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Chapter Four

Dr. Cullen left me with my aunt Sophia. She was my father's older sister, never married, and living the lonely life of an old maid. She and my father had once been as close as Edward and I were, but Aunt Sophia had never approved of my mother, and so they had grown apart. Years of seeing the life Father made for himself had made Aunt Sophia into a bitter, jealous woman who scorned her niece and nephew for bringing her brother a happiness of which she had deprived herself.

It was in this grim atmosphere that I grieved so badly for my brother. Perhaps I would have let go of Edward's face much sooner if Aunt Sophia had not spent every day telling me that I needed to forget him. But even though Aunt Sophia's widowed or married acquaintances claimed that I mourned my loss in a way only a woman could, I was still a child in so many ways. I clung stubbornly to my grief in part because Aunt Sophia was demanding I give it up.

I tried to go on like nothing had happened, but everything seemed so unimportant without Edward. In our house, the hour after dinner always found Edward seated at the piano in the parlor and me sitting next to him on the bench, combining our talents to make our parents smile. But after Edward's death, I refused to even enter Aunt Sophia's sitting room for fear of all my memories of Edward rushing back at the sight of her piano. I avoided reading because it had always been a habit of Edward's and mine to read aloud with each other before turning in for the night.

Aunt Sophia, once she realized I would not forget Edward, seemed cruelly amused at my brokenhearted reactions every time he was thought of or mentioned. She required that I attend the daily afternoon teas with her female neighbors in the sitting room, and after I had spent much of the time fighting back tears and trying to stop my eyes from wandering to the piano, she would look at me as if she had just noticed me and ask me politely if I would play the piano for them. "After all, you play beautifully," she would say with a smile that was angelic for her acquaintances yet demonic for me, "although not as beautifully as your brother." As an afterthought, she would always add, "It was a shame when he died, all that talent wasted."

I had never hated anyone before, but Aunt Sophia was the first. I hated everything about her. I hated the snide little sneer that came across her pinched face every time Edward's name slid past her lips. I hated that someone so spiteful, so malicious could have ever loved my father. But most of all, I hated that she had learned that the easiest way to hurt me was to remind me of the brother I loved.

Only days after Edward's death, it became clear that Aunt Sophia did not want me there anymore than I wanted to be there. I didn't want her company anyway; I wanted Edward's. But I would never have his company in this life again, so I went in search of the companionship of the one person who had comforted me when Edward was gone.

But when I went to the hospital to look for Dr. Cullen, Dr. Winstone told me that the young man had resigned several days previously.

"Resigned?"

I looked up helplessly at the doctor standing before me and remembered vaguely how I believed he looked. He was actually a man in perhaps his early forties with light brown hair and a warm, gentle face that would have been attractive if not compared to Dr. Cullen's. If things were still the way they were once, he could have been the man my mother wanted as my husband.

Dr. Winstone nodded, clearly worried that he had upset me. But I could see in his eyes that he was jealous of the pain Dr. Cullen's absence had caused. He might as well have muttered, "Of course it upsets you that Dr. Carlisle Cullen is gone, although a perfectly good man stands in front of you." I had the sense that he had greeted Dr. Cullen's resignation with masked enthusiasm and mock disappointment.

When I returned to Aunt Sophia's, I went back to my bed and curled up again. The throbbing hole that Edward's death had ripped in my chest began to burn worse now. Dr. Cullen, the iciness of his touch, the warmth of his presence, had numbed the pain. But he was gone from my life, just as my mother was, just as my father was.

Just as Edward was.

I didn't know if I would ever survive.