Fallback
Part IV:
She's gazing more intently at his hand than her menu. Finally she reaches over, comparing her wrist to his.
"Amazing," Bella remarks with a humorless smile. "You got a tan."
Indeed, they are the palest pair in the room, but her milky skin appears ever so slightly whiter than his.
"Two years in South America," Edward explains before the conversation dies yet again.
Gilded, Edward decides, is the most accurate adjective for describing their chosen restaurant. Everything, from the curtains to the food to even the patrons, seems so carefully presented. His appetizer is served with a radish rosebud, which he dissects absentmindedly. Edward cannot help but turn an inspective eye toward Bella herself. She applied makeup, he notes. The dramatic colors make her look like a half-starved waif with long, feathery eyelashes and a red bow for a mouth. She's not touching the food either, but her wine glass is being refilled.
He remembers that Bella used to tell him about how he dazzled her, but now, she looks at him apathetically while picking at her salad. She's overpowering him with this aloof persona, who wears pristine designer clothes and a gold Cartier watch.
"Do you like it?" Bella asks suddenly, flashing the watch in his face.
"It's very pretty," Edward answers; he realizes he's having lunch with a mannequin. "What do you do now, other than painting?"
"Charity functions."
"Ah, to the outstanding citizen," he raises his glass to her. "Let me guess: your other hobbies include wine tasting and visiting the spa?"
Annoyance rises up in her again as she hears his condescending tone. She had wanted to come here and show him that she was independent now, that she was no longer clinging onto the memory of him. Instead, this meeting is fast becoming a nightmarish reunion, and Bella gives up on being subtle.
"What do you want, Edward?"
Quietly, he demands, "Are you ever going to tell me that you hate me for what I did?"
Bella's fingers dig into the tablecloth. "Is that what you're waiting for?"
A strange intensity burns in his eyes, and the words rush out. "I don't know what I've been waiting for. Two years, I wasted two years among cobwebs and shadows, willing myself to stop thinking of your face. In the end, I couldn't do it so I traveled back to Forks."
She wants to get up, leave, and run away because she knows where this is going, and the past is not a happy place for her.
"When I went back," Edward continues, "I discovered to my horror that nobody seemed to remember you. I stood on your doorstep for two hours, insisting to your father that he had a daughter called Bella Swan, but all he gave me were confused looks and finally a closed door. Some of our old classmates, the ones who had known you faintly such as Lauren and Jessica, recalled you just as faintly. But the people, who had known you best, were completely unaware of the girl for whom I was searching."
Bella's eyes are closed, and for a moment, it seems as if she's about to cry, but a harsh laugh comes out instead.
"You were too late Edward," she tells him. "Two years too late."
From her silver bag, she pulls out a folder and gives it to him. Opening it, Edward realizes that she has filled the folder with sketches…of him.
"After you left without a goodbye, my greatest fear was that I would forget you. Since you stole all of my photos, I had no tangible memory of your face so I started drawing. I must've sketched you a hundred times, but no angle looked perfect enough."
She couldn't stop. All she needed, she repeated to herself, was one flawless picture of Edward. So she made her own memories, not only of him, but of his family. How could she forget Alice…and Emmett…and Carlisle?
Bella had never taken art classes before. She hadn't even bothered to take art in school, but she taught herself about symmetry and proportion. She learned how to make a cheek seem hollow or round, how to give hair a healthy shine, and how to make eyes sparkle. She expanded her focus and began drawing anyone who would sit still long enough. It was an obsession, no doubt, but one her father encouraged, believing it to be a sign of recovery.
Indeed, Bella realized, she became a slightly normal human being again, but the catalyst of her healing was not so much painting; rather, it was Jacob who insistently tugged her back to Earth. She loved him, sort of, because it was hard not to love someone so devoted. As a gift, he built her an easel, and when she kissed him, she finally understood that this was someone with whom she could lead a happy life and trust to never leave her.
Yet, the pure possibility of another chance at love scared Bella so she took the art school scholarship and fled to the city. There, fate intervened one cloudy afternoon, and she spotted a young boy, no older than nine, feeding pigeons in a park. He was the most beautiful child she had ever seen. When she asked for permission to sketch him, a cherub smile lit his face. Then, the boy's guardian arrived, and after perusing Bella's drawings, the man asked her to have lunch with him the next day.
"That man was Aro," Bella says softly. "I have to admit, he impressed me. In one meeting, he seemed to talk about everything – art, history, good and evil. From his appearance, I knew he was a vampire and his untouched food confirmed it. He wanted to see me again, and I agreed, but first, I headed back to Forks to visit my father…and Jake."
Bella observed right away that Jake was more distant. Still, they had fun together, jumping cliffs and riding motorcycles. Late one night, they were returning to La Push when another car surprised them around the bend. On their motorcycles, both Jacob and Bella swerved. And then something cracked and all she felt was an explosion of pain.
When she regained consciousness, Bella found herself in a blinding white hospital room with faces hovering over her. Dried blood caked Jacob's body, but for some strange reason, he possessed no real wounds.
"I'm sorry," he told her.
She smiled weakly and drifted back into darkness.
For the next several days, Bella was semi-conscious. Sometimes, she awoke to discover her parents crying by her bedside. Another time, she heard Jacob's enraged voice snarling, "What are you doing here, bloodsucker?"
"At first, I thought you had come back to me," Bella says. "But it was Aro, a virtual stranger instead. He paid for my surgeries. One month in the hospital, six months trying to walk again. He didn't leave. My behavior was erratic and temperamental at best. Even my parents and Jacob could barely tolerate my mood swings. My doctors had given me morphine, you know, to relieve the pain, but that developed into an addiction. As soon as I was beyond supervision, I went out into the street and bought heroin."
Bella didn't go back to school. When Aro located her again, she was lying on a stoop, high and out of her mind. Carefully, he carried her in his arms to his chauffeured car and took her to his penthouse.
"Why me?" she asked him.
"I hate to see wasted potential," Aro answered.
They traveled around the world in a succession of planes, boats, and camels. First, Mayan ruins in southern Mexico and Frida Kahlo's Blue House in Coyoacan. Their frenzied journey led to pyramids in Egypt, mountains in Nepal, and tea houses in Japan. In Paris, they spent days in the Louvre and d'Orsay, admiring ancient artifacts and Monet. Their last stop was a lesser known Italian town called Volterra. There, Aro finally revealed to her who he was and the secrets of the Volturi.
"And that basically is the end of the story," Bella concludes. "By the time we returned to the U.S., we were married, but I didn't want my parents or Jake to know. You see, the Bella they had known was quite erased so Aro made sure that the memory of her was removed from their minds.
"But I remember," Edward says, almost to himself.
Bella nods. "Yes, and what a problem you pose for me."