I call in sick the next day, and the day after that.
I don't leave the sofa, tucked up in a small ball, letting my conversation with Edward replay in my head. Thinking about the last few years without him, it suddenly seems like both an eternity and no time at all. This is what Rosalie meant about forever. The liquid, elastic way that time stretches and contracts around us is confusing. Edward's absence seems both insurmountable and irrelevant.
On the third day, I shake myself from my stupor and shower until the water runs cold. After dealing with the backlog at the library, I check out a stack of new books and drive over to the clinic. Scott's sleeping, and Julian looks only marginally better than when I saw him last. He's changed into sweats and I wonder if he's been sleeping here, cramped up in this hard plastic chair.
"I called you a couple of times," he says warily, an edge in his voice. I don't know what to say. It's hard to explain that I was just sitting like a statue for two days, lost in labyrinthine thought.
"My cell crapped out. I'm sorry. I was sick in bed, and really didn't want to bring my germs here." I stack the books on Scott's bedside table.
I am still a dreadful liar, it seems, based on the look Julian is giving me. He offers a small, rueful smile. "I'm sorry, Isobel. I really overstepped. You made yourself perfectly clear, and here I am forcing my family on you."
"No, of course not. You're not...I want to be here, for Scott."
He nods slightly at my emphasis, rubbing at his forehead. I feel useless, like I should reach for him, comfort him in some way, but I know I can't get anywhere near that close. My restraint is already tight as a piano wire.
I want to offer something, but I realize I have nothing to give.
"I'll come by tomorrow."
Julian doesn't look up as I go.
Naturally, Edward is standing at the front desk as I head out. I wonder if he heard me in Julian's thoughts, heard his disappointment. He looks older today. His hair is somewhat tamed, and he's wearing a dark shirt and tie under his white coat. He also looks so unexpectedly hesitant, fidgeting with the patient files he is holding.
I feel self-conscious. I'm wearing library clothes: brown trousers and a deep v-necked sweater over a white shirt, pearls. I hear Rosalie's voice in my head: Pearls, Bella, add five years instantly. But my hair is wild, tugged back into a fraying elastic, and I wish I'd caught my reflection somewhere before running into him.
Most of all I wish I didn't care.
"Scott's recovering well from the surgery," he says, aiming for neutral ground, I guess.
I nod, lecturing myself in my mind to blink, to move, not to stand frozen staring at Edward's eyelashes like some besotted schoolgirl. The nurse at the desk is looking at us both with curiosity.
"I need to get back to work..." My voice is flat. I incline my head imperceptibly in the nurse's direction. This is a very small town. If he sees my gesture, he doesn't acknowledge it, but he walks me to the front doors of the clinic. It's raining and I scrabble around in my bag for an umbrella, for a distraction.
"I'd like to take you out."
His voice is too quiet for anyone else to hear, but the ache in my chest returns with a vengeance.
"Dinner and a movie?" I manage with a wry laugh. What are vampire dates supposed to look like? 'Want to go dutch on a mountain lion? Race you to New Mexico.' I think about the Italian restaurant in Port Angeles, but it's like trying to pick the details out of a half-developed Polaroid. Fuzzy, indistinct.
Edward smiles. "Well, I thought you could come over. See where I live."
"I know where you live," I reply with a smirk. He raises an eyebrow. "Casey, who appears to be vice president of your fan club, emailed me the link on Google Earth."
"Vice president?" Edward ducks his head with a grin.
"Well, she'll never admit it, but I am confident Mrs Ainsley would faint dead away if you smiled at her again."
His laughter is refreshing; a salve to old wounds.
I open the umbrella and step swiftly out into the rain.
"Tomorrow night?" he says softly, knowing I can hear him perfectly clearly.
"Tomorrow night," I reply as I get into my car and shake the rain from the umbrella.
Edward's house is a dark wooden post and beam place right on the Silver Lake waterfront. Tall windows face out onto the water, revealing a short pier that stretches out into the lake. The property is surrounded by trees on either side, creating a small stretch of private beach. I let out a low whistle.
"Being a pediatrician in a small town pays well, huh?"
He chuckles. "Old money."
The living area is sparse, with a long low-backed leather sofa and a full-sized grand piano. He looks around with me, and suddenly seems uncomfortable. "I guess...I may need more furniture. I haven't really..."
I squeeze his arm lightly in reassurance. "It's beautiful, Edward."
We sink onto opposite ends of the sofa, a wide diplomatic distance between us. He tells me about his time since arriving in Hollis. The job at the clinic, the children he's treated, the little leaguers he coaches. We overlap, of course, as ever. These are children I've read to, helped with homework, recommended stories.
We steer clear of the difficult conversations.
"Why Whitlock?" he asks again.
"It really bothers you, doesn't it?"
He scowls a little as he tries his best not to react.
I shrug, letting him off the hook. "You'll have to ask Alice. She gave me the documents I needed when I first got to Chicago. This is the name I've had ever since. It wasn't a deliberate slight, Edward. Not everything is about you."
Edward has a far away expression as he processes this news.
I talk about New York. The time Emmett and I spent a night hitting golf balls off the roof of the apartment into the Hudson. When Rosalie got us tickets to the Costume Institute Gala, and Emmett 'forgot' to hunt first so he didn't have to come. I don't talk about the time before Rose came to get me. I wonder how much he knows.
Eventually, Edward suggests some fresh air, and we walk down to the water. Edward throws an old quilt over the end of the dock for us, and we sit side by side, not touching, our legs swinging just above the waterline as the sky turns to lavender and dawn spreads across the sky.
"e.e. cummings had a summer house here."
The lake laps around the wooden poles below us. I think back to freshman English, my fingers toying with a frayed patch on the cloth beneath me.
"The best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says... we are for each other," I murmur. The trees on the other side of the lake are silhouetted against the slowly coloring horizon. Edward turns the back of his hand to brush softly against the back of mine where they sit between us on the dock. The barest whisper of a touch. I don't look at him.
"For life's not a paragraph," he responds, his voice, low, jagged. Of course he knows this poem. His cavernous, century-old memory probably knows every poem I've ever read. "And death I think is no parenthesis."
No parenthesis.
We sit in silence until the first brilliant shards of light begin to shatter across our skin.
"I don't know about this." I dip the toe of my boot into the water and flick it up in a rush, droplets spraying in all directions in the weak morning light.
I look over at him, and he's staring intently at me. As he takes in my expression, Edward's radiant countenance turns to stone.
"It's just...so much has happened. You weren't there...for so many things. I don't know how we make up for that. How we get past it."
These are hard words to say, but I'm thinking out loud, and before I know what's happening Edward is on his feet and tugging me up to join him.
"Come on," he urges, taking off at a sprint.
Running with Edward is exhilarating. My child-like strength is only barely a match for his pace, and it feels amazing, to stretch to the edge of my capability like this, muscles thrilling at the effort. We tear across the countryside, and I have no sense of the direction he is taking me. He sticks to tree-covered hills, state parks, and moves through inhabited areas so fast we appear to be no more than a stiff breeze.
Soon I recognize the outskirts of New York City. Em and I have run north this way to hunt a number of times.
When he eventually careens to a halt we're on East 60th. I smooth my clothing self-consciously, glad for practical boots and a general lack of flora in my hair. "Where are we?"
Edward is already take the steps up to the closest building two at a time. "This is the Grolier Club. It has one of the most extensive book history collections in the world." He holds the door open for me, and then walks to a counter where he produces an ID card from his wallet and murmurs quietly to the elderly man behind the desk. The man indicates toward the stairs, and Edward is back at my side in an instant, steering me up to the first floor. We step behind a velvet rope and into an exhibition room, with rich, deep blue carpets, and books and pages on display around the walls. Edward leads me to where an illustrated manuscript sits under low light.
"What is this, Edward?"
"The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Fitzgerald. The original is Persian, from the 9th century, but Fitzgerald was translating it in the 19th. Here...this is what I wanted you to see." Edward points to the page open in front of me.
The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it
The detail in the illustration is entrancing, a weathered man in a turban, peering through a telescope up at the night sky.
Edward turns to me, reaching to tuck my hair behind my ear, his face serious. "I can't change it, don't you see? I'd give everything to be able to. I'm impossibly fast and strong, near enough to immortal, but Bella - the past is written. I can't unwrite it. No matter how much I want to."
My eyes close and he pulls me in to a brief, gentle embrace, kissing the top of my head and releasing me quickly.
We walk west to the Park and Edward lets us into the apartment with a key from the lockbox. It feels stuffy, abandoned, without Emmett's bellowing greeting and the noise from ESPN in the background. "They're still in Chicago?"
Edward looks surprised. "You're not in touch with them?"
I haven't spoken to Rosalie since I first moved to Hollis, but I am not about to tell him that, so I just shrug and head into my old room. The furniture is covered in dropsheets, and the dust I kick up swirls and dances in the late afternoon sun. I look out over the bare trees in the Park and wonder yet again what I'm doing. So time is an arrow, Edward and Omar may be right about that. But forgiveness is an attribute of the strong, and I'm not sure that I'm strong enough for this.
Edward reappears, jangling a set of keys and looking very pleased about something.
"Rose left the Audi," he says with a wicked smile. "Come on. I'll drive you home."
.X.X.X.
A/N: I am posting this blind, as FFn's traffic and stats are on the fritz, so if you're still hanging in there with me, drop a review and let me know that you're out there. Thanks to my ever patient beta emmajanepringle who is travelling and yet still finding time to correct my spelling. Love to dawntwilight000 AND SeanEmma4evr for their tireless pimping.