A/N So here it is... Esme's story.

This chapter is dedicated to 1-Brave-Lamb. Sarah, this is for you, because you're as strong and as brave as Esme. You're soul is beautiful, and it has been my delight to meet you.

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

Chapter Eight: Firelight

The weeks passed and everyone was finally home for Christmas. Carlisle read the advent readings every morning from the Book of Common Prayer. Unselfish as always, he made sure they all knew he didn't mind if they didn't listen – but everyone did anyway.

Edward wasn't sure why everyone else listened, but he knew he did because he loved Carlisle.

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And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen…

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Esme – who spent a large amount of time either in the kitchen cooking, or painting and restoring the old house – doubled the amount of time she spent cooking and decorating. She and Bella were always making different breads or desserts, which would be piping hot on the counter when the rest of the kids trooped in from school.

Alice was always begging Carlisle for more spending money. She used Christmas as a convenient excuse for shopping – and somehow managed to buy two things for herself for every one present she bought for everyone else. It made her so happy that nobody minded very much. Except for Carlisle, of course, who got as frustrated as he ever could get. Edward admitted to himself though that Carlisle usually gave her the credit card.

Rosalie was spending inordinate amounts of time in the garage, where Edward suspected that she was making Christmas gifts for everyone. He had the sneaking suspicion that it was therapeutic for her, but he thought that the therapy was helping – not necessarily because it let her be in control of something – but because whatever she did was for someone else now. Making Christmas presents … fixing the cars … preparing dinner …

Giving something can be a powerful medicine if you feel as if someone stole something from you. Carlisle would call it turning the other cheek or something like that. All Edward knew was that what Rosalie thought she was doing for herself ended by being done for others.

Jasper, he suspected, didn't care what the holiday was – it could have been National Hot Dog Day for all the notice he took of it. He only knew that he had whole days to spend with Alice at home, instead of the minutes stolen in between classes at school. He needed no other Christmas gift.

And Emmett … Emmett ran the gamut of emotions. He was literally beside himself at being able to spend Christmas with a family – with other kids he insisted on calling his brothers and sisters.

However … every now and then … his face would become blank at not being able to spend Christmas with his real brothers.

He had suffered the torture of going shopping with Alice not once, but several times, in an effort to find the perfect gift for his youngest brother. It had been wrapped and shipped almost before the Thanksgiving leftovers were gone. Emmett insisted, without meeting anyone's eyes, that he just wanted the package to get to his brother before Christmas.

He was broken when that package came back two weeks later with a label on it that read, "Cannot Deliver to Addressed."

He just sat on the couch staring at the brown package, sitting in a very un-Emmett silence that spoke louder than words, until Bella sat down beside him.

She put her head on his shoulder and showed him her tablet where she had written, "I need a big brother. Do you think you'd mind having me as a little sister?"

Emmett laughed in a faint imitation of his regular booming roar, and said that he would be happy to be Bella's big brother.

But for all that, Bella was difficult for Edward to read still...

It happened with less frequency than it used to, but the strangest things would make her eyes dull with that opaque fear and instinct that he hated. She flinched when they dug the glass ball ornaments out of boxes from the attic. She had gone pale when Esme put Christmas music on. She was shaking so hard one evening when Carlisle ceremoniously lit their first fire of the winter in the fireplace that Edward was afraid she would shatter into pieces.

"Bella," he crooned, hands shaking. "What's wrong?"

She never responded.

She just sat on the couch with her arms clinched around her drawn-up legs, her frail shoulders hunched to protect herself. Silent, rasping sobs wretched her fragile body. She was trying to fold into the smallest amount of space she could.

She was trying to disappear again.

Carlisle saw the problem and immediately started extinguishing the fire.

"Shhhh, Bella," Edward whispered.

He reached out to stroke her hair and she saw his hand out of the corner of her eye. She went absolutely still, her breath raspy.

Feeling as if he had been punched in the stomach, he just fell to desperately trying to calm her down by whispering over and over again, "Shhhh, Bella…. It's alright …. I'm here…. No one is going to hurt you."

Only after the fire was out and the embers were dying down did Bella finally relax.

She looked at him and he saw fear and shame and frustration rimming her wide brown eyes. "I'm sorry … I'm sorry," she mouthed again and again.

Carlisle kneeled down in front of her. "Bella, there is nothing you have to apologize for. I am sorry that my action, however inadvertent it was, caused you pain," he said, his voice breaking at the end.

Bella very slowly extended her hand and brushed the tips of her fingers across Carlisle's cheek. Then she laid her head very gently on Edward's shoulder. He made no other move to touch her, contenting himself with resting his head on top of hers.

Rosalie walked over and flung Bella's tablet in her lap. Bella looked at it for a few minutes and then picked up her pen to write.

In nearly illegible handwriting she said, "I trust each of you. No one could have been kinder to me than all of you have been. I just get scared by memories sometimes. Christmas was .... difficult at my house."

"What memories?" asked Rosalie. Edward hissed at her, but she just jutted her chin out.

"She needs to talk," she insisted.

He shook his head in frustration. Rosalie didn't understand… They all needed to talk. Not just Bella.

Bella's eyes went wide again, but before Edward could say anything she picked up her pen to write: "My stepfather pushed my mother into a fireplace once… There was a fire... She wasn't burned, but she cut her head and broke her arm…."

Esme sighed and Emmett looked murderous. All of them suspected that Bella wasn't sharing everything.

"Is that all, Bella?" persisted Rosalie.

For the first time since Edward had known Bella she looked angry.

"No, but isn't that enough for now?" she wrote.

"No," hissed Rosalie. "Tell us, Bella! How did that make you feel?"

"Angry … helpless," Bella's writing trailed off. Then she wrote, "Thankful that it wasn't me … ashamed that I felt that way … and guilty that it wasn't me."

"Sweetheart," whispered Esme as she gently touched Bella's knee. "There was nothing you could have done. You shouldn't feel guilty. Your stepfather was the one who made the choice to cause pain, not you."

"But I should have protected my mom," she wrote stubbornly.

It was only then that Edward understood in a flash what Bella wasn't saying … what she never said … why that film in her eye was always opaque.

She thought that it should have been her.

It all clicked together. If there was anything he had learned about Bella – beyond how brave or how good she was – he had learned that she was selfless. She was instinctively generous and self-effacing in a way that neither Rosalie nor Alice ever were.

Given a different life … a different set of circumstances … Bella would have been able to show that kind of selfless love in a wholesome way.

But because of how she was treated she believed that she must not have really loved her mother because she was not willing to take her place in the beatings.

Edward's concentration was shattered when he heard Esme speak in a fierce voice, "Bella, I want you to listen to me right now. Are you listening?"

Bella, eyes wide, nodded.

Slowly Esme pulled up the sleeves of her long-sleeve shirt.

"Do you see, Bella?" she asked in a tired voice.

So pale they almost blended into her skin, a tiny network of scars laced up Esme's arms. Bella's eyes went even wider in her pale face.

"Before I married Carlisle, Bella, I was married to another man named Charles. He was an … exacting man," Esme paused and Carlisle slipped his arms around her.

"I suppose you can see from my arms what happened … I was too afraid to leave, desperately certain that Charles would find me even if I tried. Besides, I had nowhere to go … Then I felt like such a coward for not leaving that I felt as if I deserved the pain."

Carlisle's arms tightened around Esme.

"I finally found the will to run when I discovered I was pregnant with my first child."

Everyone sat frozen and horrified as they listened to Esme's story. Bella's eyes had become so wide they looked like burnt holes in her pale face.

"I actually met Carlisle when I was a teenager… I had fallen out of a tree and I broke my leg. He set it for me," Esme smiled softly at the memory.

"I think I fell in love with him then … but he moved to a different hospital before I could ask him to marry me," she laughed slightly and Carlisle gave a shattered smile.

Edward got the feeling Carlisle blamed himself for Esme's marriage to Charles. If only he had not transferred…

"Something of the serene strength that I always associated with Carlisle came to me over the next few months as I got rounder with pregnancy and used every trick in the book to stay hidden from Charles," Esme said peacefully.

"It was as if he was walking right beside me all through those months. I was happier than I had been in so long …" Her voice trailed off.

"My son only lived for two days," Esme whispered in a stark voice. "There were … complications … because of Charles's treatment of me that made him sick."

Esme fell silent and Edward looked around at his family.

Alice was crying softly. Jasper had pulled her into his lap and was rhythmically stroking her back. Jasper's face was pale and his eyes were clamped shut. Emmett's fists were clenched, and Edward felt certain that if Charles had been in the room right at that moment, he would have been dead in less than a heartbeat. Rosalie, who had been so confident that what Bella needed to do was talk … looked almost ashamed as she realized how painful telling one's story can be.

"I named him Carlisle … Carlisle Cullen Platt … I wanted him to be at peace like I had been at peace on that examining table in that small hospital room so long ago."

Esme stopped for a moment before continuing, "I buried him on a green hill next to the ocean … That evening I jumped off a cliff."

"No!" gasped Rosalie.

"Yes," said Esme sadly. "I don't know how I managed not to kill myself. The cliff was not as tall as I thought, so that might explain it … All I know is that I only broke my leg again. When I woke up from the anesthesia, Carlisle was standing right next to me … I thought I was dreaming."

They shared a small smile before Esme spoke again, "Carlisle protected me while I got a divorce from Charles. Then we married," she concluded simply.

Very slowly, Esme reached out and cupped her hand around Bella's cheek. "Bella, I want you to know something that has taken me a lifetime to learn. Are you listening?"

Bella nodded, her eyes wide in her pale face.

"We are only responsible for our own souls … for the choices we ourselves make. No one forced your step-father to hurt your mother. No one forced your mother to murder your step-father. No one forced me to stay with Charles. No one forced me to leave. No one forced me to jump off that cliff. They were choices each of us made. You – Bella Swan – are whole and complete inside your own heart. You have to decide how you're going to act in spite of what has happened to you."

Bella, perhaps thinking that Esme was chastising her for letting her fear paralyze her, mouthed, "I'm sorry" again.

"No, Bella," said Esme, smiling gently. "Fear can cause us to act in terrible ways … You might feel that you should have flung yourself between your mother and your step-father. Your fear stopped you from doing so. But you know what I think? However much you might not realize it, I think your love for you mother stopped you too."

Bella looked shocked.

"Bella, why did you stop talking?" asked Esme gently.

Bella looked down at her legs and shrugged. Edward wasn't sure, but he thought she knew, and just didn't want to say.

"How would your mother have felt if she heard you crying when you were hurt by him?" asked Esme.

Bella lifted her eyes in surprise.

"If you had flung yourself between your stepfather and your mother the way you seem to think you should have, your mother would have suffered a pain far worse than she felt even when your step-father was hitting her. But your step-father hurt you too … And you never wanted your mother to know, so you stopped talking … You stopped making any sound at all."

Tears were slowly sliding down Bella's frail cheeks.

"You did protect your mother, Bella – in the only way you knew how. You made a choice in the face of your fear – a choice prompted by love. And you have done nothing but show that same kind of love ever since you came to this family," finished Esme softly.

Sobbing, Bella reached out for Esme, who held her until her cries finally stopped.

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But at least one thing is sure. By starving themselves, anorexics are speaking symbolically, and by trying above all else to make them start eating again, their families are in their own fashion speaking back the same way. Far beneath the issue of food there are, on both sides, unspoken issues of love, trust, fear, loss, separation. Father and mother, brother and sister, they are all of them afflicted together, acting out in pantomime a complex, subterranean drama whose nature they are at best only dimly aware of. And so, one way or another, are we all…

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