When we finally arrived I was not impressed, but I couldn't say that. Not to Esme. The problem was that I was a city girl, born and bred. Log cabins were simply not my style, no matter how charming they appeared or how tastefully they were furnished. It was far too rustic for me. Still, it didn't stop me from wondering:

"You built this?"

Esme smiled, looking down. I think that, had she been able, she would have blushed. "With Carlisle and Edward, yes."

Carlisle came up behind her and wrapped an arm loosely round her waist. "We've been through this, Esme. You designed it—"

"—therefore that gives me license to forget all courteous modesty," she teased.

He shook his head and laughed at her, but there was no malice in the sound. Rather, he sounded as if he loved her. They were so like newlyweds, caught up in the first flush of the enchantment that is young love. If their stories were to be believed, they had been married for a decade, yet they still looked at each other as if they couldn't quite believe the other were real.

I turned away.

Inside, I was further surprised at the size of the place. Alongside two reception rooms, there were four bedrooms and a room designated as a bathroom, though of course there was no running water.

"But there's a hot spring just a mile out to the east," Esme assured me. "It only takes a couple of trips to fill a bath."

"She thinks of everything," Carlisle assured me.

Despite their blatant adoration of each other, I found myself becoming more and more comfortable with both Carlisle and Esme. It was strange; I hadn't expected to feel so natural around Carlisle especially, only days after... but I did. Perhaps I was reacting to the familiarity of our shared species, perhaps I didn't mind Carlisle because he loved Esme so clearly and so I recognised that he was no threat; perhaps it was that I had been brought up to trust doctors. Whatever it was, I accepted them almost immediately in a way I had never managed with humans.

Oh, I had had friends. There had been around me circle upon circle of friends, but never had there been any whom I would tell everything. Even my closest friend, whose name had been—was—Vera, I had not told everything. When she married, I did not tell her that I thought her husband was beneath her; rather I told another circle of society girls. My parents I told next to nothing of what I felt and hoped and dreamed; they could guess most of it well enough, and the rest would never have concerned them. My father in particular would have dismissed most of my thoughts as frivolous and a waste of energy.

I marvelled that within a day of first meeting them properly, I knew almost all there was to know about Carlisle and Esme. Edward, not so much.

I unpacked my few satchels slowly in the room that had now been designated as mine. They let me choose, though Esme assured me that the room on the east had beautiful views of the sunrise. The east room became mine. Within, there was a bed, a large double bed with a deep green coverlet, reflecting the forest outside. For something that three people had built without professional help, I suppose it was impressive: there were even glass windows. It was odd to be thinking of windows as impressive. The furniture was simple and made of pine, and there was only a wardrobe and a dresser. It was functional, and perhaps it was pretty, but it wasn't my sort of pretty. My style of beautiful was luxurious and rich.

Edward wasn't there. He'd unpacked his few bags and gone, presumably hunting for I couldn't see what else there was to do, though I gathered that he'd quietly let Carlisle know while Esme and I were consoling each other.

What worried me was the manner in which I had gathered this, namely overhearing. I simply couldn't help it; a voice drew my attention and now it was very difficult to escape from earshot. In itself this didn't bother me overmuch. It was more that I knew I would overhear everything in this hut. House, I corrected myself. Everything. Every word, every sigh, every movement. It sounded like hell. Even changing my clothing, I could hear every rustle of the material, every seam that stretched slightly upon being introduced to my new body.

I was still preoccupied with this as I left my room and began to wander the house. Every now and again something would catch me off guard: the complete absence of a kitchen, for example. The silence and the noise. Used as I was to bustling Rochester, the lack of evidence of people was unnerving, and yet I could hear far more here than I had ever heard in New York. It was as I was pondering this that I came across the piano.

Esme and Carlisle were in their room, I knew, quietly discussing Edward, and I found that I'd rather not call them to ask whose this instrument was. It was nothing grand, only a simple stand up piano, and the layer of dust upon it was thick. In the corner of the sitting room it rested, dormant, placed so the player's back would be to those who listened in the rustic wooden chairs on the other side of the room. The stool, too, was covered in dust and I wondered how long this hut—house—had stood empty.

Gently, ever so gently, I swept the grime off the stool and raised the lid.

Once seated, I found myself at a loss. Of course I had taken piano lessons in Rochester until the age of fifteen, and I was musician enough to be able to play a few simple airs from memory. My father had pronounced my playing beautiful, though my mother was more doubtful. I knew myself that I could play to the standard deemed necessary, though it had been an uphill struggle to reach that standard. I had taken lessons from at least six different tutors over the years.

The problem was that I could not remember a single thing. Middle C, I told myself, and placed it, but beyond that, there was nothing. I was tempted to panic at yet another lost facet of my past, but I stopped myself with forcible effort.

For the first time in my life, I followed the instructions of each of those six piano tutors and began with a simple scale.

Do re mi fa so la ti do.

Then with both hands together, an octave apart. Then two octaves at a time. Then in the key of D major, with an F and C sharp. Then in D minor, with a B flat and the raised seventh. And then arpeggios, in the same progression, C major, D major, D minor. And then the broken chords. The keys of B flat major and E flat major.

I didn't notice that Esme and Carlisle had stopped talking.

Finally, tentatively, I began to play. It was the first proper piece I had ever learnt, and one I played often because of the way my fingers used to remember it, without even looking at the keys. Air in D minor, by Henry Purcell. I played it slowly, softly, with only the faintest of dynamics. To anyone listening I would have sounded as though I had just learnt it, and in a way I had. It was so different to play as a vampire. Once I had played one position, I knew my fingers would find it again with certainty. But before I could reach that point, I had to dredge up each chord progression from my muddied memory, and hope I could recall what had once been second nature to me.

Three times I played it, each time adding something, the first the use of the pedal and some gentle dynamics and the second some improvised ornamentation.

On the third repeat I left the last chord sustained, hanging in the air, and at long last realised that I had an audience. I spun around in surprise to find not two listeners but three. Edward had returned and was watching me with the tiniest of smiles.

"You play?" he asked.

"Evidently," I returned, but without perhaps as much sarcasm as was required. "I suppose you do too?"

He nodded. "It will get easier," he volunteered.

"As with everything, apparently."

He smiled again, glancing ever so briefly at Carlisle and Esme, knowing they had used that line far too many times already. "Once you've played something once, you'll remember it. Quicker reflexes help with sight reading, too."

"I hated sight reading," I confessed.

"I loved it."

But he didn't say anymore, and I became aware that the others were watching us, Carlisle with muted amazement and Esme with an affectionate look. Our brief conversation withered, and died.

Carlisle stepped in. "I've never been musical, myself," he admitted. "Though Edward tried to teach me."

"From what I hear, it was a disaster," Esme put in.

"It was," Edward muttered.

From the way they both beamed, you would never have thought that he had just insulted Carlisle.

"Will you play something?" I asked Edward.

Every smile faltered. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but at the same time I didn't. I thought I might have a vague idea. Still, I stood, brushed the lingering dust off my skirts and moved aside for him. Esme, at least, didn't breathe as he replaced me on the piano stool.

Unlike me, he didn't begin with scales or exercises. He didn't stretch his fingers with a flourish. He merely placed his hands upon the keyboard and played.

And play he did. Where I had been merely reciting, Edward gave his music life and let it dance. The piece, if indeed it were a piece, flowed from him as though unrehearsed, though he would have had me believe that he played from memory alone. Accents rose through the music and burst like soap bubbles, raining down on us mere immortals like manna. For someone who had at least a slight musical ear, it was divine. The tone of the piece was much like my Air, subdued and tranquil to begin, building to a crescendo and then moving to a quiet finish, but I almost didn't notice, so lost was I in the music.

When it ended, I found myself quite unable to speak.

He turned back to us and still I was speechless, so Esme came to me and touched my arm gently.

"He's rather a musical prodigy," she said, sotto voce.

"I gathered that," I managed to say.

Edward's eyebrows twitched together. "You're not upset by that?"

I wasn't sure. In one way I'd been so clearly surpassed and rendered useless and I was insanely jealous of the beauty his music had. In another I was quite comfortable with my own level of proficiency; I much preferred to be the passive listener rather than the performer. Still:

"Not unless you refuse to teach me."

Edward quirked a smile. "Of course."

I think that was the moment when Edward decided to like me. He was much like that, Edward; he thought far more with his head than his heart. When he saw that I was willing to learn something, he revised his opinion of me which had previously been born of half-impressions and third hand knowledge to include that fact, and he decided that I wasn't all shallow beauty and arrogance. For the first time, as I saw Edward judge me in this manner, I became aware that this was the impression people must gain of me.

I didn't dwell on it, of course. I let the flicker of self-awareness disappear like a semiquaver, gone before you've even had a chance to notice how much it adds to the music.

"Let me dust in here first," Esme said.

"I'll write out some music," Edward told me.

And so life began in the Great Smoky Mountains.

A/N: Not the end, whatever it sounds like. And apologies to non-musical people out there - I've got a concert coming up next week and am consequently in a rather musical mood. Look out for the same theme in the upcoming chapter of Another Life.