Chapter Nine

For the next five months, I helplessly stood as witness to the battle raging inside me. It was an endless tug-of-war between my heart and my mind, and neither seemed strong enough to win. The only day neither side seemed to fight was the twelfth of September, the very day Edward had died.

The young man with Edward's face never appeared again on the street, and when I asked Aunt Sophia if she knew of any bronze-haired young men living in the neighborhood, she merely looked at me as if I had finally gone insane.

So, in what I assumed would be a vain attempt to console my grief once and for all, I decided to return home. I was sure I would find the house Edward and I had grown up in sold to some other family, whole and complete except perhaps for the young husband or son drafted into the Great War.

I waited for a windy autumn night when Aunt Sophia would be oblivious to any other sounds in the house, for if she caught me sneaking out, she would have me sent to the asylum at once. So I let the house fall quiet around me, dressed appropriately for the cold night and wind, and snuck out through the front door.

The darkened streets frightened me more that night than they ever had, perhaps because I had never gone walking down them alone but always with Father or Edward at my side. They had both been so protective sometimes that Mother and I would sigh in irritation whenever one or both of them insisted on going with us.

It was a longer walk than I remembered, through sections of sidewalk so pitch black that I couldn't see anything in front of me. I almost ran past the gates of Lincoln Park, too terrified to walk when my mind was filled with the images and stories of the horrors that had happened in the park at night.

But finally I rounded a corner and saw halfway down Hardwicke Avenue the house I knew so well. While the houses of my neighbors still had a few lights burning in the windows, the windows of my house were depressingly dark. Tears leapt to my eyes as I walked slowly down the street.

The flowers my mother had grown in a box beneath the parlor window had died long ago; their brown skeletons were crumbling to dust in the wind. The ebony paint on the front door was peeling, and the brass doorknocker gleamed dimly in the light from the streetlamp three houses down.

I went up the front steps slowly and slowly, cautiously reached to touch the doorknob. Taking a deep breath to calm my racing heart, I turned the door handle with no hopes of it obeying. Instead, it moved easily under my touch, as easily as it would have moved under Father's strong hand.

The door creaked open slowly, letting a few beams of light dance through our front hall. I let the tears spill down my cheeks as I stepped into the house, seeing so many ghosts of the past.

Our mother called to Edward and me from the kitchen, and we came bounding down the stairs the way only young children would. Our father entered the front hall and called out that he was home, putting down his briefcase and hanging up his coat; Edward and I rushed out of the parlor to greet him, Mother trailing slowly behind us with a small smile lighting up her emerald eyes. Edward and I sat side by side on the piano bench, his long fingers dancing over the black and white keys, my voice echoing throughout the house.

I thought sadly to myself that this had been a horrible idea, that I had only hurt myself more. But despite the agonizing grief in my chest, I felt a little better. Here, at least, I could mourn for my family in a way that I couldn't at Aunt Sophia's, in her presence and Silas's. Here, I wouldn't have to hold back the overwhelming tears; here, I could wail out in pain without any sharp reprimand.

When only a few tears were all that was left, I closed the front door softly behind me. These rooms were drawing me forward, whispering that they had once sheltered everyone I loved. I moved silently up the staircase and down the hall, my hand leaving trails in the dust as I touched the handles on every door.

My room was just as I'd left it, but Manhattan and my family portrait were nowhere to be found. Edward's room, immediately next to mine, had not changed either; the bed where he had spent some of his last days was still unmade, and nothing here had been taken, unless it was something I had never known about.

Here, surrounded by the things my brother had kept, it was hardest to pretend I no longer grieved for him. I curled into a ball in the middle of his bed and wept again, the sobs tearing through me and making the burning hole in my chest hurt worse.

I rose from Edward's bed only when I thought I heard a soft sound downstairs. But when I searched for the source, I found nothing, just more ghosts. I took my fruitless search as a sign that I should leave, and I was almost to the front door when I remembered that I hadn't looked in the parlor, where Edward's piano sat.

The tears erupted again as I walked into the room. Along the wall opposite the window looking onto the street, there was an empty spot between a winged chair and my mother's writing desk.

Edward's piano was gone. Just like he was.

I ran from the house as quickly as I could, stumbling several times through my tears. I wanted to keep running, never looking back, forgetting everything I knew with every step. I wanted to find Dr. Cullen, beg him to take me with him wherever he went, beg him to help me forget.

But, several blocks from the house, I stumbled and fell to the sidewalk. I had no strength left to get up and continue to Aunt Sophia's house, and even if I had had any strength, I would not have gotten up anyway.

Then suddenly I heard voices. I looked up in surprise to see a large group of men coming down the street towards me. "Get up," a soft voice murmured in the back of my mind. "Emily, get up now!" I obeyed instantly because I recognized it at once as Edward's. "You have to run," Edward's voice purred in my head, but I couldn't move through the paralyzing fear.

Suddenly the man in front looked up. He reeled slightly to see me there, but then he crowed, "Well, well, boys, look what we have here!" His companions gave a unanimous murmur of greed as they spotted me; their leader signaled them to stay there, then drew near enough to touch me.

"Emily, please for the love of God, run!" Edward's voice pleaded. As much as I wanted to obey that wonderful, beautiful voice I hadn't heard in almost a year, I couldn't. Nothing―not even the man's rank breath mingling with the nauseating smell of alcohol, not even the lust-filled look in his eyes that made the vomit rise in my throat, not even the calloused fingers that brushed across my cheek and sent shivers rippling down my spine―could make me move from where I was rooted to the sidewalk.

As he reached out to grab me, though, my body finally responded, and I bolted. He cursed and started after me, his companions joining the chase behind him. I could hear them panting and breathing behind me; terror washed through me at the thought that I would never be able to outrun them.

Edward's voice, however, was harsh as it scolded, "Don't think like that, Emily. Just keep running." I was too terrified to question it, so I obeyed, gasping for breath and begging for help. But the voice didn't come back to me.

I was running blindly down street after street, turning corner after corner, hoping to lose these men behind me. But I was only losing myself in the heart of Chicago, and I was tiring as my pursuers grew stronger. I looked back once over my shoulder, just to check how close they were, but there was a low snarl in my mind that made me whip my head forward again.

My heart was pounding, my breath wouldn't come to me, and my limbs were burning when I rounded another corner and slid to a stop.

The hunt was over, and just like the deer cowering before the hunter, I had lost.

I was in a dead-ended alley, and my only escape was past the eight men behind me. The leader had skidded to a stop beside me and seized my arm roughly; as I begged him to let me go, he dragged me farther into the alley, away from the revealing light of the streetlamps.

He threw me down to the ground at the end of the alley and called back to his companions to join us. It was so dark that I could barely see the man standing above me, much less the seven men standing in a loose semicircle around us. I broke into tears, knowing that once they had finished with me, they'd slit my throat and leave my body here for someone to discover in the bright light of day.

I closed my eyes and sobbed softly through the dark, hoping he'd hear it wherever he was, "Edward, I'm sorry. I love you." For a moment, I was grateful that the men's loud laughing made it impossible for any of them to hear.

I had once welcomed death, had even begged for it, but now, when it lurked at the edge of the alley and drew nearer with my every breath, I feared it. But I was comforted to see that behind it, an angel waited for me.

An angel with my brother's face.