CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: THE BURIAL

The Town

After

I am dreaming. About my daughter and my wife and a life that seems like it's about to be mine. In the dream I have a family.

Jasper is shaking my shoulders and I try to hold on to the dream before it falls down.

"Wake up. Alice is on the phone."

I rub the sleep from my eyes. "What time is it?"

"Two."

I'm back on Jasper's couch. Not because I want to be. Not because Bella changed her mind. But because her mom is in town and she deserves a conversation. I promised Will I'd be back in two days. I met my daughter three weeks ago, and since then I've spent every possible second with her.

Jasper hands me the phone but doesn't leave. He just stands there and waits. He is the most irritating person I know.

"Hello?"

"Edward, you have to help me." Alice sounds panicked. I don't want to care.

"It's the middle of the night."

"She's gone."

This isn't my problem. Rose isn't my anything.

"Can you come over?" she begs.

I don't answer right away. I want to say no but maybe this is my retribution.

"I'll be there in ten."

Jasper asks if I want him to come with me but I brush him off. "At least one of us should get some sleep."

I drive. And I hardly remember my life before I had a car and a license. And an almost-family.

I have the urge to call Bella but it's the middle of the night. And nothing about this is normal.

Alice is waiting for me at the top of the stairs when I pull up to her apartment complex. She looks like she's been up all night. Maybe all her life. She carries Rose's habits under her eyes.

She stands when she sees me and starts pulling at her hair like a crazy person.

"She'd been doing so well," she says aloud, but not to me.

"What happened?"

"Wren was asleep and—"

My heart stops. "Wren came home?" It comes out as a whisper. I've been entirely caught up with Bella and Will to even think about the possibility.

"A few days ago."

I grab her by the shoulders. "Alice, where is Wren right now?"

"I don't know."

"Where is she?" I shout.

"I don't know. You can't call the police, Edward. You can't. They'll take her back to that foster home." She is a madwoman.

"Alice…"

"Just, please."

"Where the fuck is she, Alice?" I'm suddenly aware of how tight I'm squeezing her. I let go.

She grits her teeth together, like she's trying to break them. I watch her pace on the cement balcony. I'm so angry with her even though none of this is her fault.

I take a deep breath. "Start from the beginning. Please."

She looks at me then and I see Wren in her face. I see Wren and I feel gutted.

"Rose got home. Around ten. She got home around ten. And she was drunk, saying she was going to take Wren to some movie she's been begging to see."

"And you just let her take her?"

"No. I told her she couldn't. I told her you wouldn't allow it."

"Me? How about the police? How about you? Grow a fucking backbone, Alice."

She starts to cry and I don't mean to be so cruel. I'm a hypocrite. I know exactly what it feels like to be spineless.

"She's my sister. What am I supposed to do, put her on the street?"

Yes.

"Just tell me what happened next."

"She finally passed out on the couch so I went to bed. I got up to pee an hour ago and they were both gone. And so was my car."

I slam my hand against the door of her apartment. It hurts like a motherfucker, but not enough.

"I thought she was better… she's been clean for weeks." The weight of Alice's whole life settles on her shoulders.

She crumples into a ball on her doormat. But I'm not doing this alone. I pull her to her feet and lead her down the stairs to my car.

"Where would she take her in the middle of the night, Alice?"

"I don't know."

"Think!" I shout.

We circle the empty parking lots of every movie theater in town. Alice gets more and more hysterical and I need a drink.

We end up downtown. The white lights hang in the trees year-round and are lit even at this hour.

Nobody is around except for the homeless, curled up like cats in doorways. The bars and liquor stores are quiet, their neon signs no longer buzzing.

I roll the windows down, turn the radio off and listen. For something. Anything.

As we enter the intersection at 4th and E, it happens. In slow motion.

I look left and time stops. The street is lit like a fucking carnival. For blocks. Blue and red. Police. Fire. Ambulance.

The lights are all I can see. There are no sirens. Not a single one.

It's a silent emergency.

There is no desperation, no urgency. And the only thought I can manage is there is no life that needs saving.

My blood runs cold.

I put the car in park in the middle of the street and we both jump out. Alice starts running and I have to will myself to move in that direction.

She's fast, her panicked scream filling the sky as she rushes closer. My heart tries to beat out of my ears as I run.

Alice makes an abrupt stop and I almost knock her down. Her hands cover her mouth. And then I see what she sees.

Her car, broken and curled around a tree. And her sister.

What used to be her sister, Rosalie.

For a few short moments I forget about Wren. And I just see Rose. Her body is too mangled to be living. But her face. She looks... innocent. Like a little girl.

I don't cry. Because her life was the sad part.

Alice is choking on air. She tries to get closer but I grab her, trapping her.

Her whole body starts to shake, even as she tries to fight me off. I let her go seconds before she starts to vomit. She empties her stomach next to a police car.

And then I remember why I'm here. A little girl named after a bird is missing. I leave Alice there, to dry heave in the street.

I hold my breath. The smell of blood mixed with gasoline is suffocating. And all I can think about is Wren's face. The way she scowls. And the way she laughs. The way she made me a father even though I told her I couldn't be hers.

"Sir, you're going to need to stay where you are until the scene is clear."

I. Can't. Breathe.

"There's a little girl," is all I can manage.

"Do you need to report a missing child?"

"No," I say, even though it's one of my biggest lies.

I tell myself that she is not in that car.

The police are trying to calm Alice and I can't be here. I cannot be here to see them pull her small body out of that wreck.

I rifle through Alice's bag and find her cell phone. I type in Jasper's number and his name pops up. He answers on the first ring. I give him the street name and I hang up.

I walk away. I walk away from Alice. I walk past that stupid fucking car that I was so proud to drive.

The sun will be up soon and I refuse to believe that Wren is dead. I cannot be here.

My fingers twitch as I walk. My hands are traitors. My hands and my mind.

The grocery stores are open twenty-four hours.

I walk and I pretend like I don't know where I'm going.

I walk. I walk up and down those streets and I keep thinking I see her, standing there in the dark. But she is nowhere.

I start calling her name until the dogs are barking and the porch lights are on. Until I barely recognize the sound of my own voice.

It's four in the morning. She is nowhere.

I abandon the straight streets and follow the windy ones to a house with a long drive and a For Sale sign. Bank Owned it says.

I tell myself to stay calm but my heart doesn't agree. And my hands won't let me forget what has happened.

I know it's a long shot, but I expected to see her here, sitting on the porch, waiting for me with a smile.

The porch is empty. And I want to annihilate a dead woman.

Will you be my best friend?

No

I don't cry.

You can be my dad if you want.

It doesn't work that way.

I. Don't. Cry.

Let's watch the birds for two more minutes.

Two more minutes.

I sit on the porch, my face in my hands and my stomach in my throat.

And then I see a ghost. Standing barefoot at the end of the driveway in her nightgown.

I stand slowly, trying to blink her away. Maybe this is what shock feels like.

She starts running towards me. And we're both running.

I scoop her up. I hold her so tight that I might actually squeeze the life out of her. She's ice cold. "How did you get here?"

"My mommy came home mean, Edward."

I hold her tighter. "You're filthy. How did you get here?"

"I walked until I found the crooked streets. But you weren't here."

"I'm sorry, Wren. I am so, so sorry."

"You're squeezing me."

I ease up, but refuse to set her down.

"She said she was going to take me away to a place where you never come back. So I ran and ran and ran." She's crying now and this child has seen too much and heard too much, and I want to spare her from everything else that is harsh in the world.

"Am I in trouble for running away?" she asks in her smoker's voice.

"No."

"Hope to die?" she says.

"No," I tell her. "No. Don't say that ever again."

I wrap her up in my coat. She clings to my shirt. She doesn't know what has happened. There's no way she could know.

I carry her and I walk away from that house for the last time. She falls asleep in my arms.

I don't know how to fix her world. Or if that's even possible. Her mother is dead. Her father is nobody.

She has Alice, who is a wreck. She has me. But I don't know how to put my priorities in two places at once.

I have a daughter. And I have Bella. Who deserve all of me. I can't decide who the selfish one is in this whole fucked-up situation.

This little girl talks about people putting needles in their arms. My daughter talks about Cheerios. They are not the same. And yet I feel responsible for both. I love them both.

I look at her face and I see the girl who taught me how to love, how to trust, how to be truthful.

She taught me how to live.

She gave me my family. Even though she didn't have one to spare.

For days and days, I forgot she existed. I am the definition of ungrateful.

We reach Jasper's driveway just before sunrise. My car sits behind his and I don't care how it got there.

Alice must see us from the window because she's running down the steps, stealing Wren from my arms, crying so loudly that it sounds like she's injured. Maybe we're all injured. But we're alive.

Wren wakes then, scowling at Alice. "Don't be mad," she says.

"She's not mad," I promise her. "Nobody's mad."

"My mommy's real mad," she whispers.

And I am breaking.

Alice hands her back to me. Because she's already broken beyond repair. She turns back to the house. Jasper is there, his arms wrapping around her. I watch the way his chin rests on the top of her head.

I ache for Bella. She's probably awake. Will is probably trying to pour me some cereal.

Wren clings to me when I try to lie her down on Jasper's couch. She cries and she begs until it feels like I'm torturing her.

So I pull the blanket up over both of us.

We sleep.

Wren wakes up as if nothing happened. As if she didn't wander this town in the middle of the night. As if she didn't run from her drunk mother.

Her mother is dead. She's dead.

"Want to chase the crows with me?" she asks as she shakes me awake.

"Of course," I tell her. It's only now that I hear them screaming in the trees.

Jasper comes in through the front door with a couple of bags and I didn't even hear him leave. "I picked up some clothes for Alice and Wren," he says to me. He smiles at Wren but she just stares, stone-faced.

His eyes settle behind me and I turn to see Alice standing against the door frame. She doesn't look like she's slept at all. Wren looks back and forth between her and Jasper before walking over to Alice and holding her arms up the way kids do when they want to be picked up.

And I think of Will. My daughter who has a mother. I miss them.

Alice starts to cry and then Wren is crying too and I am filled with rage because Rose was a coward and this is what she did to the people who loved her.

I take Wren out front to chase the crows and she still doesn't know what has happened but she knows enough.

I call Bella after dinner. I don't tell her about Rose's corpse lying in a pool of blood even though I know I should. I just want to hear about her day.

"Someone wants to talk to you."

I grin like a fool and wait for her little voice.

"Is that my daddy?" she says.

I laugh and it feels like I haven't seen her in weeks. "I miss you," I tell her. Because I do.

"I miss you, forever," she says. And I almost cry.

She tries to tell me about a hundred things and I can hardly understand anything she says but I can't stop smiling.

I can hear Bella in the background trying to convince Will that it's time for bed. I can picture Will holding the phone in a death grip.

"Goodnight, Baby. I'll see you soon."

"Don't take a long time," she says and it chokes me.

She hangs up the phone before I have a chance to say goodnight to Bella.

I stare at the receiver and I've never felt so alone. That's a lie. I've never felt such longing.

"Who was that?"

Wren is standing in the doorway in one of Jasper's T-shirts that hangs down to her ankles.

"That…"

She studies my face. She looks at me like she no longer knows me.

I sit down at the table and instead of squeezing in next to me, she climbs onto the chair across the table. Her cheeks resting on her fists, I'm not ready for this conversation.

"I lied to you about something, Wren. And I'm sorry."

"Don't lie," she scolds me.

"Do you remember when you asked me if I was a daddy?"

"You said no. You said you can't be."

"I did. But it wasn't really true."

She doesn't understand. Probably because I'm not explaining anything.

"I have a daughter, Wren."

"Is it me?" she asks, her eyes shining. And I want to disappear.

"No, Sweetheart."

She shakes her head, her chin trembling. "Does she watch the birds with you?"

"You were the first. You'll always be that."

"But does she watch the birds?"

"Sometimes."

"Is she your best friend?"

I have to think about it. "No, she's my baby."

"What's her name?"

I don't understand why but I'm reluctant to tell her. "Her name is Will."

"That's a boy's name."

"It's short for Willow. Like the tree."

She is silent then. I can see her chest rising and falling like she's holding in a scream. She pushes away from the table and disappears from the kitchen without a word.

I watch her from the doorway.

She plays with the couch cushions, building a fort before pulling blankets inside. She pretends like I'm invisible.

I'm not sure what else to say that won't be a lie. I'm not good at this.

She falls asleep in her fort and I'm left with a couch without cushions.

I sleep on the floor and jolt awake every time she makes a noise in her sleep.

And when she wakes up we're friends again.

I go two days without seeing my daughter. This was the plan. But Rose turned the weekend into something else.

Alice sleeps. A lot. She sleeps in Jasper's bed and I don't say a word about it.

She hasn't told Wren about her mother and it feels like the worst kind of secret. The kind that eats away at your flesh.

Wren doesn't ask when she gets to go home. She doesn't ask anything. Until Sunday.

Jasper goes to a meeting. I stay with Alice and Wren and order take-out. We sit around the coffee table with paper plates.

"When's my mommy coming back?"

I look to Alice, but her wide eyes beg me to be the one.

"Tomorrow?" Wren asks.

"She's not coming back." It sounds so final and for the first time it feels like it is.

She purses her lips. "Where'd she go?"

"Sometimes people go away forever."

She's quiet and for a minute I think that's the only explanation she needs.

"But where is she?"

"She died, Baby."

Her face crumples up, her arms hanging limp. She stomps her foot. "I'm not your baby, you liar."

I grit my teeth and try to swallow the lump in my throat.

"I hate you!" she spits.

"I love you, Wren."

She screams at the top of her lungs. "You can't love me. You have a baby!"

She hits me as hard as she can. It hurts. I grab her fists when I can't take it anymore.

She tries to bite my hand.

I hold her by the shoulders and wait for her to look at me, all fire and pain. "I do love you," I try to convince her, my voice catching in my throat. "You're my best friend."

"I don't want a best friend," she lies.

"I've never had one. You're my first best friend."

She buries her face in my chest. I hold her against me and let her cry herself out.

Alice leaves the room and I want to cry too, but the tears don't come. My lungs are tight and my eyes burn but that's all I get.

Rose's coffin will be plain. She won't have a headstone. Just a place in the mud and a standard-issue plaque with her name. It won't say daughter or sister or mother. It won't say junkie or whore. It will say her name.

She will rot in the ground. Her life will be forgotten.

It all seems like such a waste. Every drink, every high, every well-thought-out lie.

She didn't know what she had. And yet, she gave me Wren. Without meaning or wanting to, but she did all the same. However indirect it may have been, Rose saved me.

I leave Wren and Alice with Jasper and drive across town. To my family. I don't have a home, but it's starting to feel like I do.

Will is waiting for me when I pull up. I forgot how small she is.

I pick her up and she settles her face into my neck for just a few seconds before she's wiggling and laughing.

"Hey, Baby."

"I'm big," she insists. Like always. "Can we have a baby brother?"

"No," Bella says. I say nothing.

Bella kisses me, Will between us. We've been kissing with all of our clothes on for weeks.

We haven't had sex since we said goodbye to the house. And I miss her. I need her. I'm not sure how to ask or if she's even ready. I don't know where we go from here.

Bella questions me with her eyes but I pretend not to notice. I try to be normal.

I spend the day with my daughter, who has no idea who I could have been. Who I would have been without her, without Wren. She doesn't know about the hole in the chain-link fence under the freeway or my seven places or the blue-eyed man. She's never seen me drunk or high.

We play and we laugh and she climbs all over me. She's my reason. She's my reason to stay. I will not be Rosalie.

Bella keeps eying me and I keep pretending not to notice.

Long after Will's in bed, Bella and I sit in the living room without talking or touching.

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah." It's not a lie. It's just… the only answer.

"I'm tired. I think I just need some sleep."

I can feel her eyes on me like I'm a liar. I don't want her to see that but I don't know what to say about a dead woman who I hate.

I'm glad she's dead?

That could have been me a hundred times?

I'm not deserving of this second chance?

The second I think it, I know it's not true. I see the way Will looks at me sometimes and if she's deserving of me, then I must deserve something too.

Bella gets up from the couch, turning around when she realizes I'm not following. "You coming?"

"I'll be there in a minute."

She stares. I look away until she disappears into the bedroom.

I leave the lights off in the kitchen and knock things around trying to fill a glass of water.

I make a call in the dark. Because I promised I would.

Sitting on the tile floor, my back against the cabinets I listen to Wren tell me about her day. I listen to her talk and she sounds so grown-up.

"Where are you?"

"I'm with Bella."

"And your baby?"

"She's asleep."

"Does she sleep on the couch with you?"

"No, she sleeps in her own bed."

"Where do you sleep?"

I let out a long breath. "Goodnight, Wren."

"Do you sleep in Bella's bed because you have a crush on her?"

"Goodnight, Wren."

"Goodnight," she yawns. I wait for her to hang up. I sit in the dark for a few minutes, feeling lost, wanting to be two places at once.

I spent the weekend missing Bella: her voice, her touch, her mouth. And now I'm here in her house and I'm sitting alone, in the dark, when she's in the other room. I'm an idiot.

I stand too quickly, smacking my head against the corner of a cabinet door. And it's instant. The pain shoots through my entire body and sits behind my eyes.

My face contorted, I try to walk through the dark to the bedroom without making a sound.

Bella's in front of the bathroom mirror, and when I see her I lose it.

"Edward…"

"It's stupid."

She's by my side, leading me to the edge of the bed. "It's not."

I let myself cry. I couldn't stop if I tried.

She runs her hands over my arms, across my cheeks, down my back. "You're scaring me."

"Wren's mom is dead," I choke out.

"What?"

"She's dead and I'm not."

Her bottom lip trembles.

"Don't cry," I plead. But she doesn't listen.

I tell her the details even though she doesn't ask. I tell her about Wren and about everything I can't fix.

She starts kissing my face. "I love you." Her hands grab at me like she's afraid I'm going to disappear.

She slides her fingers under my shirt and rests her palms flat against my chest. We stay like that, her hands absorbing my heartbeat, until she starts to undress me.

Her lips on my lips and my hands on every inch of her.

Fully naked, on top of the blankets, I make love to my wife. I fuck her slowly.

I run my hands over the curves of her body.

We don't talk. We love and we fuck in her bed. Two people who weren't supposed to make it.

We aren't quiet or careful or anything but honest.

I have never felt so much.

And I want to fuck her for the rest of my life. I want to feel the way her body responds to me and the way her mouth sucks at my throat.

I watch her chest rise and fall as she comes down from her high. I am addicted to the way she breathes with her lips parted.

To the smell of our sweat while we fuck.

To the shape of her tits, the curve of her hips and the skin behind her knees.

I am addicted.

And she watches me as I release inside of her.

I wrap her up in my arms, caging her to me. "You and me and Will, we'll be okay," I tell her.

"Promise?"

"I promise if you do."

I kiss her all over her face. And I love the way her eyelashes feel against my lips.

I listen to her fall asleep. The girl who sat in front of me in chemistry. The one who didn't even know my name. The woman who married me once upon a time. The mother of my child.

"I have a crush on you," I whisper.

-HL-

A/N:

okay?

To Susan, Kim and Peri. Sometimes I just can't believe how lucky I am to know you.

Two chapters to go (I think). I'm already having a hard time saying goodbye to this story.