AN//: Hello chicas y chicos! Yes, I'm back again. 3 chapters in 3 days- phew I'm exhausted. But no worries I've got it goin' so i'm good. For those of you who reviewed I love you for it and your virtual cookies are in the mail.

Disclaimer: (sorry forgot about these earlier, some of you may share my views and think they're overrated.) It all belongs to Stephenie Meyer- as if you didn't know that (insert eye roll here)- and she has graciously let me play around with her story line a bit.

Edward's POV

"It was so familiar" those had been my thoughts from earlier… that would explain everything! The scent was familiar which was probably because the "person" was a vampire. The left over scent had proved that it was sweet. How could we have not noticed it before? By this time I had completely tuned out all of the thoughts in the vicinity of my power but I turned my attention back to Esme. Her thoughts were nearly in hysterics again. The immense pain was back and I went into panic. I could see in Alice's thoughts that Jasper was cringing in an attempt to hide the pain from her. Esme was about to have a mental breakdown.

None of us could really understand how traumatizing it was for her to have lost her daughter. Esme hand covered her mouth, trying to hold back her sobs, when she turned away and flew out of the house, faster than even I could have. Her pain gave her strength, but by the time that she was at her destination point then she would be exhausted. Her strength would fail her and then she would have to come back and explain. There was no way that I would be able to keep this from Carlisle now. She had gone hysterical and then run away sobbing all in one day.

The only thing that I didn't understand was why she had just freaked out like that. There was nothing around here that would have set her off and unfortunately I had blocked her thoughts from my mind and had no way of knowing what she had been thinking five seconds prior to my intrusion. If I just knew what she had been thinking all of this would have been solved easily. That wasn't the case and now I would have to go looking for her. The only thing worse than a mad Esme was an emotionally unstable Esme.

Nothing was working out how I expected it to today. All of the humans had gone completely insane over the arrival of some petty human- but we had just found out that said humans were actually vampires. That was what Esme had mentioned right before she'd broken down so apparently it was connected to them. My options right now were to either go looking for Esme now and hope that she would explain everything to me- which wasn't likely, or to wait for Carlisle to come home from his shift. I was leaning towards option two because Esme would probably want some time to collect herself. I decided to wait.

This wasn't going to be easy to explain to Carlisle. Of course, being the forgiving vampire that he is, he would wait patiently and let it slide that I had let Esme go off on her own. Usually he kept a close eye on her. Not that she was a spastic person or anything, but when someone was your true soul mate, you tended to want to keep them safe. That was one of the good things about being a mate less vampire. It meant less to look after. It was just you and whatever you kept close to you, which in my case was my family.

I looked at the clock and saw that it was 2:50pm which meant that Carlisle would be home in about four hours. That was more than enough time for Esme to pull herself together and get back to the house. She would probably be pretty closed off once she got back. I felt more than heard someone approach. Alice came gliding through the doors with Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett in tow. They had heard everything.

Jeez, Eddie, what'd you do? –Emmett.

You could see the laughter in his eyes, but I didn't join him in the fun. Alice was sober as well; my guess was that she had seen this a fraction of a second before it actually happened. Or at the very least she had seen Esme run from the room at the end of one of her visions. I sighed and even Emmett's head became silent. Alice's hand came to a rest on my shoulder.

"You are right to wait. Esme will come back." She said in a far-off tone.

"And Carlisle? What should I tell him?" I asked her reluctantly. She could tell that I didn't want Esme to get hurt anymore. There wasn't much that Carlisle could do. He could only watch and make sure she didn't go running off to Italy. The Volturi wouldn't want to upset him but if they were forced to they would kill one of his family members. Alice still hadn't answered. I looked up to read her expression but her eyes were closed.

"He will decide what is best for Esme when the time comes. For now- we wait." She answered. Although I was still thinking of different options I knew from Alice's thoughts that the future had been sealed. She saw no other happenings and I had learned long ago not to bet against Alice. Now I trusted her with all my being. I went off to the piano room. The ivory keys standing out proudly against the midnight black of the frame.

All of the little things in my world seemed to grow until they became my number one priorities. I used to think so little of Carlisle. In fact in the beginning I had hated him for changing me and turning me into a monster. I had even gone off on my own for a while, and now looking back on that time I could see just how much of a terror that decade turned out to be. My shame was gnarled and twisted, fitting into those ten years of loneliness and anger. I had, of course, come back to Carlisle-begging for his forgiveness and he had welcomed me with open arms, which was much more than I deserved.

Although my past thoughts remained untouched and unchanged they were still shadowed by my horrific actions. Most of the time I buried all of the memories- as Esme had done with the memories of her lost daughter. But at times I pulled them out of the steel vault to sulk in self-hatred. I knew it was unhealthy. I knew that it was downright ridiculous to submit myself to that kind of torture, but I deserved it. I was a- no the masochist but it wasn't that painful. It helped my memory at times and I could remember my human life in sharper clarity. Although that sounds really… what did people say today… "emo" it really wasn't. I wasn't a naturally morbid or dark person.

I just sometimes felt the need to look back on old memories that left me wallowing in my own pity. Wow. I really needed to get a new hobby. I sat down at the old bench and drummed my fingers on the keys, playing a few bars of Debussy's Clair de Lune(AN//: come on people, I just had to include that). I looked at the clock and chuckled inwardly. I had been sitting here for an hour and a half, immersed in my thoughts.

It was despicable how all of the human's lives revolved around time. I don't see why they didn't just go by instinct like the rest of the animal kingdom. It was even stupider that they mocked the animal kingdom and thought that they were superior to all other creatures, but then they would do a complete 360 and run screaming from a bear because they knew that it could eat them. It would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that all of my family looked just like them but the second their blood was spilt we might go on a feeding frenzy that would destroy everything that we had worked for.

We were just as bad as the humans. Our kind, that is, vampires. We thought of ourselves as superior to the human race. The only problem with that little theory was that they held an unconscious control over us that even we could escape. My kind would become powerless if it weren't for human blood sustaining them. Or in our case, animal blood. They you look at my family and, again were as bad as both human drinking vampires, and the humans themselves. We viewed ourselves as superior to all animal races which wasn't the case. I'm veering off the subject.

Humans didn't follow their natural instincts. Any normal instincts would tell them to eat when they were hungry. Breathe when they needed oxygen, and deposit waste when needed. Unfortunately for the entire vampire race all of our instincts went against that except for eat when we're hungry. Everything else wasn't necessary.

I looked up at the clock again expecting about five minute to have passed. I was surprised to find that I had been sitting there for about three and a half hours. Esme should be back by now and Carlisle would be arriving home in half an hour. That gave me just enough time to sit down with Alice and Esme and discuss the afternoon's events. I stood up from the piano bench.

It wasn't abnormal for me to just sit by the piano and think. That was one of the purposes for this room in the first place. This was MY room. No one could disturb me here. I never felt the need to do something, nor was I under any pressure. The piano had been just a hobby when I was a human but now, among many other things it had swelled to become one of the top priorities of my existence. I looked at in with a critical eye. What drew me to it?

Forgetting my annoyance, I walked quickly to the kitchen to find Esme sitting at the island again. It was eerily like déjà vu. I came and sat across from her, exactly as before. I wanted to look into her mind and see what was bothering her so much but I knew that it would be an ungentlemanly thing to intrude upon her private thoughts. It was hard to block out the thoughts that swirled like a mini mass in her mind but I'd had practice with the particular situation before and Esme's thoughts were quiet and peaceful, unlike the loud, obnoxious thoughts that belonged to humans. I didn't say anything. She would speak when she was ready.

After what seemed like forever, Esme finally spoke.

"You may not understand why I took such offense to the arrival of the family, but if you feel the need, you may see for yourself. Esme was allowing me to freely dive into her mind. She exposed all of her secrets in those three words-"see for yourself". I sat there, shocked for a minute, until my better sense took hold of me and I delved deep into her mind. She automatically tried to block me at first but that was natural instinct. She stopped tensing after a moment and I sifted through her memories. If I had not searched hard while she was blocking me then I could have easily overlooked that many small side thoughts that weren't brought to the front of her mind. It was interesting finding out just how much I really could miss even while I was in their minds.

Fortunately, Esme had today's recent events at the front of her thoughts and I didn't have to intrude on the private matters that she wished to keep hidden. I saw how Carlisle had brought his bag home but had left it at the door in his haste to get home from work for our miniature family hunting trip. I saw how Esme had decided to stay home instead, seeing as she wasn't as thirsty as the rest of us. I saw how she picked up the bag with intentions of taking it straight to Carlisle's office and then going back to the living room to make sure that it was immaculate and any dust particles were to be destroyed.

I saw all of this but what had caught her attention was when the papers at the top of the bag had threatened to scatter all over her clean home and she had grabbed them just in time. She placed the bag down to make sure that everything was in perfect order but the neatly printed name on one of the folders had caught her eye. In Carlisle's bold handwriting there was a suspicious note off to the side. "**PERFECT HEALTH**". It had stuck Carlisle as odd because most humans never stopped complaining. The name of her lost daughter on the front of the folder had Esme dry sobbing within seconds even if there was no relation.

I saw a memory in Esme's memory (AN: as confusing as that sounds I hope it makes sense) of when Carlisle had gotten back from hunting before everyone else- because he was upset being away from Esme- and she had confronted him. Because of her hysterical sobs, Carlisle was quick to explain.

A group of particular "humans" were checked over by one of his Carlisle's colleagues- Dr. Douglas- but he was soon over come by the amount of work that the hospital had put on him. He had complained to Carlisle, during one of their breaks, how indescribably perfect they all were. They didn't yelp about cold stethoscopes. They had no unnecessary complaints of fevers or gurgling coughs. Nothing. There was nothing in their records of being sick, everything was clean.

Carlisle suspected them to be of our kind but he was not sure. Pictures were not mandatory for the Fork's hospital records and without a physical appearance to match with the description Carlisle didn't want to jump to any conclusions. He had calmed Esme down after that.

There is no reason for alarm, my son- Her soft spoken thought echoed in my head after the torrent of information. Esme was upset because someone who had the name of Esme's dead child would soon either have connections to our family, if they were vampires, or they would just be the new people in town, if they were humans. I hoped for the latter. If they were, indeed vampires, then they would be interacting with us and Esme had gone through enough pain to last her for the rest of her existence.

What hurt Esme the most was that because this person shared her dead child's name it reminded her that her daughter never got the chance to live, as we did or otherwise. Her heart was broken and she believed that there was no way to mend it. I shrank away from Esme's pain and flinched as she thought of the lost soul that never saw the light of day.

"And now you know." She whispered.

AN//: Hope I did good! I don't know how I did on this one and I'm kind of nervous so- as always-

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For those of you who do review, I'll switch it up this time and make it truffles- I love me some truffles! For those of you who don't review- don't make me come and use vampiric power on you... or bite you...whichever comes first! =)