Finally, the day has come! You guys had better give me some reviews, even if you hate this chapter, because it does a heart good to come back after a short hiatus to people who are really nice and take the extra step to let me know if what I'm doing is really worth the while. Hopefully this doesn't disappoint. Keep in mind that this is sort of a transitional chapter, but I hope you still enjoy it like any other chapter. Only a few chaps left, ladies and gents! (Well, primarily ladies (: )
song: ghost under rocks by rarariot

EPOV

My pillowcase was cold. It brushed angrily against my cheek as I sprawled across my mattress, completely still except for my steady breathing. The window across from me was fogged slightly, raindrops rolling across the pane at a glacial pace. I took a deep breath, rolling from my stomach to my back and staring at the ceiling. It was better than watching the storm.

I'd been cooped up in my room for two days, basically surviving off Gatorade and those little Ritz cracker things, leaving only to run downstairs and take a piss. Then I just wound up in the same position: flat on my stomach and staring out the goddamn window. The rest of winter break after Christmas Day was crawling by, and Bella still hadn't reacted the way that I somewhat expected her to. I kept my phone clutched in my hand for a solid forty-eight hours after Alice went to see her, waiting for her to call so I could beg her for forgiveness and so that we could be together again. Maybe I was kidding myself. Maybe the things that I'd said to her were too much for her to take, too much for her to forgive. But I still hoped.

Alice had come in a couple of times since then to talk to me, chattering away across the room as she sat on the black leather sofa and assuring me that all Bella needed was time. How she knew that, I didn't know. Alice had no real way of knowing exactly what was in the wooden box or anything that was written in that stupid fucking letter, but then again, she was famous for prying. The thought irritated me, but not enough to say anything about it. She'd rub my hair and skip out of the room, trying to hide the sympathy that she undoubtedly held for me.

There wasn't really anything she could do until Bella came back. If she ever did.

"Ed!" Emmett called from the hallway outside my door. He rapped twice before opening it, sticking his head inside. "Care if I come in?"

"You will anyway, even if I do," I snorted, dragging my eyes from the ceiling to his face. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, failing to meet my gaze as he ignored my attitude. I swallowed nervously at his sullen expression. "What's going on?"

He sighed, dragging his feet as he crossed the room the sit on the end of my bed. Kicking off his tennis shoes, for once, he propped his feet up on the pillow next to me. Something told me to let him explain rather than to punch him for having his feet so close to my face. "I told them not to make me do this," he said quietly, scratching his head. He said nothing more, pulling his eyebrows together and staring at his own feet.

"Told who? I don't understand," I said, my tone colored with frustration.

"Dad told me to come talk to you," he muttered, his brown eyes more old and tired than I'd ever seen them. "I told him I couldn't do it, but he said that I would do the best job, because I'm the oldest."

Panic swallowed me. Something was wrong. "Spit it out," I spat through clenched teeth, sitting up rigidly. It was always fucking something. There was always something to be worried about in this house. Something bad was always happening. The racing feeling that such moments inspired in my chest had become normality to me.

"I'm sorry, Edward," Emmett whispered. He picked at a hole in his sock, sniffling. "I'm sorry."

My throat closed, my breath speeding. "Emmett, just tell me," I begged, my breath raspy. "You have to tell me what's happening. I know it's hard for you, but I need to know."

Since we were little kids, Emmett was always the happy one. Esme had always said that he was my perfect counterpart, what with me being an emo bitch practically since birth. He made everything a little bit better for me, always. But now, as he sat beside me, he looked so ancient, so unlike himself. "You know that day that Dad took us to the Cape?" he asked quietly. "You remember how he told us about him?" he asked, his small voice cracking. I nodded, and he continued. "You know how he told us he had stage three lymphanela or whatever it's called?"

"Lymphoma," I corrected. "And how the fuck do you think I could forget?"

"Well, he told me to tell you something. He, uh, he told me to tell you that it's, um, it's worse now," he choked, his eyes swimming. His hands were grabbing at the knees of his jeans angrily, panicky whines building in his throat.

"Em, calm down," I pleaded, my own voice skipping across two octaves. "Pull it together, okay? Calm down, and explain what's happening." Honestly, I didn't know what the fuck was happening. I was about to rip my hair out as Emmett shook with hysterics, my discomfort at the intensity of the situation not quite outweighing the concern that I felt.

Emmett took another deep breath, trying to soothe himself, and met my eyes with a strange look of finality. "He went to the doctor last week and didn't mention it to anyone but Mom. I guess no one thought anything of it since he goes to the doctor a lot anyway. But the doctor told him they had to take him off chemo 'cause his stage got worse or something like that. He's been getting radiation now, since a couple of days ago. The chemo didn't work. It's making him real sick. Worse than before."

It took me a while to digest the information. I felt the familiar sense of dread built up inside of me, but my brain was frantically searching for solutions. "If it was that bad, why didn't they give him radiation to begin with? Wouldn't he have thought about it? He's a fucking doctor!"

Emmett shrugged, fat tears still dripping from his chin and into his lap. "Beats me," he breathed, his chin quivering. "But they said they're putting him through it for three to four weeks. Five days a week. And if they can't beat it, he might only have up to six weeks."

"Six weeks to what?" I asked stupidly, already knowing the answer.

Emmett stared at me for a minute, his face suddenly emotionless as the fuzz of the room's silence consumed us. "To live," he answered, his quiet words somehow managing to echo tauntingly off the walls.

I gasped as I processed what he'd said, my thoughts too frantic and jumbled to display proper, rational emotion. "Where is he?" I spat. "Where is he? Where is he hiding? Why couldn't he come up here, Emmett?"

Study door. Study door. Study fucking door.

"He's tired," Emmett whispered, his face still empty. "He's just tired, Edward. We need to leave him alone for once. We need to be big kids, and suck it up. He can't hold our hands anymore. He's tired."

This room was edged in a cloudy red as it faded to a deep brown, and finally, to black.

I could feel the weight of my brother beside me, but still, I knew I was alone.

*

BPOV

I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do with the goddamned box. It sat on my desk, staring at me. Whenever I closed my eyes to sleep, I couldn't because I knew that it was still sitting there. I hid it under my bed finally, waking from a terrible nightmare that it had inflated to thirty times its size and put a hole in the roof of my house, swallowing me inside of it along with Edward's pictures and keepsakes and apologies. I tried putting it in the closet, but that didn't help. I felt bad for it. I knew that my closet was dark and lonely, and I didn't want it to be alone.

Fuck. I was obsessing over inanimate objects.

Charlie was gone often, working. That left me to obsess over Edward's Christmas gift in the comfort of privacy, trying to stay away from it and then giving in by taking a peak. It hurt a little less every time I looked inside. It didn't sting as badly every time I read Edward's chicken scratch as it danced along the horizontal lines of the most beautiful letter anyone had ever written me. It was beautiful, but it wasn't a magical cure that could take back all of his words and rewind all of my actions. The pain of leaving him was still there, the memories of his fingers digging into my hips and his stubble scraping against my cheeks fresh in my mind. I knew that I was obsessed with the wooden box, and more importantly with its contents, but I tried to convince myself that I didn't care one way or another if Edward loved me. Because even though that wasn't true, I knew that I couldn't act irrationally. I couldn't just run to Edward every time his letter made my heart stop, or every time the picture of him at his house made me cry.

My heart was a fucking tennis ball. Or maybe it was like one of those little pink paddleball things. I wanted to go back to Edward, and then I didn't. I ached to have his face between my hands, and then I wanted nothing more but to smack him and hurt him as badly as he'd hurt me. It was exhausting.

So I let it sit. I let the wounds fester, and I let the box stay on my desk, taunting me. Maybe it was masochism, or maybe it was some sick sense of pleasure. A gross reminder of the man that I loved so desperately that I almost hated him. Hell if I knew. But what I did know was that if Edward expected me to forgive him over a box of…stuff, then he was wrong. God, I was a proud little bitch.

I called Alice the morning after Christmas to apologize for my breakdown, and more importantly, to pry information from her about Edward. How was he feeling? Was he acting weird? Did she know what the letter had said? What was her opinion? But she never picked up. It was odd. Alice's phone was generally glued to her palm.

My phone rang that night a little after dinner, and I'd being lying if I said that I didn't run to it, my heart thumping unevenly as I checked the caller ID. I don't know whether I expected it to be Alice or Edward, but I shouldn't have been surprised when it wasn't. Contrarily, my heart began beating harder as I read the name over and over again on the screen, trying to make sure that my eyes weren't tricking me. Taking a shaky breath, I flipped open the phone, lifting it slowly to my ear.

"Rosalie?" I asked timidly, my old stammer finally unearthing itself after months. "What do you need?"

"Did you ever think that maybe I just wanted to call and chit-chat, Swan?" Rosalie droned disinterestedly on the other line, her velvety voice musical and more intimidating than ever.

"I don't know," I replied stupidly, wincing as soon as the words left my mouth.

Rosalie laughed to herself. "But maybe you're right in thinking that I need something, because I do. I do always seem to have an agenda," she sighed, waiting for me to respond.

I played into her trap, knowing that there was no real way out of it. I felt like a new kid on the first day of Kindergarten. "What do you need help with?" I asked in a small voice.

"All that I need is for you to get your ass over to the Hale casa," she ordered. "And make it quick. This is important." Her last statement concerned me. She said those words in a more solemn tone than the way that she generally spoke, confident and flamboyant.

"Is something wrong?" I blurted. "Something with the Cullens?" I knew that that family was the only thing tying Rosalie and I together, and could be the only reason that she was inviting me over. I highly doubted that she wanted to braid each other's hair and have a slumber party.

"Just…get here. Okay?" she ordered impatiently, as if every second that the phone call lasted rattled her nerves.

"O-okay," I stammered, hanging up the phone before giving a proper goodbye. I ran to my desk, grabbing my keys and that stupid fucking box—for reasons unknown—and shoving them in my bag. Charlie wasn't home yet, so I scribbled a note explaining where I was on the whiteboard attached to the fridge and slipped through the front door to fire up the old Chevy.

*

APOV

"So Edward knows?" I asked Esme, swallowing roughly as a golf ball-sized lump formed in my throat. "Who told him?"

"Emmett," Esme answered. "Poor kid. Your dad called him into our room last night and asked him to do it. I thought he was going to pass out or cry. Or both."

I watched from the end of her bed as my mother glided the iron across one of Edward's dress shirts, steam rising and blurring the picture of the muted television behind her. "Why didn't you just tell him when you told me?" I asked quietly. Esme and Carlisle had pulled me aside the day before to tell me…the news. It was shocking, of course, and completely and utterly devastating. But I was used to it. Immune.

"Well, your dad was scared of how he'd react," Esme sighed. "But I think that since you handled it so well your father was more comfortable with the entire situation. We tried not to avoid it. So the two of us figured that he had the right to know."

"So you made Emmett tell him," I said dryly, quirking an eyebrow. "I think that that qualifies as 'avoiding the situation,' Mom."

Esme took a deep breath, furrowing her eyebrows. "I know. But—God, I know." She stood there in thoughtful silence, leaning against the board as steam continued to rise from the iron's hot plate.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I didn't mean to upset you or anything. I'm just edgy. Now that things are getting even worse, I don't really know what to do with myself."

She still didn't speak as she stood there, her gaze fixed just over my head. A few silent moments passed before her eyes flickered to mine, her expression changing from regret to something very close to passion. "Why don't you try anymore?" she blurted.

"What?" I asked, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"You are extremely talented, Alice," she whined, her voice rising from it's usual, buttery tone to a small sound like a child's. "What happened to art school? What happened to all of your dreams? Your plans for college? You are so talented," she repeated.

"I, I um…" I trailed off, at a loss for words. I shifted uncomfortably, bringing my legs underneath me.

Esme picked up the iron, gliding it roughly across my favorite cotton dress as she continued to stare at me with hard eyes and a set jaw. "Can I be honest with you?" I nodded. "This is exactly what Carlisle and I wanted not to happen. When he first…found out…about….well, you know, the very next thing he said was how he didn't want his circumstance to affect you and your brothers."

"Dad has cancer, Mom. It's not really something we can ignore."

"Just listen to me!" she snapped, stepping back with the iron still in her grasp, hanging by her side. "You're not even the same anymore. You're not my little girl, happy and excited and independent and full of potential. You've just…given up. You've given up, Alice."

"I haven't!" I protested, though I knew as soon as she spoke the words that she was right.

"You have," she insisted, ripping the chord of the iron to release the plug from the outlet. She left the pile of still-wrinkled clothes in the chair by the TV, jerking the chord across the carpet and dropping the iron to the board with a thump. "Where has Rose been, Alice? She's your best friend. Where has she been through all of this? You've quit the things you love. You're alone, all the time. Always. You're either alone, or with Jasper. What happened to you?"

I felt a lump of ice form in my throat, my eyes welling with defensive tears. "Nothing happened to me," I croaked, hanging my head.

My mother was quiet, only the sounds of our breathing filling the room for a few beats. After a moment, I heard her feet shuffling towards me. I felt her weight drop beside me on the bed, just far enough away so we weren't touching. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"'Sokay," I murmured, the wetness of my eyes not quite thick enough to spill over. "You didn't say anything that wasn't true."

"That doesn't make it any better."

"It's alright. I know. I'm a zombie," I said, my voice cracking pathetically.

Her fingers, soft as feathers, tightened around my wrist that was flopped hopelessly in my lap. "Everything will be fine, Alice. I promise."

"You don't have to lie to me, Mom. I'm a big girl. I can handle it. I'm used to this."

"Stop!" she said harshly, her grip tightening slightly. "This is what I was just talking about. When you're like this, it doesn't help your father. It hurts him. It makes him feel like this is all his fault, that he's tearing our family apart."

"That's not true, though!" I piped up, meeting her eyes. "He can't help this."

"Then stop making him feel like he can," she answered, her mouth in a tight line. She released my wrist, flopping her own hand to her leg as we both sat in pensive stillness. "I love you, Alice," she said quietly. It caught me off guard.

"You do?" I wanted to slap myself for sounding so weak, so hopeful.

"I don't tell you enough," she sighed, brushing her hands against her skirt. "I actually can't remember the last time I told you that. I haven't been there for you like I should be."

"You do the best you can," I said.

"My best is not good enough, I'm afraid," she said sadly.

"Maybe not," I relented, giving a weak smile.

"But I do. Love you, I mean. I want to help you. I want you to help me. I want you to be my daughter, like you used to be, and not just someone who lives in my house with my DNA and my last name. You worry more than any girl your age should. He's going to be able to fight this, Alice."

I sighed heavily, cuffing my hand around the back of my neck as I leaned forward on my elbow. "He's been fighting this, Mom. For months. And it's only getting worse."

"We're going to help him," she said, her tone thick with zeal as her eyes brightened fiercely. "He's going to fight it. We're going to fight it. And this will be over. We can live our lives again. This will be over."

I felt like she was partly speaking to solely to herself, finding an inkling of inspiration from her own words.

She grasped my hand once again tightly, tears spilling over her high cheekbones.

*

BPOV

My hand was shaking when I reached to ring the doorbell. An uneven thumping pounded in my chest as I clutched a hand to my heart in anxious anticipation. It felt like twelve thousand years before the front door was opened.

"Hey, Jasper?" I asked when the blue front door was opened to reveal his familiar figure, standing just behind the threshold. "Why aren't you with Alice?"

"Come in, Bella," he answered simply, his tone dry and unsurprised. In that moment, it all sunk in. Whatever this was, whatever I was about to go through, Jasper was in on. Jasper and Rose are holding an intervention, I thought nervously to myself.

I followed him through the foyer, past the dining room and into the sunken den. I hadn't been there since that first week of school with Alice and…and Edward. I was barely even the same person now that I was then. The difference between the two occasions was crippling.

Jasper plopped lazily into a blue armchair, slinging his long, gangly legs over its arm and scratching at his wild mane of curly, blonde hair. "Rose!" he hollered, his voice echoing off of the paneled walls. "Swan is here!"

I stood awkwardly in the center of the room, my arms crossed in my dad's old, tan jacket and my hair damp from the outside rain. A minute later, Rosalie entered, in all of her blonde-haired, blue-eyed glory.

"For fuck's sake, Jasper, you could've invited her to sit down," she chastised, shooting her brother a threatening sneer that I knew all too well.

"Well then, Bella, by all means, I invite you to sit down," he droned, throwing an arm over her eyes as if to block out the minimal amount of muted light coming in from outside. Rosalie scoffed as I shuffled silently to the couch against the far wall, pulling my knees defensively to my chin.

"Shoes off the leather, Swan," Rosalie snapped, sitting primly in an arm chair directly across from me. "You're not at the YMCA."

A sound scraped through my teeth—sounding very much like a lost puppy—as I kicked my shoes off and straightened them so they were even with one another. "Sorry," I muttered, my stomach doing little flips. Rosalie's stare made me feel very much like pre-Edward Bella. I didn't like it.

"I'd generally give you a harder time, but your less than perfect manners aren't really the whole point of this little tête-à-tête," Rosalie said sternly, raising one perfect, light brow.

"Uh, Rose?" Jasper asked, his voice muffled by his arm. "Technically you're fancy French terminology is null-and-void considering that I'm a by-standing third party." He raised the arm not covering his face in the air for emphasis. I tried to hold back the giggle building in my throat.

"If you're not going to be helpful, then just leave," she hissed. She crossed her insanely thin legs, smoothing the dark, expensive-looking denim that covered them. "Shall we begin?" she asked impatiently, turning her attention back to me.

I nodded quickly, swallowing.

"Good," she chirped, somehow managing to inject a lethal dosage of venom into one seemingly innocent word. "I have two bases I need to cover. One of them, Jasper might have to help with, considering I haven't been able to fully understand Emmett the last few times I've spoken to him."

I squinted my eyes curiously, cocking my head to the side. "What do you mean?"

She waved a hand dismissively, but there was still something wrong with her expression. "We'll get to that soon, little Bella. But first things first."

"Rose, this part really doesn't qualify as a 'first thing,'" Jasper argued, lifting his arm from his face to make air quotes. He straightening in his seat, his attention more focused. It made me uncomfortable to have the two of them staring at me with a mixture of…what was it? Concern from Jasper…and something indecipherable from Rose.

"Pipe down," Rose said to her brother through clenched teeth, her eyes still not leaving my face. "First, I need to talk to Bella about Alice. We need to establish a few things."

"Like?" I asked, still thoroughly confused. I began to wring my fingers nervously.

"Well, my two bases really melt into one. And it all starts with the fact that I kind of…reestablished my relationship with her the other day."

"Right before Alice was gonna reestablish her cooch on my dick," Jasper interjected crudely, earning another death stare from Rose. Luckily, she didn't get too entirely distracted. The interruptions made me even more anxious.

"I haven't been there for her," Rose said, a trace of sadness in her expression. "I've been there for Emmett the best that I can, but I think Alice was a little…"

"Creeped out?" I offered, biting down on my lip as her brows pulled together. "Sorry," I said quickly. "She just said something to me a few times about you being with her brother and how it was weird for her."

"Well…yes. That," she said. "But I feel like I need to tell you that…I, uh, I need her, Bella. I need her as my best friend. I don't have any other ones."

"Because you're a bitch," Jasper muttered. We both ignored him again.

"Why are you telling me this?" I murmured, looking down at my hands.

"Because you love her, and so do I," Rose whispered back, her façade fully dropping as her tone turned almost to one of pleading. "I want my best friend back. I've known her all my life. And I've missed her."

"Did you talk about everything?" I asked. "Like, about her and Jasper and you and Emmett? Is everything fixed? Sorry if I'm prying."

"Goddamn it, Bella, would you stop apologizing?" she almost laughed.

"Sorry," I blushed. "Oops! Sorry!"

She chuckled a hard laugh. "You're ridiculous." We all sat there for a minute, collecting our thoughts. Or at least, they were. I still had no idea what the fuck was going on. "I know that you think I don't like you," she spoke again, earning a quiet snicker from Jasper. "I mean, I didn't. Not for a while. But I realized something the other day."

"What's that?" I prompted, trying to relax into the sofa. My body wasn't cooperating.

"That you're a nice person," she laughed. "You're not so bad. Sure, you're inept and boring and also possibly socially retarded, but you're not so bad."

"Thanks," I grimaced. "I think."

"Sorry, that was kind of harsh," she relented, pushing up the sleeves of her dark red sweater. "What I'm trying to say is that…well, I got jealous. Jealous that you were stealing my friend, and angry that there was nothing I could do about it."

"W-what? You were jealous? Of me?" I stammered, my eyes widening.

"I know, I know. Hard to believe," she grinned with slight amusement. "But I want to make everything work. I want us to get along. For Alice. For all of the Cullens. They need us." Then she smiled. And she really smiled, and it wasn't her trademark half-smile I know something you don't know bitch grin. It was one of almost comradeship. We were in the exact same boat, and she recognized it. Or rather, we had been in the same position.

"This is only for Alice," I muttered, my heart filling with dread. "She's the only one I can support anymore."

"No, Swan, this is for everyone. I almost enjoy you. You're funny. I think that if I try, I might learn to be friends with you. But we're doing this for all of them," she said, her voice filled with determination.

"But Edward--," I began.

"But Edward nothing," Rose interrupted. "I know everything, Bella. I am with Emmett, after all. Given Em's still not your number one fan, but I still know the story. And just because you and Edward had a little falling out because you're both so goddamn stubborn doesn't mean you get out of anything. You're still in this as deep as you were before."

"That's not true," I said solemnly. "I've become irrelevant. And now I guess Emmett hates me too. I'm only in it for Alice."

Rosalie rolled her eyes, scoffing noisily. "Oh, Bella, quit with the fucking drama. We all know that Edward loves you. He loves you, and your fugly man jackets, and how your hair smells like cheap fruit-scented grocery store brand shampoo, and how you blush and trip and other irritating shit like that. Alice isn't the only one who knows about that letter he wrote you."

I blushed, biting down on my lip with so much force that I almost drew blood.

"And Emmett only hates you because he thinks that you broke his brother's heart," she said matter-of-factly, inspecting her cuticles. "I tried to tell him that you just kind of fucked and ducked and that Edward lied to you and stuff, but he wouldn't listen."

"How do you know all of this?" I gasped, my face heating and my heart thumping irregularly.

"Jesus, Bella," Rose snorted. "Where did you learn to think that I don't find out absolutely everything? I'm omnipotent, sweetheart."

Jasper choked out one hard laugh, flipping open a magazine and sifting through it with a crooked smile.

"You think he really loves me though?" I asked in a small voice.

"Fucking duh. He only wrote it like, five thousand times in the little diary entry he gave you," she droned, rolling her eyes.

Fucking Alice, I swore to myself. No one should ever let her handle personal possessions.

"So we're good?" Rosalie asked, her eyes widening. "Can we cooperate? We can be co-presidents of the Make Alice Happy Even If You Think I'm A Heartless Bitch And I Think You're A Sheltered, Mousy Little Baby Club."

"I guess I'll take it," I smiled, shrugging. "It's better than nothing."

"For now." Rosalie grinned. Her expression held promise. But suddenly, her smile faded into a frumpy frown, far too sullen for Rosalie's beautiful face. "And now I guess this is the part where Jasper comes in."

I looked to Jasper. The magazine was now closed in his lap, his back rigid and his navy eyes flat and one-dimensional. "I forgot for a minute," he muttered.

"Me too," Rosalie whispered, her voice cracking.

"You forgot what?" I asked, my anxiousness from earlier suddenly returning.

"The main reason you're here. The main reason we made nice," Rosalie responded, her small attempt at humor failing miserably.

"Bella, we need you," Jasper mumbled, scratching his neck. "You're the only other person who understands what's going on."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The Cullens all have to work together," Jasper answered. "They depend on each other. And the three of us are just sort of there for them individually. Now we need to work together. Try to help each other. It's time to stop being selfish, Bella. They need us."

"Something's happened," Rose blurted, a crease forming between her eyebrows and one, delicate hand covering her mouth.

The change in the atmosphere was drastic. Before it had been uncomfortable, slowly easing into something less awkward as Rosalie let down her cool and spoke to me as if I were a human being rather than an object in her path that she could simply kick aside. But now…it was different. Almost like someone had flipped a switch, their faces were solemn and sort of reverent. Something was wrong.

"We should have just told her this first, Rose," Jasper said quietly.

Rose sighed. "I was trying to put it off. I've been trying not to think about it."

"What is it?!" I shouted, jumping at the sound of my own frustration. I hadn't meant to explode that way. It just…happened.

Rose swallowed and looked at me, Jasper's eyes down at his feet. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

Something came back to me in that moment. "What were you saying earlier?" I asked. "About Emmett? About not being able to understand him when you spoke to him?"

Rosalie opened her mouth again, closing it and reopening it a few times before any sound came out. "He's been sobbing. Sobbing like a baby. I can only make out a few words here and there. It hurts me to think about it. I called Alice three times this morning, and she answered once telling me she couldn't talk and to call later."

My stomach dropped, dread falling over me as I considered the possibilities. I knew Carlisle still had to have been alive. Things would have been a lot less casual if that were the case. But some many things could have been wrong—all of the options were crippling.

"Just tell me," I begged. "Please, just tell me."

Jasper's mouth straightened into a tight purse, his eyes darkening so that they were almost black. The lamp beside him bathed half of his face in light while the other half remained in shadow, a shiver shooting down my spine. "Carlisle's worse," he said simply.

Rosalie let out a loud, harsh exhale, dropping her face to her hands. She looked almost...human.

"What do you mean, worse?" I asked. My voice cracked miserably as my blood stilled in my veins.

"He's getting sicker, Bell. It's getting really bad." His words were simple, but somehow, that made things worse.

"I don't understand," I lied.

"What's so hard about it?" Rose piped up, lifting her face to narrow her eyes. "Carlisle. Is. Worse. It's not difficult, Swan."

I looked at my feet, swallowed in lumpy, oatmeal colored socks, searching for words to say. "What does this mean now?" I choked out, my throat closing and making my breaths and words nearly strangled.

"It means we've gotta stick together, start helping," Jasper answered slowly, thoughtfully. "Emmett and Al have known for a little while. Edward just found out today."

My eyes brimmed with tears, the image of him as a little boy outside of his white house in my mind, smiling and carefree. The image faded and darkened into how he was now, resentful and hurting and...and alone. Without me. Dry sobs ripped loudly from my chest. I didn't even try to hide my face. "Edward," I whispered, wiping at the sticky trails my sorrow left along my cheeks.

"Will be fine, if you help him," Rosalie said. She tossed her hair behind one shoulder, bringing her elbows to her knees as she leaned forward on her palms. "So you need to help yourself by helping him. I know you love him, Swan. So be there for him. Stop all this fucking selfishness and get the hell over it. "

"At least do it for Alice," Jasper croaked, his expression clouding. I wanted to hug him. He looked so passionate as he spoke, his eyes softening infinitesmally at the mention of her name.

I stood abruptly from the couch, jamming my feet into my sneakers as my socks ballooned over the tops of them. "I need to go, right now," I spat, blood spilling into my cheeks as they flamed. My nose was running, and it was kind of disgusting, but I was far passed caring. The only place that my mind was was in the front seat of my truck, behind the wheel.

"Where are you going?" Rosalie asked, raising her eyebrows in disapproval.

"I'm leaving," I said, my voice strong. "I'm going there. I'm going to him, right now."

"I'm not so sure that's a good--," Jasper began.

"I have to do this, Jasper," I interrupted, zipping my coat up and exiting the room in one swift motion.