26

"Marry?" she squeaked.

{Idiot! Too early!} he wasn't sure if it was actually Alice or his inner consciousness this time.

"We can talk about it later. I think you need something to eat and to get some rest." Her eyes were wide and almost frightened as she looked at him. All signs of lust gone from the shocked girl still straddling him. She realised the position she was in and scrambled to get off and onto the bed. He cursed himself for spoiling the intimacy they had built.

"Marry?" she repeated. "I don't want to get married! Not at 17!" panic gripped her, she wrung her hands vigorously and bit her lip furiously.

"Bella, calm down." She got to her feet and paced the bedroom.

"People just don't get married at my age." She said. Edward sighed, she had to work this through her system now he had brought it up.

"I'll never get any older, does that mean I can't get married?" he asked.

"Marriage is just a piece of paper." She ignored what he said, obviously parroting someone she had heard, probably her mother. "It doesn't mean anything."

"If it's just a piece of paper there's no reason not to get one is there?" he asked. She stopped dead, wild eyed, glaring at him. "I mean if it doesn't mean anything to you, but it means a lot to me that we get married, there's no reason not to is there?" he thought his argument was reasonable, but knew that deep down she did not think marriage was a piece of paper or she wouldn't be so scared of it.

He got to his feet and stopped her pacing by putting his arms around her.

"What's wrong?" he asked. If she put any more pressure on her lip it would split. He daren't have the scent of her blood anywhere near him. The bond had acclimatised him to her scent, but her blood was just too potent. "What's really wrong?" he asked before she could say either 'nothing' or 'I'm fine'.

She burst into tears, "Renée…" she gasped. Alice chose that moment to throw her thoughts at him.

{Jeesus, that woman was evil. I've just seen this and rather than push Bella to tell you, watch…} Alice's vision played in front of his eyes. Bella almost in hysterics as she recounted Renée's repeated derogatory statement, "Getting married at 17 was the worst thing I ever did, having a baby then was the second… forget that, having you was worse, at least I managed to leave Charlie!", "Only desperate people get married young. I expect you will be stupid enough to fall pregnant and ruin your life like you ruined mine.", "No wonder you never have a boyfriend, the only reason they would want you would be if you opened your legs for them.", "No one would ever want to marry you, unless you managed to get some money and they needed it.", "I don't know why I bother spending money on clothes for you, good grief, you could make a designer dress look like a sack of shit tied in the middle.", "Jesus Bella, could you look any worse? You wear those clothes and slump as you walk, something the cat dragged in would look better than you, and have more chance of finding someone who wants to be with them.", "Why can't you be more like the popular girls? Someone a mother could be proud of?", "You need to get your nose out of a book and into real life, let me give you a hint, there's no Mr. Darcy for the likes of YOU!", "God help you if you ever had to look after yourself, you have no idea, you would have to earn your way on your back!" More and more vicious words filled in the air, in Alice's vision Bella kept reciting things her mother had said without pause, the vitriol in her voice obviously copied as well as the words. There were so many insults over the years and Bella had remembered them all, each one had damaged her fragile self-esteem until there was virtually nothing left. {She was drunk a lot of the times as she said stuff like this, but she repeated them over so many years Bella's started to believe it. Especially when she never got a boyfriend.}

"I'll kill her!" he growled. Bella looked at him worriedly. "Oh love, you don't have to tell me what she said." He stopped the recitation before it began and pulled the trembling girl back into his arms. "She was wrong. She was always jealous of you."

Bella scoffed. "What would she be jealous of me for?" she asked.

He held her by her shoulders and dipped his head to make sure he could see her face. "Phil said she was jealous, remember?" he asked, repeating the words Alice could see in her visions that would work best to calm her. Bella frowned and nodded slowly. "You are young, you are very beautiful, you are kind, pleasant, modest and so very desirable, everything Renée wasn't. In fact if you think about it, all those boyfriends she had?" he hoped he was getting through to her. "Think about them, now think of the nasty things she said about you. Do you think any of those lowlife's wanted Renée for herself? Or do you think the only reason they wanted her was because she put out?" He suddenly realised he may have gone too far. After all this was her mother! "Renée used men and sex as a way to get what she wanted and they used her the same way."

"Phil didn't, he married her." she pointed out to him, he was so exasperated he answered without thinking.

"That's because Jasper paid him to!"

"It's true Bella." Bella's head shot up in shock at her father's voice. The Cullen's collectedly held their breaths. He wished Carlisle was at home, but he was still at the hospital. He had somehow missed Charlie walking in though. He had been so concentrating on Bella he hadn't heard the heartbeat or smelled him on the air.

He had walked into the bedroom without knocking.

"I spoke to Phil this morning. The only reason he took the job was to help you, his aunt loved you and wanted to make sure you were looked after. When the Cullen's offered him enough money to get on his feet and start a business he jumped at the chance. He would get what he wanted, and he would protect you as you needed from that evil witch I married." Charlie sighed. "I've spent the last 18 years loving that woman, and I was blind to it all. I really should never have let her take you, I knew she resented getting pregnant in the first place, she hardly ever looked after you when she was here, and only took you because she thought I would follow her. She hated Forks so much and tried repeatedly to get me to move south. When I wouldn't move she took you and left, knowing I would make sure she never went without money while ever she had you." He wiped a hand across his face as he saw the devastation that the evil woman had heaped onto this loving and fragile child of his. "I'm so sorry. My blindness to her faults left you vulnerable. You deserved more, you deserved better."

Bella clung to Edward's shirt as sobs burst out of her, her heart was broken and he held her gently, soothing a hand down her hair and allowing her to weep as much as she needed. He hoped it would prove cathartic for her. But before she finished crying her body slumped. He caught her before she had even lost consciousness fully. Charlie rushed over to them but Edward lifted her in to his arms and carried her back to the bed. He laid her down, her muscles twitched.

"What's wrong?" her father asked. "Is she having a fit?"

"It's ok, she's just fainted." Edward told him, his eyes fixed on the rapid pulse in her throat.

"Fainted? Why, what caused it? Why is she moving?" he referred to her muscles twitching.

"Stress, she will be ok in a few minutes. Her body was under too much strain so it… closed down to help calm her." Bella moaned and put her hand to her head.

"What happened?" she asked.

"You fainted, evidently." Charlie said still worried.

"I do that a lot." She tried to prop herself up.

"Alice said you would ask for this," Esme came into the room with a glass of cranberry juice. Bella frowned but drank it, making a face afterwards.

"Thank you Esme. I can't stand the taste of cranberries." She complained. "But I read online somewhere that it's one of the best things to drink after a faint, something to do with potassium I think it was." She groaned and held her head, it was obvious she was starting with a headache.

"What a load of rubbish." Edward scoffed. "In certain cases I dare say it's true but if you faint regularly then you need tests to see what your body's balance is lacking before just accepting that something is a cure all. What did your doctor say?"

"I don't have a doctor." She mumbled. Charlie asked her to repeat it and, blushing, she did.

"What do you mean you don't have a doctor? I pay regu… Oh shit." Edward's temper was almost at the point where he would have happily travelled to his old home city and strangled Renée.

Bella shrugged. "When I needed treatment I could go to the free clinic." She told them, "Sometimes there was a long queue so if it could wait I would go to the library and look it up online but I didn't know you paid for me to have a proper doctor." She grabbed Edward's arm as if she could read his intention of leaving her to hunt down her mother. She pulled him as she lay down. The stress had made her tired and the last thing she needed was more. He looked at Charlie for approval and the older man smiled at him and left the room. He lay on the bed, above the covers, and pulled her into his embrace.

"I'm still angry with you over what you did at school." She told him as she slipped into sleep.

"I know."

"And the chocolates."

"I know that too."

She was tired and confused. Her body and mind pulled her towards him wherever he was, but she was also annoyed to death with him. Did he think he could force her to accept him? He showed her no respect when they were at school and though Charlie said he saved her life, he still didn't do as she asked and leave her alone. The argument she had had with herself played over and over in her mind.

Then on top of that he went and bought her those obscenely expensive chocolates! So much too much. She would much rather have the snickers bar that Emmett had bought her than these disgusting symbols of decadence. Who the hell spent almost $100 on chocolates?

He finally left her alone when she was asleep. She woke in the night and saw the box of truffles on the bedside table. Her temper rose just looking at them! She turned the box upside down so she couldn't see the picture of the chocolates on the lid. On the base was a blurb about how good the chocolates were, and how they were for the 'discerning palate' she very much doubted that her palate was discerning, she hadn't eaten chocolate enough to know though.

She sat in the huge bed contemplating her life. Charlie had been extremely angry with Renée, but he had surely known what she was like. And Phil?! He was paid to be with her mother? Did that make him a whore? She had liked Phil, even though he had hovered over her making sure she was looked after. She had never felt uncomfortable with him the same way she had with a couple of her mother's other boyfriends. He wasn't creepy and never overly friendly. But then, he wasn't looking after her from the goodness of his heart… she thought… he was getting paid.

Her head throbbed, she looked at her wrist for her watch, which still wasn't there. She didn't remember the last time she saw it. She would be devastated if it had got lost. Tears streamed down her face for no apparent reason, and though she tried to suppress it, a sob tore out of her throat.

A gentle knock on the door and at her spoken permission Esme entered the room.

"Hey, anything I can do?" she asked softly. Bella shook her head. Her life was screwed up, she doubted there was anything anyone could do.

"Confused?" Esme sat on the bed and smoothed her hair back, just like Bella supposed a real proper mother would for an upset daughter. This made her cry even more. She wanted Edward, he would hold her and make things seem slightly more bearable, though she didn't know why. She hated herself for being so dependent on him so quickly.

"Let me tell you my story." Esme lay on the bed and wrapped Bella in her arms. Bella nodded and Esme paused slightly as if to order her thoughts and started to tell her tale.

"I was born in 1895, my father was a farmer. He owned his own farm but it wasn't a large one. I lived with my parents and my 2 sisters and one brother. My human years are slightly fuzzy in my memory, they always are for vampires, but I do remember long summers filled with play and laughter. When I was 16 I fell out of a tree, my youngest sister had dared me to climb it, and of course I couldn't refuse a dare!" she laughed and Bella smiled, she had never been dared to do anything, she had no friends or family close enough. She pushed the melancholy thoughts to the back of her mind and listened to the kind matriarch of the family.

"My father rushed me to the local hospital; there I saw a sight so beautiful it changed me forever. Carlisle. He was kind and gentle, always polite. One of the other doctor's set my leg but I could not take my eyes off him. I was positive he felt it too, he watched me as much as I watched him, but he was quite a bit older than me," again she laughed, "I only saw him once after that, he was there when my parents took me home, but he again never came close." she sighed.

"Just after my leg healed I started suffering severe pains in my chest. My father and mother rushed me back to the hospital but there was no sign of my angelic doctor. The pain was terrible, but there was nothing they could do for me, even what passed for painkillers back then seemed to have no effect. After about a week of me being in agony the pain lessened slightly, and every day after that it got a little better until it was just a constant dull throbbing. I was never without pain from that day forward. I know now it was because I had formed a mating bond with Carlisle… not a full one as we never actually touched like you and Edward have, but once a vampire finds his mate the pull is there even before the touch seals it… and he had left, but back then I had no idea what was wrong with me. I asked him once why he had not turned me back then, and he told me that he had never turned anyone at that stage and he had no idea how. He also thought I was too young and had my whole life ahead of me, how I wished he had thrown caution to the wind and bitten me then.

"Four years later my father was having trouble on the farm, the corn crop was attacked by what he called wilt and he had to mortgage the farm just to buy seed for the year after. However the wilt came back that next year and the bank was threatening to foreclose when a neighbour offered to help. Charles Evenson wasn't much richer than my father, but he was lucky that his crop of beans wasn't affected by the disease that was devastating the corn farmers. He offered to help the family, on condition that I marry him. I had planned on being a teacher, but my father begged me to save the family and marry the man. In the end I agreed, there wasn't just me to think of, but my sisters as well. It was only three weeks after my 21 st birthday that we married and I moved into his farmhouse.

"He had three sisters, his parents had died several years before leaving him the farm and the girls to look after. I was expected to cook and clean for the whole family, and really I don't think I minded that so much as the fact that I was married to a man I didn't love. For the first 6 months or so of our marriage everything was ok. But soon after he started asking questions, he guessed that I loved someone else and he got jealous. He drank a lot and occasionally he would hit me trying to get answers out of me. He accused me of having an affair behind his back and he made his farm hands trail me every time I went to town. I never told him about Carlisle and he got angrier and angrier.

"His youngest sister was a sly and nasty piece of work. I didn't realise to start with that she enjoyed watching me suffer, just for the hell of it. One day as we were making dinner she sympathised with me over his treatment of me. I started crying and confessed that I wished I had never married. As soon as he came in from the farm she rushed to tell him what I had said. He hit me so hard he broke my jaw. I ran back to my parents house, but they had to send me back to him, he had threatened to take them to court and sue them for the money they owed him if they sheltered me. My mother begged me not to leave him or make him angrier than he was before, and depressed, I returned to him. That night he beat me so bad I didn't remember the next few days.

"I was rather lucky in one respect. Charles was a member of a group of men in the area that had a pact. If America joined the war they all agreed to sign up. Just a month after the beating he was gone. How I prayed that he wouldn't return. Then I felt guilty for wishing him dead.

"While he was gone I managed the farm and looked after his sisters, though I was careful never to talk to any of them of personal matters ever again. I wasn't really happy but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been when he was there. He was demobbed in 1919, he had even survived a bout of the Spanish Influenza that killed Edward's family. When he returned he was different. More aggressive and openly belligerent. He started drinking in the house as well as going into town. Several times he raped me in front of his sisters, he didn't seem to care anymore about anything. Even Lucy, the youngest, who had hated me from the start, was scared of him and terrified for me.

"I realised I was pregnant at the start of summer in 1920. One day after the harvest, when he was in town drinking I packed a bag and ran. I had cousins who owned a farm in Milwaukee, when I arrived there and they saw the condition I was in they swore to protect me. I had thought I was safe, but he found me. One Saturday, a couple of months after I arrived, my cousin travelled into the nearest town to stock up at the local store, while there he heard a stranger asking directions to his farm. He worked out quickly who he was and sent him in the wrong direction. When Charles left he hurried back, I was packed and gone within the hour.

"Knowing that he would find me if I sought help from any more of my relatives, I literally put a pin in a map. I arrived in a small community near Ashland in Wisconsin when I was 7 months pregnant. It was Christmas and the Salvation Army helped me find a place to live (I told them I was a widow) they also helped me find a job as a school teacher close by. I spent the best Christmas of my life since leaving the family farm there, surrounded by good honest people who wanted nothing more than to help others.

"I went into labour in the middle of a snowstorm in late January. The woman who owned the building the school was in as well as my own small house, Mrs. Noble, had to act as midwife, my son was tiny when he was born," she sobbed and Bella wrapped her arms around the woman, giving comfort for once. "We did everything we could, but he only lived for 2 days, there wasn't enough heating in the small house, he was born too early and the snow was too deep to risk taking him out to find wood for the fire. Mrs. Noble tried to help but the weather was just too bad, too cold. I was devastated when he died, I held him and cried for what seemed like days. Eventually Mrs. Noble took him from me and we held a small prayer service for him. She promised me she would make sure he had a proper burial and I told her I was going home to my parents. I left everything and went out into the snow. I walked for hours, maybe even a day or so, I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. All I knew was that I was cold and that my son was dead. I came to a quarry… I stood on the edge of the cliff, looking at the drop and decided there and then that I would join my son. I threw myself off." Bella gasped, tears streamed down her face as she wept for the despair Esme must have felt.

"The next thing I knew was that I was in agony. I cursed the fact that I had not died as I intended, but my body was burning up. I screamed and screamed, I remember Carlisle holding my hand and telling me that everything was going to be fine, I just had to get through this and we could be together. That was the only thing that made it anywhere near bearable. The burning wasn't as bad whenever he was touching me. He held me in his arms after that, soothing me until I woke.

"Though I loved him and had for years, I had a hard time accepting him. After all he had left once before, which had led to my marriage and the eventual death of my son. I kept expecting him to turn on me, to hit me if things went wrong, to run me down, or to leave again. It took me a month before I would let him touch me in a sexual way." Bella blushed brightly but Esme continued as if she hadn't spoken of something private, "It was Edward that finally convinced me. He took me out hunting one day and told me all about Carlisle. Not just what he knew from firsthand experience, but also from what he had heard in his mind. I found out for sure what I had always known deep down. Carlisle was a good man! I stopped fighting him, stopped fighting the bond we had formed, and allowed him to love me. Even then though I had moments where I was afraid. Sometimes when Carlisle raised his hand I flinched automatically, the only time I was certain he would not harm me was when we were intimate." Bella blushed, Esme smiled at her. "The only regret I have from those times was that when I accepted Carlisle we pushed Edward out. It had been just the two of them since Edward had lost his parents, and then suddenly Carlisle wanted to be with me all the time. It isn't something a vampire can really fight against once they have accepted the bond. Carlisle has tremendous strength of character… it was the only way he could have left me all those years before… but once the bond is mutual and fully accepted there is no way for a vampire to do anything but love the object of the bond totally, without reservation.

"Edward will always be my first son, my eldest, even if he is the youngest." She laughed at that contradiction. "And I will always be grateful that he didn't try and break Carlisle and me up, he could have tried, with his mind reading he could have played on my fears to the point where I would have stayed wrapped in my misery and not let Carlisle in. And now it is his turn." She looked Bella in the eye. "He loves you. It is as simple and as complicated as that. If you asked him to walk through fire for you, he would. Anything you need, anything you want, he will provide, if it is physically possible. But please, don't ask him to leave you alone. Because he will break his own heart trying to do as you ask, and you have felt the pain of the bond… you have no idea what it is like for him, just because he doesn't fall to the floor in pain like you do, does not mean he doesn't feel it every bit as much as you, in fact he feels it more." Bella nodded, ashamed that she had tried to push him away. "Edward has been alone for almost a hundred years, always on the outside looking in. He has no idea how to win your affection, your regard. Please, just give him a chance. I promise you won't regret it, I have waited to have another daughter for more than 50 years, my most deserving son has picked the most deserving girl I know." She smoothed a hand gently down Bella's face in a maternal gesture that brought tears to the girls' eyes again. "WE love you Bella, you never have to be alone again."

"I don't know how to be close to him." She whispered.

"Oh darling, you just have to be you." Esme said the love she felt for Bella clear in her voice.

"I just can't…" she swallowed the lump in her throat, "I want him to touch me, to hold me, but when he does I panic." She admitted.

"It takes time." Esme looked sad, "I know, almost better than anyone, what you are going through my dear. Just give it time, when you are ready you will know." Bella nodded.

Esme got to her feet, shaking off the emotionally heavy atmosphere, "Would you like some breakfast?" she asked. Bella looked out of the window, there was no sign of dawn in the sky, but there was a thick and steady snowfall again, she sighed at the sight.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"About 4," Esme told her.

"Where is Edward?" she asked.

"His father has taken him hunting. He didn't need to go, but Carlisle insisted." Bella nodded and got out of bed.

"I would love some breakfast." She said, "Could I have a moment to…" she waved a vague hand at the bathroom. Esme smiled and nodded.

"Do you want to come downstairs or shall I bring up a tray?" she asked.

"I'll come down." The women smiled at each other and Bella headed off to use the toilet and get ready for the day.