Chapter 2

It was hard to concentrate on driving on the way to the mall. It took normal people about an hour but it took us half the time. Nessie had chosen the Guardian. I think she knew what was coming in terms of the car but I still wanted to surprise her. I had gotten used to the idea that I really didn't need to obey the speed limit. Even if I was pulled over I could have talked my way out of any situation. I couldn't come up with the courage to talk to my daughter about anything that was going on.

She remembered everything that happened when she was around 6 months old, when the Volturi tried to dismember her. She remembered being afraid and she remembered all of the things that I had told her. We never talked about it but sometimes when she had nightmares that's what it was usually about. Unfortunately, she got all the same crazy dreams and nightmares that I had when I was a human. I hated the fact that she had to deal with all of the pain while she was sleeping. There is nothing comforting in that. She was still a little kid when it came to that. She would sometimes, if the nightmare was really bad, come in and lye in bed with Edward and I. Those were the nights that she dreamed of the Volturi.

When we arrived at the mall I knew that it would be a long day. I had 3 different credit cards with me because when Renesmee went shopping it was always for a brand new wardrobe.

"Momma, what's really going on at home? What's Alice seeing?"
"All I'm going to tell you is that there is a lot of ciaos but it's nothing that we need to be involving ourselves with."
"Not yet or not at all?"
"Hey," I said trying to change the subject. "I thought that we came here to talk about you."
"Yeah I guess."
"Are you alright sweetie? You seem preoccupied lately."
"I know I have. I just keep having these dreams lately."
"What kind of dreams?"
"I really wanted to talk to you about this but I was afraid of what you would think of me."
"Honey I could never think anything bad of you. I will have you know that when I was, umm, like you, when I slept I always had the weirdest dreams. Sometimes they were worse and weirder than usual. Before I was pregnant with you, I was having dreams about a little boy. He looked just like your father and we were all so happy together. I thought that when I got pregnant I was going to have that little boy, but instead I had a girl. The most beautiful girl in the world. I don't know why I was having that dream. Maybe it was because I knew that I was pregnant or that I really wanted a child. I don't want you to ever be ashamed to tell me anything."

"Even if it has to do with a certain someone."

"Oh."

"See I knew that I shouldn't have told you."

"No it's perfectly normal to be having dreams about Jacob. He was a big part of your life."

"Then why did you tear me away from him?"

"Honey I want you to know that it wasn't easy for me to leave him. He was my best friend and he was somebody that I loved. It was a hard decision for me and it was because I needed to get away from my old life. I knew I would need to do it eventually and when grandpa passed away, I found that as a chance to get away. I needed to get away for my own sanity. I was thinking of you too."

"By pulling me away from my best friend too?"

I hesitated. I realized that the reason that I pulled her away was because I didn't want her to fall in love with him. I didn't want her to be stuck in that predicament but that was also the reason that we never talked about him. That we never mentioned his name. Esme knew that that's where Carlisle was but she was too afraid to mention his name. It was a touchy subject and it always would be. Renesmee looked up from the pair of skinny jeans she was holding. She looked very upset. "Don't be upset. I was just trying to do the right thing for this family."

"Even though it hurt me."

"Even though it hurt you. It hurt everyone. He was a big part of this family but I was always so afraid of what it would become once you got older. He made a promise to give you absolutely anything that would make you happy. I was afraid of that. I didn't want him falling in love with you and you falling in love with him."

"Eww mom, about Jacob?" She pouted her face and smiled. "I never thought of him that way and I never will. For God sakes, it's Jake. I could never, ever think of him as more than a cuddly creature."

"Really?" This surprised me because I was thought that they would become something more. I never even thought to ask my daughter about the situation.

"Yeah really. Jake is a great guy and I always knew that he liked me. I don't think I could have hurt him either. I've thought about this a lot and I miss him but not in a way that would make him something more than just a great friend. I think that he had a thing for you."

"Yeah he did really. He was there for me when your father left me."

"Daddy left you," she questioned hesitantly. She grabbed a tight black vest, a white vest and a light blue one too adding it to the 3 pairs of skinny jeans in her arms all in different fades.

"Yeah. When I was still human, right after my 18th birthday he left me. He told me that it was to protect me from him. He always had the preconceived notion that he would hurt me if he stayed. When in reality it was much much worse when he was gone. Jacob had been a great friend to me while Edward was gone. He seemed to be the only person that I could talk to and not have to fake being happy with."

"How did daddy come back to you?"

"Well I don't want you getting any ideas here," I said while grabbing a red cocktail dress. It was a halter top, open back dress that went down to just the top of my knees. I held it up to myself and put it back on the rack. Renesmee picked it up and put it on the pile. I frowned at her. "I've never told anyone this but when your dad was gone I could hear him, like he was really there but only when I did something reckless. I wanted so bad not to forget him so I held on to it as long as I could. I rode a motorcycle and his voice came into my head. And then I decided to try cliff diving."

"Cliff driving," I heard her say under her breath with a little excitement.

"Don't even think about it. Anyways Alice had a vision of it and thought that I was trying to kill myself. So Rosalie told Edward that I had killed myself and he went to Italy to have the Volturi kill him." She stood shocked not even paying attention to the clothes around us. "So Alice and I went to find him. I felt awful. I didn't want to lose him and he felt like if he couldn't have me alive, then he didn't want to be alive either. I caught him in Italy before he exposed his secret. It was then that we vowed to never leave each other."

"You and daddy have such a special bond. When did you know that you guys would be together?"

"The first time that I saw him. I had just moved to Forks and I didn't know anybody. I was in the cafeteria. And then he walked in. He was so mysterious and I couldn't take my eyes off of him."

"Well my dad is gorgeous."

"Nessie."

"Well it's true. You are too, just look at me." She was right. She was the most beautiful child that I had ever seen. She had my deep brown eyes from when I was a human and gorgeous bronze hair that flowed to the middle of her back in tight curls. She had gotten the curls from Charlie and she was just amazing. Renesmee had a very slender figure, about the same size as me but just a little bit more muscular. She was a miracle to me in every since of the term.

"Conceded much."

"A little bit." We stood in silence for a minute looking around at the different clothing choices around us. I grabbed a v-neck tan sweater and got two more, why not, in pale blue and pale pink. I noticed her grab a little mini-dress.

"No, put that down. You are not wearing that."

"I know it's for you."

"Why would I wear that?"

"It's a surprise. I'm supposed to try to find you a few things while we're here." I went to say something but she wasn't having any of it. "Don't say a word, you aren't getting out of this."

"Fine."

"I like this."

"What? Torturing me?"

"No, doing something with just you and me. It's nice."

I smiled at her and continued looking. She was absolutely amazing. I couldn't believe how grown up my daughter was. I really didn't need new clothes but she really did. Everything that we bought her needed to be thrown away not too much sooner after we bought it. She was still trying to come up with her own and way of acting. She had so many different things that she wanted to try. The classic vest with the skinny jeans and a pair of booties or boots was her classic outfit. It was something that she could pull off really easily. However, she could just throw on a pair of baggy jeans and a t-shirt and still look cute. We ended up buying around 30 pairs of shoes between us, too many pairs of jeans to count, dresses for whatever occasion would occur, shirts upon shirts, new jackets for the winter time and everything was pretty much light colors. For some reason it looked better against our pale skin than anything too dark.

We sat in the car for a moment in the parking lot. It was basically empty with just a few cars left in the parking lot. I looked over at Renesmee and she was reading a new book that we had just bought. She caught me glaring at her.

"What? Is something wrong?"

"Well not for you but for me."

"What?"

"Would you like to try driving?"

"Really," she screeched throwing the book onto the dashboard. "Can I really?"

"Yeah you can." I got out of the driver's seat and switched places with her. "Now," I said closing the door and buckling my seat belt. "This car is very powerful. It takes a while to learn how to drive it."

"Just get ready."

She smiled as she turned the car on. Her smile reached from ear to ear.

"I'm just telling you right now, a few times around the parking lot is all you get. No speeding either. You don't want to end up hurting anybody."

It seemed like everything I said went in through one ear and out the other. She put the car into drive and lightly touched the gas petal. Even lightly touching the gas petal in this car was like going at 90 on the highway. I gripped the sides of the doors and closed my eyes. I looked up after a minute, surprised that we didn't hit anything.

"How am I doing?"

"You're doing…great actually. How did you learn so fast?"

"Well being around daddy and Aunt Rosalie I learned a lot about cars and that kind of got me accustomed to the actual car."

"Oh."

"You alright momma? You look whiter than usual."

"I'm fine. This is just so weird."

"I know I know. Do you think that I could drive home?"

"And what if we get pulled over?"

"We'll switch really fast. Come on you're a vampire, no police officer would ever know. Plus we look so much alike that I could just use your human license."

"Don't even pull that one on me."

"Come on, let me drive home."

"Fine, just…just drive the speed limit okay and not any faster."

"Yes ma'am," she said saluting me. She smiled as she put the blinker on and drove out of the parking lot. The drive home, I was panicking the entire time. If I still had a heartbeat when we started it sure would've stopped on the way home. She pulled up the driveway and parked the car in the garage. Edward was waiting for us and was shocked to find Renesmee driving. He walked over to her and opened up the door. She looked at him a little upset still from this afternoon. He knew that she was still mad at him from her thoughts.

"Baby, I'm sorry that I destroyed the car. I wasn't thinking about it. I don't want you to be mad at me."

"I'm not really mad at you daddy. I'm just a little upset by the situation is all. I did really well driving home." He peered over the car at me and I nodded.

"Why don't you go talk to you mother? I'll carry these inside and she has something to tell you."

Renesmee smiled and kissed his cheek. She popped the trunk and walked over to me. Edward's face nearly dropped as he saw everything that we had managed to buy.

"Did you guys buy the mall while you were there?"

"Almost," I said. "Now just bring these up to our room so we can sort them out alright?"

"Yeah I guess."

Edward started to carry everything inside having to make a few trips.

"So how do you like this car," I asked leaning against it. "Does it drive good?"

"This car is amazing."

"Do you know this is the first extravagant thing your father bought for me?"

"This is your car?"

"Yeah."

"You have two cars?"

"Well you see. This car was the car that your dad gave me before I was vampire. It was his way of protecting me. It's basically indestructible."

"I knew that."

"And the Ferrari he gave me after I was a vampire and I couldn't be harmed anymore. But since I have the Ferrari I really don't need this car anymore." She let out a loud screech and gave me the biggest hug of all time. It knocked the wind out of me, so to speak.

"Thank you thank you thank you."

"You did pretty well today driving and I'm sure that we can make arrangements to get a carbon copy license before we go off to school."

"Thank you thank you thank you."

Edward was back and grabbed his daughter by the waist. He smiled down to her and smiled, leading her into the house. I closed the trunk and followed after them.

"So are you ready for my surprise," Edward asked as we entered the house.

"Is today a special occasion or something? I get a new wardrobe, I get my license, I get a car and now you have a surprise for me too. What? Do I get my own house?"

"Not quite."

Edward led her through the living room and into the kitchen and then down to the basement. I myself was extremely confused. I didn't know what could possibly be down in the basement. Edward turned the light on and Renesmee freaked. The whole basement was transformed into her own little apartment. There was a big bed in the middle of the back wall, all white bedding and a bunch of pillows. Around it was a white canopy net and next to it on both sides were side tables. On one wall there was a desk surrounded by bookshelves with all sorts of books. Then there was a curtain down the middle of the room. When she looked behind it, it was a huge closet. There were shelves and all of her stuff was hung up and folded. There were a bunch of pictures on the walls of family and friends and big art pictures everywhere else.

"Thanks daddy."

"You're welcome. Everybody helped out. I figured that we would want to be close to the family since we haven't been here in a while and if you fall asleep then you'll have your own place to go."

"Thanks daddy, I really appreciate it."

She ran over to the bed and hopped onto it. I smiled as Edward put his arm around my shoulders.

"Good job," I whispered to him. "You really got her."

"Well it's not just a surprise for her."

He smiled at me suggestively and I laughed quietly to myself. I looked at Renesmee that was looking through her books. Edward had left to get our things from upstairs and brought them down to us. He left us while we went through everything and separated it.

"So how are you doing honey?"

"Fine momma. Am I going to be going through something really bad soon."

"What do you mean?"

"Well today has been nothing more than pampering me and I feel like something bad is coming really soon. What was going on with everybody today before we left?"

"I'm not quite sure yet baby, I'm really not. You know as much as I do. It's something that could be a potential problem in the future but not right now. We are going on with our lives as normal as possible for now okay?" I nodded towards her and smiled kissing the top of her head. "We've got two months to prep before we move back east."

"Where are we moving?"

"Somewhere in upstate New York. Esme is still trying to figure out the details. She knows more about this than anyone else."

Renesmee nodded at me and forced a smile. I knew that she was upset about what nobody was telling her but I didn't know if was something that we needed to concern ourselves with. I didn't know all of the details that were involved with the Volturi situation. It wasn't the Cullens' responsibility to oversee that part of the vampire world. They were nothing like us. I, myself, didn't agree with the ways that they lived their lives. They took innocent people and killed them, for their own good. It's been shown that vampires don't need to feed on human blood in order to survive. We were all proof enough.

After Renesmee and I were finished putting her clothes in the closet, we sat on the bed and she yawned.

"Shopping takes a lot out of you."

"Yeah it does. I wish I was like you, not getting tired and not having to sleep."

"Trust me, I would love to be able to close my eyes and sleep the night away. When you've got nothing but time, it becomes kind of hard to find stuff to keep yourself occupied."

"But still, staying up all night, it's cool."

"Alright sleepy head get into some pajamas and get to bed. Your dad and I will probably go to the cottage tonight, so if you need anything just yell for Esme."

"Not a problem."

"Love you sweetie."

"Love you too mommy."

I gave her a kiss on the forehead and headed up the stairs to see everyone. I saw Carlisle the minute that I came up the stairs. I ran to him and gave him a big hug.

"Carlisle, I missed you."

"I missed you too sweetie."

"How's umm, business." I was hoping in the back of my mind, that he would get the hint that I wanted to know what was going on with Jacob and his friends. I wanted to make sure that he was alright and I hadn't permanently destroyed him.

"There's been a lot of fighting lately. A lot of broken bones so I've had my hands full, so to speak."

I wanted to enquire more because I knew the fights were between the werewolves. If it were other people, then the other doctors could handle it without Carlisle's help. I was about to speak when everyone's attention went back to the TV. Watching the massacre again, the bodies in the street of Italy made me cringe. We all looked to the TV for a moment, before looking around the room at each other. Once we heard Renesmee start snoring quietly in her room, we moved to the dining room table. Or perhaps, a meeting table, which it was often, used for. Carlisle and Esme sat at the ends of the table while Jasper sat next to Alice who sat next to Rosalie. Across from Rosalie was Emmett and I was in-between Emmett and Edward.

"So what to do about this situation," Carlisle said calmly. "Everybody discuss your opinions one at a time. Jasper why don't you start."

He took a moment looking around at everybody. I don't think that even Jasper's abilities could help relax this very tense moment in the Cullen household.