I find myself on the outskirts of Hollis, New Hampshire. Population: 7,012. It's postcard perfect, with gleaming red barns, a town common, and banners advertising 'Old Home Day'. I feel like I've been swallowed whole by a real life Stars Hollow.

It's shortly before dawn, and I look down at myself to take inventory. I am still wearing the black pants and yellow silk blouse I had on for drinks with Rosalie, but they are dirty and torn in places from my cross-country efforts. The high heels were abandoned miles ago. I still have my wallet. I have my phone.

I do the only thing I can think of. I call Alice. Naturally, she's expecting me.

She directs me to a Walmart in the nearby town of Hudson, and I'm there when it opens to buy a pile of nondescript warm clothes and shoes. The store clerk is a bored, gum-chewing teenager who is too interested in her iPod to pay my urchin appearance any real attention. I change in the bathroom before I leave the store, extracting twigs from my hair and splashing water on my face.

When I call Alice back from the center of town, she tells me that Hollis has a public library with gleaming white columns and an American flag fluttering out front. The Hollis Public Library needs a new children's librarian, and it seems like Isobel Whitlock will be perfect for the job.

"I'm emailing you your c.v." she says. "I've been a little creative, but you'll do fine Bella. You love books, it's perfect. There's a real estate agent just off Monument Square, and..."

She's exhausting, like a little tornado of organization in my ear.

"What do I tell people?" I interrupt her, my voice is no more than a whisper.

"I've thought about that. You don't want anyone to ask too many questions, so try and say as little as possible, but based on what I've seen you should hint at a bad break-up. Something that suggests domestic violence..."

The phone slips from my hands, and I'm leaning against the side of a bakery overcome with choking sobs.

"Excuse me, miss? Are you okay?"

A kindly-looking older gentleman is leaning over me. He has a set of keys jangling in one hand and a newspaper tucked under his arm. He takes off the flat cap he is wearing, and offers me a hand, which I take reverently and carefully get to my feet.

"I'm...I'm so sorry..." I whisper, stooping to pick up my cell, and clicking it to silent as I stuff it back into the pocket of my jeans. Alice will have to wait.

"Bad news?" he asks me, studying my features with concern. He has a kind face and thinning grey hair. "If you don't mind me saying, you look awful pale, and your hands are freezing."

"No...I just..." I stutter helplessly. This is what Carlisle was talking about, all those months ago. To be a vampire means many things, but one of them is to be an effortless liar.

He reaches around me and unlocks the door to the bakery, pushing the door open.

"Well, why don't you come inside for a coffee. I'm Gerald."

"Isobel," I manage, nodding gratefully. "Thank you, that would be great."

I sit at the counter with my hands wrapped around a hot mug of tea, trying to compose myself, while Gerald potters around getting ready to open for the day. I tell him that I've just arrived in town, that things went badly with my fiancée and that I don't really want to talk about it. He gives me a muffin, on the house, and the address to a bed & breakfast.

"Why'd you pick Hollis?" he asks, as I'm gathering my things. "Seems like a pretty small place for a girl like you."

I smile at him sadly, tucking the muffin in one of my Walmart bags to dispose of later. "I guess this is just where I stopped running."

The bed & breakfast is gorgeous. A former working farm, the original barn has been fully restored, and the owner shows me to a divine little cottage nestled under the branches of a giant oak.

"No luggage?" he asks, staring at my shopping bags in confusion.

"I'm...getting things sent on," I manage shakily, cursing myself internally for having turned up here at breakfast time, on foot and with nothing but the clothes on my back. Careless.

I take a long shower, with the temperature turned as high as it can go, scrubbing viciously at the grass stains on the soles of my feet. Not for the first time, I long for tears.

And so I dress for my job interview, concentrating on the tricks Rose taught me about my hair and makeup, donning a pair of glasses to hopefully add to the illusion of a couple of extra years.
Mrs Ainsley, the head librarian, is a dumpy, slightly sour woman who doesn't really agree with the idea of children in libraries. I assure her that I am all in favor of keeping children in their designated area, and she assures me that my budget is limited and doesn't stretch to 'fairy costumes'. I have no idea what she's talking about. I retell stories of Rosalie's from the preschool in New York, speak passionately about the "classics", and shrug sympathetically when she starts in the evils of the internet. She says I can have a trial period.

I spend the next two days with the real estate agent, and fall in love with an antique reproduction home with a gambrel roof. Carlisle signs and FedExes the papers straight away. It has hardwood floors and a fireplace, and I email photos to Esme who swoons over the phone.

"It is gorgeous. When can we visit?"

I hedge a little. It's only been days, and I am still feeling grazed, livid at Rose, confused as all hell. I've just been putting one foot in front of the other. Getting the job, finding somewhere to live, and succeeding in looking a little broken every time I meet someone new. Gerald has done a wonderful job, clearly telling everyone in town that he found me doubled over and sobbing. I am tragic figure, pitiable, mysterious. No one tries too hard to pry.

I can't tell Esme that her son has broken my heart all over again.

"I just need to be here on my own for a bit."

She sounds disappointed, as she murmurs her assent. "You tell us, anything you need. We're there."

"You've done more than enough buying this place."

It was hard to ask, but Carlisle offered before I could even get the words out. "Esme loves New England," he assured me. "Even when you don't need it any more, we'll get plenty of use out of it."

The children's space at the library is kind of dull. So budget or no, I spend my first few days making construction paper posters, and setting up brightly colored displays of books. Mrs Ainsley eyes my progress warily, but says nothing.

At night, I potter around my new house making lists of things I'd like to get Em to fix, furniture I need to buy, walls that could do with painting. I hunt regularly too, determined not to repeat the mistakes I made last time I was on my own. Deer mostly, which are easy if not particularly tasty after Emmett's bears.

Rosalie finally calls at the end of my second week.

"Look, I don't really know what to say."

"Let me get you started, then," my voice unexpectedly sarcastic, bitchy. "How often have you seen him over the last two years?"

"Four times," she sighs. I am staggered.

"Then why the fuck did you lie about it?"

"What the hell was I supposed to say, Bella? The first time we found him was in Lima. You were about three months old, and by all accounts, barely able to feed yourself. He was being a royal douchebag, hell-bent on destroying Victoria and refusing to listen to reason."

I suck in a breath. I haven't heard her name mentioned since before my death.

"He chased her. That's why he went to South America, he was trying to track her."

"Why?"

"James said something to him at the ballet studio. Something about her avenging the death of her mate, that she would come for you."

I shudder violently. The very thought of Victoria coming anywhere near me is appalling, but if she went to Forks... "Charlie!" I gasp.

"Don't worry. Edward found her. She didn't get to avenge anything."

I feel a little sick. The idea of Edward like some stalking vigilante, roaming across South America. A picture of Alice returns unbidden from memory, her tiny hands wrenching James' head from his shoulders. Did Edward do that? Tear Victoria limb from limb?

"So we found him in Lima, and then we lost him again. He's a slippery little sucker when he's in a foul mood, which let's face it, is now all of the time."

"Then what?" My head is pounding. None of this makes sense. Rosalie has known where he was, all along.

"Then he was in Ireland. He visited some...friends...of Carlisle's."

"Carlisle knew? And he didn't tell me?"

"Honey, we all knew and didn't tell you. So you can hate all of us equally, or you can just hate me if it's more satisfying, because I was the one stupid enough to keep tracking him down. The rest of the family thought I was crazy. Even Em, though he wasn't brave enough to say it to my face."

All of the air leaves my lungs in a puff. Beautiful, determined Rosalie, chasing her brother around the world with singular purpose.

"So I found him in Dublin, and he was still being a total fucking lunatic. He was starving himself, despite Maggie's best efforts. All he did was play the piano at home every fucking day, and in a bar every fucking night."

Maggie? Who is Maggie?

"So I left him there. But by the time I got back to the States, Alice was a basket case. You'd gone to New York by this point, and she was distraught about that, but worse still she'd seen Edward going to Volterra."

And the hits keep right on coming. My knees are weak. I sink to the sofa. The phone burns hot against my ear.

"So Em and I jumped a flight straight away. To be honest, Bella, I didn't really think I could stop him. We jacked a car from the airport and I've never driven so fast, but we were too late. He'd already dragged his sorry ass in front of Aro and asked to die."

My breath hitches unevenly.

"Aro said no. I'm not clear on the details, but I think maybe he's also a selfish asshole and wanted Edward to stay and work for him. Aro didn't really understand the whole martyred emo teen thing Edward had going on. Alice had seen Edward doing something really stupid, forcing the Guard's hand, but by the time we got there he'd changed his mind. He was just a broken shell. We got him back to Rome where we have a place."

"You left him there?" My voice sounds tiny.

"Well, he wasn't suicidal anymore, Alice was sure of that. And frankly, he was just unbearable to be around. He was an utterly self-absorbed, wallowing mess. Eventually even Emmett tired of him."

I think back to my time in Chicago. Rose & Em's Christmas call from Dublin. They were all so careful to keep it from me.

"And the fourth time was just now in New York, and I don't have a fucking clue what he was doing in the city, but I discovered he was there a few days before, and he hung out in that bar all the time, so I arranged to meet you there for drinks."

"What the fuck?"

"I know. It was stupid. But I'd talked myself hoarse and I wasn't getting anywhere so I thought if I just put you two in the same damn room for five minutes then it might all come to a head. But he could smell you on me, and he reacted really badly, and then you ran, and then he ran.

Anyway, I'm done now. I'm finished meddling. I thought I could do something that would make it okay, but I can't...I don't know, Bella...I can't fix it. So I'm going to stop. Alice hasn't told us where you are, I'm not going to ask. You take whatever time you need."

I hang up without saying goodbye, and then I call Mrs Ainsley and claim one of the kids at the library has given me a cold.

I bring down three deer before my mind stops whirling uncontrollably. My family have been hiding this from me to protect me, I know that. But now I also know without a shadow of a doubt that Edward wants nothing more to do with me. That at one point, he would rather have died than be near me. Any hope that I carried has flickered and died.

This is my life now, here in Hollis, with my construction paper posters, and story time on Wednesdays. The coffee I ask Gerald for in a takeaway cup with a lid, so that no one can tell I don't drink it, and the muffin he thinks is for me, but I leave for Mrs Ainsley's morning tea in the staff room. Enigmatic, tragic Isobel Whitlock will do for the next few years, until time forces me to move on.