20. Emilie

Her faded eyes narrowed as she took me in, with my too-young face and untamed hair and expensive clothes. A paradox. "Edward Masen. I'm not dead. Am I about to be?"

I opened my mouth and closed it again, finally offering weakly, "Not tonight."

"But it'll be soon, then? Good." She shifted slightly, causing one arm to slide off her lap. "Don't look so surprised. Useless arm, useless leg, stuck in this bed or a chair getting waited on like an infant; and Henry…" Her voice shook then firmed. "I could tolerate anything with him by my side. I have little patience for all of this nonsense without him."

I stared at her wordlessly and tried to ignore Jasper, who was outside snickering at my expense. I should have stayed back at the hotel—haven't had to do a thing. And you were so worried!

Emilie focused on me again. "So, what's your story? Why do you look so young when I look like a two-days dead cat? You're older than I am!" She sounded offended. "You have a painting in your attic? And don't try to tell me you're dead."

"I… no, no painting." Though if I did, no doubt it would look worse than Dorian Gray's. "Why don't you think I'm dead?"

She scoffed, poking awkwardly at the controls on the bed, trying to raise it higher. Alice darted over and helped her. "Thank you, honey. I don't know who you are, but we'll get to that in a minute. As for you, Edward, you were raised in the same church I was so you should already know the answer. If you were dead, you'd either be in heaven or hell, not here on Earth, looking handsome as ever and visiting old ladies in the middle of the night. It is the middle of the night, yes?"

"Almost 3 AM."

"Thought so. Nobody leaves me alone in this place during the day. It's annoying. So, you're still alive. You've either found the Fountain of Youth, in which case I wish you'd come by fifty years ago, or you're not human."

Alice and I just gaped at her. Apparently even she hadn't seen that one coming.

"Well?"

"Not… not the Fountain of Youth," I admitted weakly.

Emilie closed her eyes, her mouth twisting a little. The three of us waited tensely for her reaction, and I could feel Jasper's gift coiled in his mind, waiting to burst forth. Her body started shaking, but I barely had time to panic before Jasper derailed it by laughing.

"Yes!" Emilie hissed, sounding so jubilant I half-expected her to punch her fist into the air. "Yes! I knew it! Oh, I wish Jack were here."

Her laughter all too soon turned into gasps and for a minute she struggled to catch her breath. She lay limply back against her pillow afterwards. Her heart was working too hard and her breath sounded raspy, but she was simply beaming at me, her eyes sparkling. "Oh Edward," she breathed, "thank you for coming to see me."

"I wasn't sure if you'd want to see me," I admitted, then asked a little caustically, "And how can you be happy that I'm not human?"

What was wrong with human girls? A rather elderly girl in this case, but still!

I wish Emmett was here to see this, Jasper thought, still in hysterics. He's going to be so sorry he missed it!

I told him to shut up at vampire pitch, but of course he didn't.

"Because I was right!" Emilie crowed breathlessly. "Nobody believed me. Oh, they knew that someone rescued me and brought me to the hospital, but they didn't believe it was you. 'Edward's in that hospital in Switzerland, dear, he's not here in Chicago. He's still very ill. His lungs, you know. It was just someone who looked like him.' But I knew it was you." A memory flashed through her mind, distressingly clear: my back pressed into a filthy corner, the expression on my face turning from dull despair to horror as I saw her. "I knew you recognized me. I insisted at first, demanded people listen to me, until Mama and Father began to whisper of a special doctor. Even then… it was Jack who stopped me talking about it, really."

She took a deep breath, her eyes and her mind far away. "He came into my room one day—I was home then, but still in a cast, and it was so boring. He would collect my lessons from my teachers and spend hours with me after he got home from school, playing games and helping me with my schoolwork. And one day I mentioned you…" You believe me about Edward, don't you, Jack? "…and he got so angry. He said you hadn't saved me, that you couldn't have. Because if you were in Chicago you would have come to see him."

He wouldn't leave me to worry about him! Jack shrieked in our heads, making me flinch. If he were well enough to be here he would answer my letters!

Emilie looked at me and frowned. "Now, there's no reason to look like that. I didn't know until that day, but he'd been writing you, trying to contact you through your lawyer."

"I… I didn't know. I never got them."

Carlisle said once that there's correspondence packed with your things—the letters may be there.

I reached out blindly and squeezed Alice's hand in thanks, beyond words. I was grateful when she didn't let go of my hand.

Emilie nodded sagely. "Figured as much. You would have at least written something, if you'd known. As time went by and you were still alive, but never wrote or came back… he didn't talk about it, but he knew something was wrong. He didn't say anything until after Helen died... you know about Helen? Such a tragic thing. I stayed with Jack for a few weeks after that, helping take care of Johnny until he could make arrangements. Poor little boy. He was just over a year old and wanted his mama so badly and he didn't understand—couldn't understand, as small as he was. It broke all our hearts."

She was quiet for a moment, lost in remembered grief. "Anyway, Jack came to me one day shortly before I went home… I had just gotten Johnny down for a nap and I was so weary. I was just standing staring out the window, and he came and stood next to me for the longest time, before telling me he'd written you two weeks earlier and you hadn't replied. And that something wasn't right. He asked if I was certain you were the one to save me years earlier and when I said I was he just nodded and repeated, 'Something isn't right.'

"We didn't talk about it again until shortly before he died. You'd supposedly just died yourself, your son inheriting your house, but no one had seen hide nor hair of either of you. He wanted to know what I thought had happened to you, and when I told him he just nodded."

Only thing that makes sense, aged Jack said in Emilie's head. He had that look about him that some elderly people get, when they begin to look almost childlike again. You think he's really dead? Yeah, me neither.

I blinked, slowly, but couldn't muster up any other reaction.

"What did you tell him?" Alice asked cautiously when she realized I couldn't reply.

"That something happened to Edward, and he wasn't human anymore."

"How?" I murmured. "How could you believe that?"

Emilie shrugged with her good shoulder. "How could I not? I thought about it a lot while I was recovering. Everyone was so insistent that it couldn't have been you, but I knew it was. And then there was the whole issue of you appearing to ignore Jack's letters—you being dead was the only thing that could explain that, but everyone was equally insistent you were alive. So I tried to make sense of it, and after a while I had to accept that there were too many unnatural things. The way you moved and the sounds you made, and the fight…"

Her voice trailed off and it was in her head, the movement blurred and confusing, mixed with the hisses and growls and the screeching of vampire flesh getting torn apart.

"At first I thought I just didn't remember it clearly, and maybe I don't remember all of it, but what I did remember was clear and it was so confusing. And the other one," her voice dripped with loathing, "he was so strong. Too strong, but you were strong enough to beat him. Stronger than you should have been, sick or not. So I made a list of all the details and tried to think it out logically, like you and Jack taught me that last summer. And the only thing that made sense was that you had been changed in some way, had been made super-human, or something, and you legitimately couldn't come home anymore."

She nestled her head deeper into the pillow, looking exhausted yet smug.

I finally let go of Alice's hand, since I needed mine back to pinch the bridge of my nose. Alice fought giggles. "You mean to tell me that you used logic to deduce that I was an inhuman creature? How is that possibly a logical conclusion?"

"I don't know if it truly was logical, exactly," Emilie said reflectively, "but it was still the most logical explanation. And what was it you two taught me? Aristotle, I think, about preferring the probable impossible to the improbably possible. It should have been impossible, but it was more likely than all of the possible things, so…"

"Clearly, we taught you wrong," I muttered.

Alice gave up and started laughing quietly.

"I'd say you taught me fine, since I was right." A beatific smile spread across her face, undimmed by the droop of one side. "I was right. This is so satisfying."

I rolled my eyes at all of them, including Jasper, who had started snickering again. He couldn't see me do it, but I didn't care.

Emilie sighed happily. "So. I have a question. No, two questions. That man," the venom in her voice left no doubt of whom she was speaking, "was he the Dr. Cullen who was supposed to have taken you to Switzerland?"

"No," I replied, startled, though it was a perfectly sensible question. "No, he… he had…" I wasn't sure how much to tell her, or where to even begin.

Alice stepped in smoothly. "He stole Edward away from Dr. Cullen. Edward was too ill to realize what was happening."

Emilie nodded. "Okay, good. That leads me to my next question: who are you, honey?"

"I'm Alice," she answered simply, leaving any further explanations up to me.

I looked between the two women, one appearing so youthful despite sharing a birth year with me and the other soon to be old no longer. "Alice is my sister. I found Dr. Cullen just a few months ago. She's also part of his family."

Alice beamed and quivered as though she wanted to bounce or clap or something, while Emilie looked intrigued. "So he's adopted you?"

"In a manner of speaking. It's not a legal adoption, of course, or in any way traditional, but…"

"But it's still a family," Emilie concluded. "Good. I wouldn't like to think you were going to be alone."

"Yes," was all I said, but she must have seen something on my face or heard it in my voice.

"Been alone a lot, have you?"

"Yes." Her mind was nowhere near as frail as her body, and it was working, trying to make sense of everything. "Please don't try to figure it all out."

Her eyes sharpened. "No one's supposed to know. Well, I guess I knew that already what with you disappearing the way you did. Why did you come see me, then? Taking quite a risk, aren't you?"

Alice and I exchanged glances before I replied haltingly, "It's a bit of a risk, yes. But I needed to see, make sure… I knew a little about your life, but… I needed to see for myself that I hadn't ruined it."

Her face was confused. "Edward, what on earth are you talking about? You saved me from that… person, and brought me to the hospital."

"I should have done it… better somehow. You were a little girl. You shouldn't have had to see that."

She stared at me for a long moment before saying abruptly, "I used to have nightmares."

I flinched.

She pointed a finger at me. "Stop that and listen. Yes, I had nightmares. Long after I stopped dreaming about what that monster did to me, I had nightmares about the look on your face when I tried to get away from you. I would wake up crying, because I couldn't go back and change it. You know the first thing I did, when I woke up in the hospital and remembered what happened? I asked where you were so I could apologize. I've wanted to apologize for so long, and when you came here I nearly forgot to do it! Don't get old, Edward." Her eyes brightened. "Ha! You're the first person I've said that to who really won't have to."

"You… Emilie, you were nine. You were injured and scared, and I was…" I shook my head, remembering the long-ago image of my face through her eyes, lips pulled back in a snarl and venom running down my chin. "You were right to be afraid of me. You shouldn't feel sorry for it."

"Well, then, you shouldn't feel sorry for doing what you had to do to save me. Really, Edward, what were you supposed to do? Politely ask the beast to join you in the next room for a fight to the death?"

Alice giggled at that, her mind conjuring a scene of me bowing dramatically to Tredan while I called him out. With an English accent, no less. She must watch too many movies.

"Don't waste your time with this," Emilie continued seriously. "I've been too thankful you saved me to worry about how you did it. My only regret was that I hurt you."

"I hope you won't worry about that any longer," I replied with equal gravity. "And thank you. I'll try."

"I'm so sorry," Alice interrupted regretfully. "Edward, we need to get going." There will be a nurse making rounds in half an hour. Emilie needs time to settle down after we leave or the nurse might get suspicious that someone was here and mention it to the family.

"So soon? Ah well, if you must, you must. Come give me a hug, Edward. It's been far too long since I had one from you."

I obliged, so aware of the fragile skin and bones beneath my fingers.

"You too, honey," Emilie commanded, much to Alice's delight.

"You'll be happy?" she asked me as we moved away from her bed.

I thought of Bella, and the Cullens, and being freed from a life of murder. "Yes, I will."

"Good." Her eyes widened as Alice opened the window and slipped gracefully through. "What, you're going out my window? I have a perfectly good door, you know."

I winked at her and teased, "I'm not human, remember? I can go out the window if I want."

Emilie's chortling laughter followed me out, and I smiled as I silently dropped the three stories to the ground.

.

.

.

We had very little conversation on the journey back to the hotel, but the silence was peaceful. Carlisle and Esme were curled up in much the same position Bella and I were in earlier, and they looked up hopefully as we let ourselves into the suite.

"Ah, you're back. All go well?"

"Very well," I replied, feeling lighter than I could ever remember being. "Alice and Jasper can fill you in, if you don't mind. I'd like to go be with Bella."

"Of course we don't mind, Edward," Esme said in her gentle voice. "Alice looks like she's bursting to tell us all about it anyway."

Alice was back to quivering again. I rolled my eyes and she stuck her tongue out at me.

"Oh, Edward," Carlisle called out before I reached the closed bedroom door, "before you go, where are we off to later this morning?"

Four faces were turned to me wearing nearly identical expectant expressions, and I knew if Emmett and Rosalie were there he would be looking at me the same way. Only she would be different—she would be inspecting her manicure and mentally castigating me for taking so long to answer. Paradoxically, the thought made me smile.

Alice began grinning madly as I realized there was really only one place I wanted to go.

"Actually, if no one has any objection, I'd really like to go home."

Carlisle blinked slowly, not appearing to notice as Esme's hand squeezed convulsively around his arm. He cleared his throat, the unnecessary human action making my smile wider. "I'm sure none of us has any objection."

"Of course not," Esme whispered shakily.

Alice's giggles were like bells and Jasper sighed in contentment, basking in our emotions. I slipped through the door, into the bedroom I shared with my Bella.

She stirred as I lay down with her, uttering a long string of incomprehensible gibberish. Perhaps it was a question, because she ended with what sounded like "…kay?"

"Yes, love," I murmured into her hair. "Everything's okay."

A/N: So sorry this took so long. Only one chapter and an epilogue left.