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I took a few flowers off the top of the casket and watched as they lowered it into the ground. I didn't want them being careless with it. My three best friends stood beside me, watching as my husband was returned to the earth.

Tears weren't coming. I was all cried out. I had cried so much in the past three days, I didn't know how I was going to do anything else. They had let me see him, but I had chosen to do a closed casket service because he looked so terrible. His head was completely shaved, there was a line stitched where the neurologists had cracked his head open. Death had done nothing for the bruises and abrasions and the swelling. His nose wasn't even recognizable.

I had put in a leave of absence at La Push High School's English Department. I wasn't going to return to work for a while. Charlie needed to be taken care of. Rebecca would probably want me to do a lot of the desk work that Mike and Dave did. I certainly couldn't do the lifting until after the baby was born. All I could think about was what needed to be done, now. I just wanted to keep busy.

I had baby clothes to put away and a baby room to paint and baby furniture to assemble and I had to do something with Mike's things. I couldn't stand to give them away, but I found myself fawning over them, holding them and remembering when he got a shot glass with me in Port Angeles, when I had Sex on the Beach with him at a tacky tourist trap bar or a candle I had lit when I seduced him the night I got pregnant. The swan-shaped tattoo he had on his right arm for me when we got married that he had drawn himself that was up on our refrigerator on a magnet. His clothes- I hadn't even picked out this outfit for today because I hated opening our closet, seeing his things. We had gone as Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood at Alice's Halloween Party, complete with the hat and whip. The Indiana Jones fedora was on the top shelf of our closet, it stared down at me, challenging me. Forget his "man cave." I spent as little time as I could in there, now. All his Indiana Jones and Star Wars movie posters, his sports pendants. His DVD sound system he spent an entire weekend cursing over and putting together, making me laugh when he hit his thumb with the hammer while hanging the speakers, when he cried a string of profanities. All his DVDs and CDs, his obsession with Weezer, his talking Cartman doll from South Park that I found tasteless but he found hysterical and quoted all the time. The couch smelled like him; it smelled like the beer he sometimes spilled on it and the cigarettes he sometimes sneaked outside in the garage, and would come in and swear he wasn't smoking, but the scent clung to his clothing. You know, smoking will kill you, Mike. I shuddered at those words. How stupid had I been to say something so carelessly?

Rebecca looked almost dead every time I saw her. Both her husband and her son in one night. She wasn't much better than me. Renée and Phil came up from Florida to see me and help me through this.

Charlie was still in the hospital. He couldn't do much for himself, he was in so much pain, still. Angela guided me back to Phil's rental car. The whole thing was over; the visitation, the funeral, all the food that was arriving at my house. Renée and Phil took me back to my house.

Angela met me at home helped me get out of my dress. When I got downstairs, Renée was baking a casserole that the Lutheran Women's group had made for me and put in the freezer. Phil had the TV on, watching ESPN.

"Sweetheart, I'm making dinner," Renée said. "You need to eat, being pregnant and all." She was acting like Mike was on a business trip or something.

"I know," I said. I had taken down all the offending pictures of Mike in the kitchen and bedroom. They all made me cry. She set down a plate of rolls in front of Angela and me.

"Here, you get first pick," Angela said, nudging the plate towards me.

I reached for it, although my manners were suffering since my husband's death. I took one of the rolls and bit into it. It didn't taste like anything to me. I heard the front door open. Alice and Jasper were here, finally.

"Hi, Bella," Alice called. She came through to the kitchen. "We brought Edward."

I stood up as Dr. Cullen came through the door. "Dr. Cullen," I began.

"Sorry, I know we didn't ask, he's just off today," Alice said. "He came to the funeral and was just going to go home and watch TV, so I thought it would be good for him to come and be with people for once."

He came to Mike's funeral? How many doctors did that? Why would he do that? "You'll have to forgive me, I'm not up for entertaining this evening, Dr. Cullen," I said.

"You can call me Edward," he said.

"Edward," I repeated. I had to remind myself that Edward tried to save my husband's life. I wanted to lash out at him, but it wasn't logical to do so.

"That's quite understandable, Mrs. Newton," he replied.

"As long as we're on a first-name basis, it's Bella," I said.

"I've always found that to be a lovely name," he said. Stuck up, I thought bitterly. You killed my husband.

I simply sat back down. Mike used to always tell me how my name meant Beautiful Swan in high school. I always rolled my eyes at that.

"… you'll have to excuse her, I'm her mother, Renée, would you like something to eat, Edward?" Renée was saying.

"Sure," Edward said. I played with the cheap Formica counter tops in our rented house's kitchen with my pinkie finger while Alice introduced Edward to everyone as they arrived. My thoughts all blended together into thoughts about Mike. My mind ran a mile a minute.

I stayed in the kitchen, not wanting to go into the living room when everybody was done eating. Renée and my girl friends stayed with me. We played a few games of cards while the boys watched some sports, but I personally felt like I was lost. I hardly paid attention to my cards and eventually left the game.

I was in a fog. A complete fog. I missed Mike so much.