Carlisle's study seemed much more crowded to Bella, when she and Edward walked to it, hand in hand.

"What is that?" Bella asked, looking at the small box in his hand.

"A doppler," he said softly, "lets us listen." He didn't say to what. "Ready?"

"Sure." She squeezed Edward's hand, and he squeezed back.

Her grip tightened, hearing a fuzzy, but regular thump.

"That's you," Carlisle said, smiling gently. "But it should be clearer." He pulled the probe away, checking the wired connection. "Must be something loose inside," he finally concluded.

Then, as he moved the slippery probe to the side, a new sound fluttered, high, rapid and regular.

No one said anything for a moment. Carlisle's voice sounded almost strangled. "That's the fetal...heartbeat."

Bella listened to it, lost in marvel, but Edward was still stunned to silence. Finally, he pushed out a, "how?"

Carlisle just shook his head, eyebrows hidden in his hair. "Bella, can we try the ultrasound?"

She nodded.

He didn't bother moving at a human speed, arranging everything, forgetting to warm the gel.

The coldness of it didn't bother Bella, and she stared intently at the screen, squinting at the grainy image. "Is it normally like that?"

Edward and Carlisle's "no's" were synchronized.

"Is it malfunctioning?" Edward murmured, checking the connections, adjusting the settings.

"No," Carlisle said. "It's fine." Pointing at the screen, he outlined the shape he could see for Bella. "It's almost like the waves are being partially blocked." He pulled away the probe. "May I?" he asked, gesturing to her heart.

"Sure," she said, unbuttoning her shirt.

The graininess of the image persisted.

"There must be something wrong with it," Edward said.

But Carlisle was shaking his head. "I need something to test. Emmett?" he called. "Something small, please."

He was there a moment later, a small, trembling rabbit in hand. "This do?"

"Thank you," Carlisle said, and then, with a speed and finesse Bella could barely see to appreciate, shaved a patch of its fur, splattering gel onto the freshly bald space. The rabbit twitched, but was otherwise held firm by Carlisle's fingers.

The image on the screen was clear. Far clearer than it had been with Bella.

No one said anything as he handed the rabbit back to Emmett, who disappeared with it.

"Is there something wrong with me?" Bella said. "I mean, you can't hear my thoughts, right?" She looked at Edward.

"No," Edward said immediately. "Nothing's wrong with you. The machine just...can't see well, through you."

Turning off the ultrasound, Carlisle sat for a moment. "Well. Congratulations." His eyebrows were halfway to his hair. "The fetus seems to be developing normally, and you appear to be in...exceptional health. I think we should keep monitoring, daily, but I'm cautiously optimistic."

After a moment, Bella breathed out, "we have a baby."

Edward, not quite so ready to accept what his eyes had presented him with, nodded with a small, and uncertain smile, squeezing her hand.

Collecting himself, Carlisle began talking again, this time about basic prenatal care.

- 0 -

The other Cullen's reaction to this startling news was joyful, and exuberant. Edward put on a brave face, forcing down his vibrant fears, telling himself over and over again that she was well.

And she was.

A week after the ultrasound, the needle Carlisle pressed to her arm snapped.

She registered the feeling, but there was no pain.

It had been tough to take the sample the day before, but when he tried again, the second needle broke too.

No one doubted his technique.

Carlisle drummed his fingers on the table. "Can we try an x-ray?"

"Isn't that bad for the baby?" The word still felt unreal on her tongue. It was whispered out.

"It shouldn't be, you're in your second trimester."

"Do we need to?"

"No, but it would be...helpful, to know as much as we can."

"Sure," Bella said, catching Edward's look. She could see the strain, despite his efforts to appear relaxed.

The x-ray was as useless as the ultrasound, only the largest, and most vague shapes of Bella's bones ghosting over the screen.

Her swelling shape left no doubt as to the accelerating rate of growth.

She'd managed to disguise it from Charlie with loose sweatshirts, but there would be no hiding it soon.

"Perhaps a case of the flu? Something we don't want him to catch?" Edward suggested, one afternoon. He looked at her shape, so distinct, there was no way she could mask it as anything else. Certainly not with Charlie, or with the keen eyes of hospital staff. "You can still call him," he said gently. "And Alice can go visit. Give her a break."

Bella nodded in reluctant agreement, but frowned too. Alice, whose visions of Bella had only come back in whispered snatches since the last pregnancy, were gone now. She could see nothing of Bella's, or the baby's futures.

At her ponderous silence, Edward tried, again, to offer her something to eat.

"No," she said, shaking her head at the plate he held in front of her. "Sorry. It's just, ugh—" She put an explanatory hand to her stomach.

"Yeah man, can you blame her?" Emmett said, feet up on the coffee table. "Ugh is right."

"Volunteering to catch me something?" Bella joked, chuckling at the notion.

Then she found herself unexpectedly salivating.

Edward lifted an inquisitive eyebrow, hearing it.

"Actually, do we have any steak?" Bella asked.

Esme nodded, going to the fridge, pulling it out. "How do you want it cooked?"

"Rare. Really, really rare." She said it almost shyly.

Presented, a few minutes later, with a plate, she looked up to see almost every single Cullen staring at her.

"Um."

They all found something else to do, except for Edward, who fiddled with a candle on the table, pretending not to watch her eat.

"Oh my God," she murmured.

"What?" Edward asked, imagining some new, disturbing, pregnancy-related discovery.

"This is amazing."

His relief washed out in the minute slack in his shoulders.

She was too absorbed in—finally—eating, to notice it.

Trying to maintain this small piece of normality, he said, "seeing as you're officially too ill to leave the house, what do you want to do today?" He played with her now free hands, swinging them back and forth.

"Go lay in the sun," she said, "with you. Read a book. If I can see, for all the sparkling." She grinned. She loved seeing him in the sun.

"Sure," he said, leaning down and kissing her, their closeness slightly impeded by the protuberance of her abdomen. "I'll go get a blanket."

Outside, the clouds persisted, despite the weather report, and Bella's hopes for sun were growing dimmer, when a small breeze threw back the scrum of whiteness, and left them in a startling patch of warm light.

She smiled at Edward, watching the refracted rays pick at her skin, offering the illusion of its own shimmer.

When she first glanced at him watching her, it didn't strike her as strange. He often did.

But today, it was with eyes widened with pure shock.

"Bella," he said, "look." He held up her hand, and then moved his away.

The radiance in her fingers was all their own.

"Is that—?"

"I don't know," he whispered. He was too afraid to say the words, too uncertain of what all of it meant. What all the signs seemed to impossibly point to.

She was sitting, staring at her skin, watching the sun dance over it in that subtle glimmer. Picking up a small, sharp rock, she squeezed it hard enough, that she knew it should draw blood. Or abbrade her skin.

Nothing.

"That should have cut my hand," she murmured, and looking at him, said, "am I—?"

"Changing?"

She nodded.

"I don't know."

Their conversation had floated back to the house, and from it, Edward could hear the unprecedented thoughts of his family, wondering at the same, fragile conclusion they turned over in their minds: that she was turning, by the tiniest and most painless degrees, into a vampire.