boys, let's behave like gentlemen, shall we? She drew close enough for me to see that the amusement in her eyes belied her severe expression. At least while you're inside the house. We'd proceeded decorously up the stairs to my room where, once safely behind the closed door, we'd burst into laughter and—

"Edward?"

Startled, my eyes turned to Bella even as a part of my mind carefully filed the memory away, to be pulled out and enjoyed later.

She was staring up at me hopefully. "You… do you remember something?"

"I remember the house. And other things—just bits and pieces of things, really, except for one thing with Jack; we were about fifteen, coming back here from somewhere, and—"

Bella flung her arms into a chokehold around my neck, cutting me off. "You can remember Jack now? You remember his face?"

I pulled her up against me and buried my face in her hair. I think my hands were shaking. "And his laugh, and his voice, though it was mixed with mine so it was hard to completely distinguish. My mother scolded us for roughhousing inside, so we told her 'Yes, ma'am' like good boys, then went up to my room and laughed." I felt her body quiver and frowned. "Are you… you're not crying?"

Her only response was a sniffle, which I took as a yes. Why on earth was she crying?

"Bella?" I demanded, alarmed.

She finally replied, her voice muffled against my neck, "I'm just so relieved. We've gone so many places today and you've barely remembered anything and I was afraid coming here would be no different, and I wanted you to remember so badly. And you did, you remembered Jack's face and you guys were being boyish and dumb and… and I'm so happy!" She finished on a wail, then sniffled again and took a deep breath, swiping at her face. "Sorry. I'm being stupid."

"You are not," I contradicted her. "I was afraid of the same thing, and I'm relieved, too. And happy, and if I could cry, I probably would. I remember him, Bella!" I exulted. "I remember his face—not stiff and serious in a portrait, but moving and expressive, and his laugh, and personality—what a gift you've given me!" I looked at the four Cullens waiting across the street, in front of my old house, attempting to give us some privacy though I knew they'd be able to hear every word. "What a gift you've all given me."

They met my smile with their own and I looked again at the house. I tilted my head to the side, squinting a little. "There's something different."

"The stained glass is gone—we had to replace the first floor windows," Esme said apologetically. "One was lost to neighbor children playing baseball in the street and another to a storm. I preserved most of the last one and used it in the master bathroom. You'll see when we go upstairs."

Bella looked at me inquisitively. Of course she hadn't been able to hear. I urged her across the street, repeating, "She says it looks different because the stained glass is gone. Shall we look inside?"

Esme led us through the house, explaining the changes that had been made. The interior was very different from the few memories I had, but how could it be otherwise after the passage of so many years? I was more surprised that so many things were the same: the entryway, the woodwork, the mantelpieces, even the bookcases in my father's office. Every familiar sight prompted a flash of memory. Coming home from school, my books swinging from my hand by the strap. My parents talking to each other. Talking to me. Discussions over dinner. My father turning to look at me, a book in his hand, his brows raised inquiringly. Sneaking food from the pantry. People gathered in our home for a party. Playing the piano for them; a teenage girl creeping closer, watching me shyly through her lashes, making my hands fumble, as Jack and another boy snickered at me from across the room. Playing the piano for my parents after dinner. Playing the piano for myself, wrestling with difficult passages and my deep satisfaction when I conquered them.

I knew I had played. I told Bella as much when she wanted to know my history. But somehow I had forgotten how much I loved it.

Voices of people long dead echoing through my head, we silently ascended the familiar staircase. The altered wear pattern on the treads felt strange beneath my feet. I automatically turned to the right at the top, ignoring the other doorways as I walked directly to my bedroom.

Lost in the past as I was, it didn't surprise me that the room was so little changed. This was my room. It was supposed to have this wallpaper, these windows, this fireplace and radiator. I strode to the hearth, seeing not my inhumanly perfect face in the mirror above the mantel, but the one I should see.

Softer. A hint of boyish roundness. Hair severely parted and tamed close to my head. Dressed for the evening. My mother's voice in my ear. Edward, I understand why you want to enlist. I do. And I admire that sense of valor, the strength in you that wants to fight for what's right.

A barely suppressed eye roll.

I wouldn't want my son to be a coward or to care nothing for the suffering of others. All I'm asking is for you to stop and consider the best way to accomplish your desires.

Irritation. A muscle twitching in my cheek.

Can you be of the most use by enlisting as a common soldier? Would it not be better to continue your education and become an officer?

My voice, frustration poorly veiled. Be honest, Mother. Your hope is that if I defer long enough I will be no longer needed.

Her hand, reaching to straighten my tie. Coddling me. It was insufferable.

I am a grown man! I can fix my own tie!

Unspoken remorse. Her trembling lips pressed together. My hands shaking as I adjust my tie. The air is heavy with grief.

"Edward, I'm sorry."

My head turns as I tell her, "No, I should be the one to…" My voice trails away. I'm shocked not to see my mother. Another woman is there.

"I didn't know what you would want," the woman continued. "As we renovated over the years, I tried to keep some familiar elements so that if," she threw a slight smile over her shoulder at Alice, "rather, when you found us the house would be at least somewhat recognizable. I took more effort to preserve your room, hoping that if you remembered nothing else at least it should be familiar." She touched my arm gently, then withdrew her hand at my continued unnatural stillness. "But perhaps I left it too unaltered. I apologize, Edward. I never intended to upset you."

Oh. It's Esme. And Bella just beyond, her eyes wide and her teeth worrying her lip. Carlisle, Jasper and Alice lingered in the doorway. Alice's eyes were blank, visions of my future flickering through our heads at lightning speed.

The future and the past and the present were an indecipherable mish mash in my brain. I felt an artificial calm seep into me and glanced gratefully at Jasper. Bella and Esme were looking more distressed by the second and I needed to pull myself together. "No," I told her, fighting to keep my voice steady, "I'm glad the house is so much the same. I just wish…" My trembling lips pressed together, mirroring the memory of my mother's, as a wave of homesickness swept over me, stronger than I'd felt since my first bewildering, terrifying days as a vampire.

I want to tell my mother I'm sorry.

I want to go home.

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I lay curled around Bella on the wide sofa in the living area of the hotel suite, watching the hair on my arm sway to and fro with her slow, even breaths. Every once in a while the pattern would change as she fought sleep, but it soon eased back into the same rhythm.

We'd finished going through the house after my little breakdown—a flashback, Jasper had called it, something Carlisle had pronounced to be perfectly normal, and perhaps, under the circumstances, even to be expected.

Which had irked me, since I certainly hadn't been expecting it, but at least his calm acceptance had made Bella feel better.

Speaking of whom… her breathing changed again as she startled herself awake and I sighed noiselessly. "You should just go to sleep, love."

Her response was no surprise. "No," she murmured mulishly. "Not until you leave."

Earlier tonight, while Bella ate a room service dinner that she assured us was delicious, we all discussed the changing logistics of visiting Emilie. The original plan had been to go during normal visiting hours the next day, but unfortunately Emilie's health had taken a downturn and Alice saw that she would now have family visiting over the next few days. I then joked that I would just return for her 95th birthday, which is a little over a week away, but Alice had soberly replied that I couldn't.

If nothing changes Emilie will die in three days.

There then was so much talking: how good it is that I'm here now, and do I really still want to see her, and is it safe to sneak in at night, and there's a two-hour window of opportunity, and no seeing me won't kill her, and on and on until Bella finally put an end to it by asking me what I wanted to do.

Alice assured me that it was safe for us to go and that seeing me won't scare Emilie, and Jasper offered to be outside her window to help if we need him.

So I said that I want to go tonight. That I want Carlisle and Esme to stay here to keep Bella safe. And that in the morning I want to leave Chicago.

I didn't say that I don't want to ever come back. But judging by the expression on Bella's face, she knew it.

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Alice and I crept on silent feet into Emilie's room at the nursing home. It was large and comfortably furnished, with various pictures and personal items giving it a touch of hominess, and I was glad to see that it truly was as nice as we had been led to expect. The head of Emilie's bed was partially raised and she was curled slightly towards her stroke damaged side. I squinted at her, trying to see the girl I had known in the shrunken, fragile woman in the bed.

Look, Alice thought, gesturing to a framed photo on the bedside table. In it an elderly couple danced, smiling and engrossed in one another. This must be of her and Henry. It's so sad.

I frowned down at her, unsure why she was saddened by such a lovely picture.

She looked up at me, her expression solemn. They were so happy, and now she's alone. Human lives are so short. She touched the picture with a gentle finger, then slanted a glance up at me. Don't you think?

This wasn't the first time in the past week or so that she'd made such a comment. She could see two futures for Bella— one as a human, and one as a vampire— and wanted to persuade me to change her. I knew she was motivated by her love for her friend, but it wasn't a decision to be made lightly. And it certainly wasn't one that I was going to discuss with her before I discussed it with Bella.

She sighed nearly soundlessly, seeing that I wasn't going to answer her, and moved to look at the other pictures around the room. I took another look at the photograph, then the frail creature in the bed, who was dreaming peacefully of youthful days with her husband.

Alice was right. It was sad.

"So, where are we going next?" Alice asked at vampire pitch.

I looked at her blankly.

"Later on, after we check out. You haven't made a decision yet."

I was tactless in my surprise. "You're coming with us?"

"Of course. We all are. Unless you don't want us to." Uncertainty—no, it was hurt— flickered across her face.

"I have no objection…" I began courteously, then remembered the fleeting expression on her face and opted for honesty. "I would like you all to come, but I don't want you to do it out of obligation. I know we had plans for the rest of the week, tickets to the theatre and so on."

She scoffed. "Edward, really! When are you going to accept that we're your family? As though we'd want to go to the theatre or a museum while you're off somewhere struggling through this!"

I stared at a picture of a seated Emilie and Henry surrounded by a large group of people. Family reunion, perhaps. They were all smiling.

Alice's mind grew nervous with my silence. "We're not always together. I don't want you to think you'll never get rid of us if you want to be alone. We spend a lot of time just with our mates; we even live separately at times, and—"

"You truly think of me that way?" I interrupted. I turned so I could see her face. "As your family?"

She appeared perplexed, but said simply, "You're my brother. You always have been."

Telepathy is a much more complex thing than most people realize, more than merely hearing thoughts or seeing what someone sees. When people talk, the words they say are not usually the only things in their heads. The mind is always working— reacting to stimuli, selecting and discarding words, problem solving— and speech for both human and vampire is often layered with unconscious nuance: emotions, smells, sounds, memories. The memories that had just flashed through Alice's mind were so fragmented and fleeting that she may not have even realized she'd had them, but they confirmed her words in a way that little else could. Judging by my clothing, they were from her earliest visions of me: images of me golden-eyed, laughing with Carlisle and wrestling with Emmett; others of me on a seedy city street, face expressionless, fedora pulled down to hide empty red eyes.

The emotion underlying both was the same. Regardless of how I was living or the color of my eyes, she had longed to meet me. In the decades she spent alone she had yearned not only for her future-mate but for her future-family. She had known and loved all of us long before she ever met us. And when she finally met Jasper, when she finally met the rest of the Cullens, she had told them about me and had made them want to meet me, too. The Cullens' easy acceptance had unsettled me and made me suspicious, but this was the reason for it: years before I was expected, Alice had carved out a space for me in the family.

I had, indeed, always been her brother.

Words failed me. Alice smiled at me anyway, so widely that her eyes crinkled around the edges, and visions of me fully integrated into the family flashed through our heads. Then a different vision overtook her, just as I heard Emilie's mind sharpening towards wakefulness.

She's waking up, Alice thought, the vision of Emilie watching me still in her mind.

Now that the moment was here I felt a jolt of panic. "You're sure this will be okay?"

Alice nodded, her eyes bright, and Jasper thought from outside, Stop worrying, would you? I won't let her get upset.

Now, who is that, I wonder?

Emilie's mind had joined the fray. I took a deep, steadying breath, and turned to meet the curious eyes of the girl I had last seen in 1919.

A/N: Sorry to leave it here- I have spent the last month writing and re-writing and deleting and re-writing and pulling out my hair and deleting and rewriting the next section and I'm still not happy with it. The end of it is written, as is most of the epilogue, so hopefully I'll be able to wrap this up by the end of the year. I'll be posting the picture of old Emily and Henry dancing and pictures of Edward's house on my writing tumblr (also whilewewereyetsinners) if you're interested in seeing them. I've also started a new tumblr blog (during an episode of deleting insipid conversation and cursing myself for ever having thought of becoming a writer) which focuses on images of the Cullens and other vampires in clothing they would have worn as the decades/centuries passed. It's called cullencouture, and if historical clothing (or ridiculous pictures of the Cullen men in the 70s) interest you I hope you'll check it out. :)