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Chapter Six
It had been almost nine months since Edward's death and Dr. Cullen's resignation, and the hole in my chest still burned. It had been almost nine months, and Aunt Sophia decided that she hated living with me alone.
She introduced me to our new "renter," Silas Carrington. He looked like one of those men that all young women fear to see on the street; if Edward had seen him on the street while we were out walking, his arm would have tightened protectively around me. Silas leered suggestively at me; it made my stomach lurch in disgust.
Aunt Sophia claimed she had met him the week before and had spent days trying to convince him to move in with us. But I saw a gleam in her eyes that I had seen in Mother's when she watched Father quietly across the dinner table. In any other woman, like my mother, it was the gleam of love, although in Aunt Sophia's eyes, it was more like rampant lust.
If I had had any sense at all, I should have run away in the moment I first saw Silas Carrington. I should have fled that horrendous house where I wasn't wanted anyway; I should have run without looking back, even if I had no reason to look forward either. I should have gone searching for Dr. Cullen again because his arms of icy stone had given me a strange sense of security.
But instead I remained with Aunt Sophia and Mister Carrington (as Aunt Sophia demanded I call him). Besides, even as I thought wildly of running away to find Dr. Cullen, I knew I never would. Although people everywhere would remember him for that beauty only a Renaissance angel could have, his path would be practically impossible to follow. He had always moved in silence like a ghost; it was the only complaint anyone had ever voiced aloud about the man, even my mother: "He certainly is handsome, but there's just something frightening about the way he moves without making a sound."
By now, I thought then, Dr. Cullen could have easily left Chicago. A young, handsome, skilled doctor such as he could surely find a rewarding job somewhere else with ease. And with that perfect face and unyielding compassion, he would have no difficulty finding a woman as his wife.
The emotions rising in my throat were making me sick. Who was I to envy a woman who almost certainly didn't exist? Who was I to hate Dr. Cullen for leaving when I had never told him how much I needed him?
I went to bed that night in bitter tears, crying at this strange, new mix of emotions that had nothing to do with Edward.
And I had also remembered that the birthday Edward and I'd shared was only eleven days away. We would have been eighteen.
I would be, and he would never be.