The brownstone looks like a fairytale, with snow piled high on the windowsills and warm light burning brightly inside.
Alice throws the front door open and takes the steps three at a time, flinging herself at me in a rush of squeals. She smells like cinnamon and pine cones, and her hair is a spiky dark halo around her head flecked with glitter from the decorations indoors.
"What took you so long!" she admonishes, whacking me softly on the arm. "I was so sure you'd be here this morning, and I'm so excited because I know that Jasper is going to love what you got him for his present, and Esme has been baking cookies for the shelter all week but she says they're not nearly as good as yours." She is dragging me up the steps, my heavy suitcase tossed lightly over her shoulder. "Wait a minute...where's Edward?" She looks past me in confusion, as if I've hidden him behind me all this time.
"We didn't come here together."
"Oh." Her face is impenetrable. "Huh. Well, I'm sure he'll be here soon. Come on."
Everyone crowds into the entrance to greet me, and it's a whirl of hugs and laughter, and these astonishing people, this incredible family of mine, surround me with more love than I know what to do with. I can't remember why I stayed away for so long.
I've beaten Emmett twice at Madden NFL, and am helping Esme refine her cookie dough recipe when Alice comes flying down the stairs again like an avalanche and out the front door. I hear him before I see him, and Esme's whole face softens into the most beautiful expression. She tugs on my arm pulling me into an embrace, and stroking my hair softly.
"Thank you, Bella. Thank you so much."
I pull back and look at her with a confused expression. "For what?"
"For making sure my whole family is together for the first time."
I swear, physical impossibility or no, her eyes seem to be welling up, and there is a lump in my throat the size of Alaska.
Edward trails Alice into the kitchen, dropping a large duffel in the doorway. He's wearing dark jeans and chunky cream cable-knit sweater. He looks stunning, his skin flushed faintly from a recent hunt. Edward and Esme stare at each other for a long time without saying anything. It takes me a beat to realize she is telling him everything she needs to. He drops his head and smiles, finally, and then crosses the room in two long strides to scoop her up in a hug.
When he puts her down, she smooths his sweater, and pats his chest maternally. It's a moment of such intimacy that I feel uncomfortable still being in the room, but Edward's blocking my escape.
"The cookies smell pretty good," he says, looking at me for the first time, a shy smile on his face.
"Yeah, it's worrying. I suspect Esme and I may have started baking things that smell amazing, but actually taste terrible. There'd be no way to know."
He laughs softly, his arm still looped around Esme's waist. She is beaming.
Edward helps me wash and dry the remaining dishes, and we work in companionable silence.
When we finish he is surprised to find the family has retreated to the music room. Alice is lying on her stomach in front of the fire sticking photos in an album. Emmett is in a club chair with Rose curled up in his lap, and an original Bing Crosby record is on the turntable.
"Why are we in here?" Edward asks, as I drop to the sofa next to Carlisle and his tedious pile of medical journals.
Jasper glances up from the book he's reading with a puzzled expression on his face.
Understanding washes over Edward's features, and he looks at me curiously, but says nothing.
"God, that's frustrating." I grump to no one in particular. Carlisle pats my knee absently without looking up. "Seriously. Can we have out-loud conversations this week?"
Edward chuckles and takes a seat at the piano, picking out accompanying harmonies to the Christmas songs playing on the record. I could watch him play for days, his sleeves pushed back, the tendons in his arms stretching and contracting as his fingers dance over the keys.
Eventually, the album finishes and the needle skips and whirs in the center of the disc. No one makes a move to change it and so Edward begins to play his own melodies. I recognize the piece he wrote for Esme. Then he switches to something different: lyrical, gentle.
"What is that?"
"It's Liszt, Au lac de Wallenstadt," he responds without missing a note. "It makes me think of Silver Lake." I hear it too, the water lapping gently at the dock beneath us. The back of his hand against mine.
When dawn breaks, Alice and I go for a walk. She's wearing earmuffs shaped like Christmas snowmen, and appears to have tinsel laced through her boots. I feel like the Grinch just standing next to her.
"I'm so glad you're back, Bella," she enthuses, lacing her tiny hand in mine. "Tell me all about Hollis. I've only seen bits and pieces, because I've been trying really hard not to pry. There was a dance, though, and your dress was divine."
I think about that night: the heat on my skin that bloomed under Edward's touch, the flare of my thirst. Alice gets impatient, tugging on my hand. "And the guy, Bella. Tell me all about the guy!"
My heart sinks, thinking about Julian's crestfallen expression. It seems unfair.
"Is this it, Alice?" I stop walking, slowing her to a halt. Thin sunlight is breaking through the cloud cover and lighting up the very tops of the waves on the lake. It causes the faintest sparkle across the bridge of Alice's nose. I try to think how to explain this to her, this crippling fear that is overcoming me. "I mean, I love you guys more than... But...are you the only people that I'll ever really know from now on? Always moving, always letting someone down. Keeping my distance from everyone so they don't get hurt."
Alice's dark eyes are wide and sympathetic. She shakes her head sharply. "No, Bella. It gets easier. You'll be able to stay in one place a little longer. You'll start younger. It's okay to meet people, you know. That's a big part of why we live the way we do.
"And Julian, he's going to be okay too. I started watching him when it looked like you would...you know." She waves her hand dismissively, without a hint of embarrassment. As if we weren't discussing my uncontrollable bloodlust and Julian's previously inevitable death. "He's going to take a transfer this summer, to California. And Scott's going to charm the pants off his fifth grade teacher, and play little league in the sun. They're going to be happy, Bella."
My gut twists a little at the news I hadn't wanted to ask for, but desperately wanted to know.
"We're not frozen, Bella. Things change. I found Jasper," she says, with a twinkly little smile. Then she elbows me in the ribs. "And Edward found you."
Yes, he did.
Not frozen, then. Not immutable. Just with a completely different time horizon to those around us. More like glaciers, inching slowly forward over hundreds of years.
She gives my hand a tight little squeeze. "Come on. I found this fantastic antique store that has these German glass snow angels from the 1900s. They are just extraordinary. You will love them."
That night, Edward and his brothers decide to head to Minnesota to hunt big game in the Chippewa National Forest. Rosalie wants to stay closer to home, so she and I run around the lake to Manistee.
I make a mess of my last kill, and I'm crouched over a frigid stream washing my face when Rosalie catches up with me.
"You are still so fast," she says, slightly awed.
I laugh, and wave a blood-streaked palm at her. "And still such an amateur."
She perches on a rocky outcrop above me.
"He's so different, Bella. You have no idea." I dry off as best as I can with my scarf, looking up at her, hesitantly.
"All that pain, that darkness, he was carrying around with him. I thought it had broken him. And now he's here, and he's whole..." her voice catches.
"You give me too much credit, Rose. I haven't done anything"
"You've given him a chance," she says, reaching down to pull me out of the bone-chilling water with a firm hand. "Apparently that was all he needed."
The night before Christmas loses some of its magic when there is no sleep. Carlisle and Esme go to a midnight service at St James Cathedral, and when they return everyone drifts off to their rooms, leaving Edward and me alone. The fire has burned low in the grate, and I can't be bothered getting up from my favorite spot in front of the turntable to stoke it. Nina Simone is singing Ne me quitte pas, and my limbs feel lazy, fluid.
"I love this song."
Edward is lying on the sofa, reading a patient file and making notes on a pad. When I speak, he puts his work down and rolls onto his side to face me, propping himself up on one elbow.
"Do you know what she's singing? In English?"
I shake my head slowly, closing my eyes and letting the music roll around us like smoke.
"She's begging her lover not to leave her. We must just forget, all we can forget, all we did 'til now, let's forget the cost, of the breath we've spent."
Edward's cadence is slow, his voice mellow. His translation rhyming like the song.
"Only you will know...Tales of lovers who fell apart and then, fell in love again, since their hearts stayed true..."
I open my eyes to look at him, my stone heart breaking wide open. He's wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved Dartmouth t-shirt, his feet bare and his hair still damp from the shower. He looks so young, so unsure.
"And often it's true, that flames spill anew, from ancient volcanoes... Scorched fields of defeat, could give us more wheat, than the fine April sun..."
I sit up, kneeling before him...
"Don't leave me now, don't leave me now..."
... leaning over him, pressing my lips to his. The kiss is gentle, honeyed, slow. I feel it in the roots of my hair; in the curl of my toes. Edward tastes like sunset, like snowfall. When we break apart, neither of us breathes. His hands reach for my hips and he lifts me easily over him to lie pressed in against his side, tucked under his arm, my cheek against his silent chest. I place my palm over his heart, feeling his body spark and thrum beneath my hand. This, here, is home. I never want to leave.
In the morning, Alice makes a truly unnecessary amount of noise coming down the stairs, singing carols at the top of her lungs. I pull reluctantly away from Edward, sitting up and stretching, retreating to the other end of the sofa, my toes still tucked up under the warmth of his thigh. He runs a hand through his hair and gives me a small, wistful smile, wrapping his hand around my ankle and tracing a delicate pattern over the bone.
If the rest of the family is surprised to see that we've closed our physical distance, they don't let on. I make a mental note to never play poker with any of them.
Emmett is wearing a Santa hat, and Alice has felt reindeer antlers poking out of her hair, which seems sort of...gruesome, considering our diet. Jasper and Carlisle carry in armloads of gifts that have been residing under the tree in the foyer, and the day takes on a boisterous, joyful air.
Alice was right, Jasper is really delighted my gift, an original orderly book kept by officers of Co. F, 1st Texas Cavalry, during the regiment's Civil War service. It took me months of research and a truly obscene amount of money at private auction, but the look on his face as he traces the handwritten entries is more than worth it.
Alice and Jasper give me earrings that must be real diamonds, though I don't like to ask. Rosalie and Emmett give me a laptop. Carlisle and Esme, despite my vehement protests, give me a new car. But the gift that delights me the most is by far the least ostentatious. Alice wrinkles her nose in disdain, "Really, Edward? You had much better ideas than this."
The ice skates have white boots, with dark red laces, and they make me unreasonably happy. I lean over immediately and kiss him on the cheek, whispering, "They're perfect," in his ear. He seems just as delighted by the watch that I give him, engraved on the back with the date of my rebirth and the words No parenthesis. He fastens it around his wrist and then reaches out to tug me to him where we sit for the rest of the day, my back warm against the rise and fall of his chest.