I don't own any of the characters or the settings and I'm defiantly not making any money from them – they belong to Summit and SM. I just put a copyright on this story.

Sorry about the super long wait - my computer broke. Again. Twice in three months now - I'm going to start looking around for another one soon.

Previously:

The cab pulled away behind me and I started walking forward towards the front door, intending this time to knock and wait, instead of busting in.

They were going to have to answer me, whether they liked it or not.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Alice's POV

"Jasper!"

My husband rushed down the stairs and saw me sitting in the lounge with my laptop, immediately relaxing some and making his way slowly to me and taking a seat.

I didn't know what to think when I stared back at the computer screen. Disappointment? Hurt? Excitement? Fulfilment? Happiness? Grief?

Jasper sensed my conflicted emotions and moved closer to hug me rubbing my back up and down in supportive strokes.

Every time I saw another detail of my human life this same procedure would happen. I would be happy and exited I had uncovered another part of my past. I would be miserable knowing what the humans back then had done to me. I would feel disappointment for my parents for letting me go, for not believing their own daughter. I would feel satisfaction knowing that I had found another piece of the puzzle.

Jasper read the article that was currently displayed on the 17" monitor quickly, and turned to me with guarded eyes. He didn't know what to think either.

Under the Deaths category of the Friday, July 2, 1920 Biloxi newspaper, in a short article stood:

Mary-Alice Brandon Dies.

Miss Brandon, daughter of Frederick
and Katherine Brandon, died this
Wednesday morning at the Roanoke
hospital following a prolonged illness
aged 19 years. The profession and
cause of death for Miss Brandon is
unknown. She is survived by her
parents, two brothers and sister.

The article mentioned nothing about my visions or my admission to the mental institution my parents threw me in. My parents would have probably been too ashamed to be publicly associated with a crazy daughter. I was surprised they even publicly admitted my death, since not many knew of my existence in the first place.

I glanced at the clock in the bottom left of the screen and saw Jasper had twenty minutes to get to his philosophy class, and noticed he was already dressed accordingly to go out. I kissed him briefly and told him so, and he glimpsed at me lovingly in one of his meaningful glances. I sent out positive and loving vibes, reassuring him I was fine, and saw him head up the stairs, collect his books and precede into the garage, getting into Rosalie's M3 and driving away. Since Rosalie and Emmett had taken off onto another one of their second honeymoons to explore in the north of Africa, they had left behind both of their cars for our use here, although our close proximity to Cornell meant that we could walk there and not stand out.

Edward up and leaving us just over a week after leaving Forks meant that he wasn't here either, and suddenly the large house purchased here for the seven of us now only contained four of us, and only Esme and I during the day. With Carlisle teaching days at Cornell and then leaving for ten hour shifts at the hospital afterwards, it meant that he was home only a few hours of the night before leaving for teaching again. Leaving Forks had truly ruined our happy family and broken us beyond repair.

I still didn't understand why Edward demanded we leave Forks all of a sudden, right after Bella's eighteenth birthday party. In his lonesome mind, Edward had decided that he wasn't good enough for Bella, and that we were putting her in danger by our kind being in such close proximity to her. After Jasper's lapse in control, I followed him to take refuge in Alaska, but then some days later when we got the call we were to come straight to Ithica, we were more than confused. Upon arrival, we saw the whole family – minus Bella – in a loose circle, with Edward shunning himself and sitting faceless in the corner. It was explained that we were now living here, we weren't going back to Forks – ever – and that all our things had been put in our respective rooms. Even I didn't see this coming.

Edward had demanded that none of us ever take up contact with Bella again, and cornered me that evening to make sure I never look for Bella's future. I swore I wouldn't, and I honestly didn't look, but I still saw. I was so attuned to looking out for Bella that I saw glimpses of her life after Edward left. She was either curled up crying, or sitting blankly. She only talked when it was asked of her. She was broken. We did that to her.

Daily images would come into my mind, all until a couple of weeks ago when abruptly all the glimpses into her future stopped. It had me worried, and I was nervous until Carlisle came home and told me it was probably because I hadn't seen her in months and the fact she was human and not like me were the reasons I couldn't see her.

I was broken from my pregnant stare at the TV by my cell phone ringing, and I dug around in my pocket and pressed the talk button while not looking at the ID, figuring it would be Carlisle using my power to see into his patient's futures again. So when I chirped, "Alice speaking," into the phone and waited for someone to answer, only to get a sharp gasp, I knew something was wrong.

I took the phone away from my ear and looked on the screen; I was surprised to see the word home. I'd never gotten around to changing the phone number from our house in Forks to the one from here, because I'd never considered this place home. The place where the seven of us were together and Bella was with us was where home would always be.

I wondered who could possibly be at home, and started eliminating people. Esme was upstairs drafting blue prints for the outbuilding on our property, Carlisle was at the hospital, Jasper in class, Rosalie and Emmett... surely they would use their own phones and not call from Forks? Then that left...

"Edward, is that you?"

The dial tone sounded in my ear, and I was left confused as to who could possibly be there. The last time Edward had called us he had been in Colorado and he had told us he was heading south. That had been more than a month ago. He hadn't had the courage to give us his phone number yet – since he'd bought a new phone – but I knew what it was, since I had seen it. I hadn't told anyone though, because I respected his need for privacy.

I rang the number for home, and let the dial tone beep nine times before it crossed to the answering machine.

"Um... hey Edward. If your there, could you call back? Even just for a little while. We're worried about you. We just want to know if you're okay." I stayed silent for a few moments, hesitating before adding, "Love you," and hanging up.

I looked into his immediate future and a few minutes of concentrating only bought me fleeting images of rainforest, nothing like the scenery in Washington. I stopped and was irked at the holes my vision was bringing me.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Esme glided down the stairs and I could see she was planning on going grocery shopping. She collected the keys from the pot we kept them in and glanced over at me.

"You coming, sweetie?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

I nodded and got up, getting my jacket from the hooks and making my way to the garage. Glancing to the left I saw Esme scrutinizing me, probably thinking where my excitement was. I smiled tenderly at her, and she unlocked the Volvo. Edward had taken his Aston Martin with him, claiming it was faster. But I knew the reason he didn't take his Volvo was because it smelled deliciously of Bella, and he couldn't bear it. Even after nearly five months, the floral smell still hung in the air.

Shopping was a chore that needed to be done to retain the human image, but many of us found it therapeutic. The classical grocery store music, the rhythm of pushing the carts up and down the aisles, and selecting human food was somewhat remedial, and whenever we had any troubles on our mind we would accompany our main shopper Esme along to the local Wegmans.

I saw Esme deciding how to start a talk with me and waited for her to make up her mind.

"What's wrong?" Esme said, deciding to get straight to the point.

"Apart from us moving to the other side of the country and subsequently half of us disappearing?"

Esme looked sad, and I felt instantly guilty about what I had just said.

"Yes, apart from the mess our family is at the moment."

"I got this strange phone call this morning," I mused, and the look on Esme's face made me continue, "from our house back in Forks."

Esme gasped, and I turned around quickly to see if she knew who it was.

"Is it Edward?" Esme whispered, almost afraid to say his name.

"That's what I thought. I asked, but then... they just hung up." I scrunched up my face.

Esme was confused too, clearly not having an idea of who could have possibly be at our house bar Edward.

"Could it be someone from Denali?"

I considered it and thought it could be plausible, since they knew the code to get into our house.

"It wouldn't be a human," I wondered out loud, careful to keep my voice down since we were still shopping.

"Yes, no human could break into the house, or knows the code..." Esme pondered.

"And only the Denali's know the code, so it had to be one of them, right?" I could feel that my familiar cheery self was coming back. Maybe it wasn't the Denali's, but I felt better knowing it could be one of them.

"I'll have to ring Tanya when we get back to the house." Esme decided, and with that we finished out shopping and headed back to the car, enduring a silent ride home.

Esme proceeded to help me bring the groceries in, and I organized them into the various unused cupboards while overhearing Esme speaking to Tanya.

"No, Alice clearly was..."

"Are you sure?"

"Definitely not."

"I wouldn't know."

"He hasn't turned up there then?"

"Well, I'm not."

"Not Irina?"

"Oh, well pass my condolences onto her."

"You too. We'll get up there when the break arrives."

"Until then, goodbye, Tanya."

I couldn't hear the other part of the conversation, but I asked Esme what was going on when she came back downstairs.

"They don't know about anything," she said, sighing. "Edward hasn't gotten close to them at all since he left, and he hasn't contacted any of them, either. They haven't been to visit our house since we moved there all those years ago."

"What was that about Irina?" I asked, curious as to why Esme was giving her condolences.

"Laurent and Irina were heavily involved, more than we thought. He disappeared when they were hunting about a month ago, and they traced his scent to just outside Vancouver. They're pretty sure the wolves outside Forks got him."

"The wolves are there again?" I asked her, shocked.

"Yes, the first one went through his changes when we still living there."

I was shocked that I had never noticed the scent before.

"The other ones have only started changing within the last half year."

"How many are there?" I breathed.

"Five, currently. That's what Tanya thinks."

"Wow. So they've finally re-appeared."

Esme nodded and collected the empty shopping bags, depositing them in the recycling bin and making her way upstairs to work on her blueprints again.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I had just finished giving Jasper a very thorough welcoming home when Carlisle called for us to come back downstairs.

"So, Esme told me what you told her." Carlisle started once Jasper and I were seated in the loveseat.

I nodded once. I had been able to tell Jasper just before we disappeared into our room.

"Do you think we should go back to the house to check the scent?"

"I'm honestly not too worried, Carlisle. We haven't got anything in the house that could lead them here. Nothing valuable is there anymore, except for the papers that we left. And even if they get those papers, what will they do with them? If they expose them to the police, they would expose themselves too. So I think there isn't much to worry about, but we could be safe if one or two of us went over there in the weekend just to check."

Carlisle's response wasn't uttered because gravel crunching under the weight of tires could be heard approaching our house. A car was turning onto the driveway. All of us looked at each other with wide eyes, not knowing who it was – but hoping it was Edward.

The door opened and a vampire scent hit us like a sonic boom, the sweet smell reviving the animal in all of us. This scent wasn't one I had come across before, it was sweet, too sweet, but also there was a slight waft of a horrible wet dog smell. What was this?

Jasper growled and wrapped an arm around me protectively, and Carlisle's uncommonly panicked face turned to me, and I answered the silent question he was asking only me by shaking my head. I couldn't see who it was. Carlisle's face turned to Jasper for a split second before putting his welcoming face on and taking Esme's hand to lead them to the door.

Jasper and I followed slowly behind, wary of this vampire that had turned up alone and unannounced, and somehow knew where we were.

Was this the vampire that had broken into our house?

A tentative knock sounded, and Carlisle gripped the door handle, sending us all glances before yanking open the door.

So, I know technically nothing happens in this chapter, but I had to get a Cullen POV in there. Next chapter we get to see what every bodies reactions will be!

This week its Clipped Wings and Inked Armor by hunterhunting. Haunted by her past Bella is broken and alone. Starting over, can she let go of the guilt that consumes her when she meets a beautiful tattoo artist or will his own personal demons destroy them first? Written perfectly and gets very angsty. Contains Tattward and Inkella :)