A/N: Here it is, the last of three chapters concerning the birthday. I hope you like it, it's more of Bella and Carlisle talking, and then wrapping it up at the end with Esme and Carlisle. Please review and tell me what you think!

-Wish

P.S. This will be my last post until about mid-July, since I'm going to where I don't have access to internet. Thanks to everyone who is still reading this. I know it's really long. I promise to have a chapter for you when I get back.

Chapter 42: Elizabeth's Decision

"You know my father way a clergyman," I said. I began to wipe down the table, meticulous about every splatter of blood. "He had a rather harsh view of the world, which I was already beginning to question before the time that I was changed." I wiped the table down again with alcohol and then, taking all the gauze and shards of glad, placed them in a bowl. I lit a match and tossed it into the bloody mess. Bella jumped as the fire flared from the alcohol.

"Sorry," I apologized. It was really the easiest way to get rid of blood. "That ought to do it…so I didn't agree with my father's particular brand of faith. But never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other. Not even the reflection in the mirror."

Bella seemed surprised as she looked over the gauze dressing. I doubted she expected to hear someone like me, believing in God.

"I'm sure all this sounds a little bizarre, coming from a vampire." She looked shocked that I'd used the term "vampire". But I grinned. We didn't bother masking the truth at home. "But I'm hoping that there is still a point to this life, even for us. It's a long shot, I'll admit. By all accounts, we're damned regardless. But I hope, maybe foolishly, that we'll get some measure of credit for trying."

"I don't think that's foolish," Bella murmured. "And I don't think that anyone else would, either," she added.

I was surprised. "Actually," I told her, "You're the very first one to agree with me."

Bella looked surprised to hear that. "The rest of them don't feel the same?"

She must've been thinking of Edward. "Edward's with me up to a part," I explained. "God and heaven exist…and so does hell. But he doesn't believe that there is an afterlife for our kind."

The thought made me feel pity for my wonderful son, as I looked out the kitchen window, into the dark forest. Edward's outlook was so bleak. "You see, he thinks we've lost our souls."

"That's the real problem, isn't it? That's why he's being so difficult about me," Bella concluded.

I spoke again, carefully. "I look at my…son. His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him—and it only fuels that hope, that faith, more than ever. How could there not be more for one such as Edward?" I asked.

Bella nodded vigorously. She could see the goodness in him. That's why she loved him. That's also why she agreed.

"But if I believed as he does…" I looked to her. I wanted to help her understand. It wasn't that Edward didn't want her. It was that he was trying to protect her. "If you believed as he did. Could you take away his soul?"

Bella paused. She hadn't been expecting a question like mine, I could tell. She had been expecting me to ask her if she was willing to throw away her own soul. I had no doubt that answer would've been, "Yes, for Edward". But she didn't seem sure about this question. This was the dilemma Edward faced, in his mind at least.

"You see the problem."

Bella stubbornly shook her head no. I sighed.

"It's my choice," Bella insisted.

"It's his too," I reminded her. Bella looked about to protest, but I stopped her. "Whether he is responsible for doing that to you."

"He's not the only one to do it." Bella looked to me and I could see the wheels turning in her mind.

I laughed. "Oh, no! You're going to have to work this out with him." I wasn't about to get into the middle of that quarrel. It was hard enough deciding for the others. I wasn't about to go against one of their wishes. Especially when, with the exception of particularly bad luck, Bella was perfectly healthy.

I found myself sighing. "That's the one part I can never be sure of," I admitted. "I think, in most other ways, that I've done the best I could with what I have to work with. But was it right to doom the others to this life? I can't decide."

Bella didn't say anything. She simply stared out the dark, kitchen window with me, lost in her own thoughts.

"It was Edward's mother who made up my mind," I said, softly. As I stared at the window, the reflection seemed to warp, showing me the bronze-haired woman with green eyes from 1918. I remembered it perfectly, even after all those years.

"His mother?" I realized that, more than likely, Edward hadn't told Bella about his mother. I wasn't sure he remembered. He'd been sick with the Spanish Influenza when she'd died.

"Yes," I replied. "Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Masen. His father, Edward Senior, never regained consciousness in the hospital. He died in the first wave of the influenza. But Elizabeth was alert until almost the very end." I could almost see the hospital room in the Quarantine Ward in Chicago. The nurses, the hundreds of patients, the disease, and death. It was not a pleasant sight to remember. "Edward looks a great deal like her—she had the same strange bronze shade to her hair, and her eyes were exactly the same color green."

"His eyes were green?" Bella repeated.

"Yes…" I remembered Elizabeth Masen and a human Edward, sick, suffering, dying. "Elizabeth worried obsessively about her son. She hurt her own chances of survival trying to nurse him from her sickbed. I expected that he would go first, he was so much worse off than she was. When the end came for her, it was very quick. It was just after sunset, and I'd arrived to relieve the doctors who'd been working all day. That was a hard time to pretend—there was so much work to be done, and I had no need of rest." My words turned bitter on my tongue as I thought back to the wasted time. "How I hated to go back to my house, to hide in the dark and pretend to sleep while so many were dying." That had been the worst part of the Influenza. The waiting. The restrictions.

"I went to check Elizabeth and her son first. I'd grown attached—always a dangerous thing to do considering the fragile nature of humans. I could see at once that she'd taken a bad turn. The fever was raging out of control, and her body was too weak to fight anymore.

"She didn't look weak, though, when she glared up at me from her cot."

I could still see that look. Edward could glare like his mother. "'Save him!' she commanded me in the hoarse voice that was all her throat could manage.

"'I'll do everything in my power,' I promised her, taking her hand. The fever was so high, she probably wouldn't even tell how unnaturally cold mine felt. Everything felt cold to her skin.

"'You must,' she insisted, clutching at my hand with enough strength that I wondered if she wouldn't pull through the crisis after all. Her eyes were hard, like stones, like emeralds. 'You must do everything in your power. What others cannot do, that is what you must do for my Edward.'

"It frightened me," I admitted. "She looked at me with those piercing eyes, and, for one instant, I felt certain that she knew my secret. Then the fever overwhelmed her, and she never regained consciousness. She died within an hour of making her demand."

I blinked a few times and the memory of Elizabeth drifted back to be replaced with Edward.

"I'd spent decades considering the idea of creating a companion for myself. Just one other creature who could really know me, rather than what I pretended to be. But I could never justify it to myself—doing what had been done to me.

"There Edward lay, dying. It was clear that he had only hours left. Besides him, his mother, her face somehow not yet peaceful, not even in death."

I could see it all before me as if the events had happened only yesterday. I could see the human Edward, hot with a fever, weak, waiting for the end. I could see Elizabeth Masen in the bed next to him, already dead, but somehow still holding me to my final promise to her.

"Elizabeth's words echoed in my head. How could she guess what I could do? Could anyone really want that for her son?

"I looked at Edward. Sick as he was, he was still beautiful. There was something pure and good about his face. The kind of face I would have wanted my son to have.

"After all those years of indecision, I simply acted on a whim. I wheeled his mother to the morgue first, and then I came back for him. No one noticed that he was still breathing. There weren't enough hands, enough eyes, to keep track of half of what the patients needed. The morgue was empty—of the living, at least, I stole him out the back door, and carried him across the rooftops back to my home.

"I wasn't sure what had to be done. I settled for recreating the wounds I'd received myself, so many centuries earlier in London. I felt bad about that later. It was more painful and lingering than necessary.

"I wasn't sorry, though. I've never been sorry that I saved Edward." I sighed and shook my head, bringing my mind back to the present. I smiled at Bella. I was glad for the bit of time I'd spent with her, even though it was at the expense of her health and her birthday party. "I suppose I should take you home now."

"I'll do that." Edward walked in from the dining room. His expression was cool, but almost one hundred years of living with Edward told me, right away, something was extremely wrong. Something bigger than this accident.

Edward, are you sure? I don't have a problem with taking Bella home.

"Carlisle can take me," Bella said, as if she's read my thoughts rather than Edward.

"I'm fine," Edward replied to both of us. "You'll need to change anyway. You'd give Charlie a heart attack the way you look. I'll have Alice get you something."

I watched Edward as he left. Something was definitely wrong. Something bigger.

Bella picked p on Edward's mood. "He's very upset," she said to me, anxious.

"Yes," I agreed. "Tonight is exactly the kind of thing that he fears the most. You being put in danger because of what we are."

"It's not his fault."

"It's not yours, either."

Bella looked down, not meeting my gaze. I smiled and moved to help her stand before escorting her back to the living room. My Esme was mopping the floor with bleach, the guaranteed way to get rid of the odor of blood.

"Esme, let me do that," Bella offered unnecessarily.

"I'm already done," Esme replied. She smiled warmly at Bella. "How do you feel?"

"I'm fine," Bella replied. That seemed to be her answer to any injury. "Carlisle sews faster than any other doctor I've had."

I laughed. Considering how many times Bella must've been to the emergency room, I took that as a great compliment.

Alice and Edward returned, Alice moving forward as if nothing had gone wrong, Edward remaining back, brooding.

"C'mon, I'll get you something less macabre to wear," Alice suggested.

Bella's shirt was ruined. Blood and pink icing stained the fabric thoroughly. Charlie would have a fit if Bella returned home as she was. I doubt he would let her visit ever again.

Alice and Bella returned a few minutes later, Bella wearing one of my wife's blouses that was similar to her original. Edward waited by the door and ushered them out silently.

"Take your things," Alice reminded Bella. "You can thank my later, when you've opened them." Edward grabbed the last two presents (his and Alice's half opened and Esme and mine untouched) and Bella's camera, and handed them to her. He was being very quiet, which, for my son, was never a good sign.

"Goodnight Bella," I said. "Take care of that cut. You don't want to get an infection."

Bella nodded, then turned to Esme. "I'm sorry."

"Everything is fine, dear," Esme assured her. "Have a goodnight. And happy birthday."

"Thank you."

Esme and I watched as Edward and Bella left in her truck.

"We're going to have to speak as a family when Edward get's home," I told her.

Esme nodded her agreement. "It's unfortunate, that such a happy day should be ruined. I feel so horrible."

I kissed her forehead gently. "It was an accident."

"But Edward will see it as his fault. And so will Jasper."

I would've liked to think otherwise, but I knew Esme was right. This accident would have consequences. Far-reaching consequences.