Author's Notes (February 15, 2012): Sorry about the delay. A terrible combination of real-life business and perfectionism prevented me from getting it out any sooner. As always, Aleeab4u, duskwatcher2153, GreatChemistry and smexy4smarties helped make the chapter come together.
Chapter music: bit(dot)ly/sotpm32-music
"SINS OF THE PIANO MAN"
CHAPTER 32: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
…and my mouth will fill with the taste of you,
the kiss that rose from the earth
with your blood, the blood of a lover's fruit.
From "Sonnet XLVII" by Pablo Neruda
ISABELLA SWAN
Port Angeles and Forks became places of my past, towns I knew I'd visit but not live in again, places I glanced at in a rearview mirror as I set out on a different journey. A journey that would end in my death and reincarnation.
To say the Cullens had property in Wyoming would be an understatement. Each family member owned large expanses of land—a chunk of the entire state, it seemed—under an LLC. It was on Emmett's piece of the pie that Edward and I went to live with the Cullens in a mansion that could easily pass for a lodge and spa—and apparently sometimes did.
The lodge overwhelmed my middle class senses with its contemporary opulence—the first week, I was afraid to touch anything—but I also couldn't help but eventually swallow my pride and enjoy the peace and quiet luxury offered. We were in the middle of nowhere, free to be ourselves, plus hot tubs and fireplaces. It wasn't exactly a hard place to love.
It was where we began to heal after all that had happened with Maria and in the weeks and months before her. I grieved over Charlie when I needed to. Edward composed, and I wrote what came to mind when I heard his music; sometimes I even thought that what I was writing was good. And every day that passed with my pen and Edward's piano keys brought me closer to understanding him and the men and women he regretted killing. He held me in the night when I dreamed of bloodthirsty newborns or James and the redhead returning, and I soothed him when he struggled with the past he couldn't change.
By day, between music and writing, we worked at figuring out where we fit into the Cullen clan that was both family and…something else altogether. They were the people who'd be in our lives from now on, but there was still so much adjusting to do. And not only because I didn't share their diet yet.
But all in all, things were slowly starting to fall into place.
Except for Alice and me.
I watched from the sidelines as Alice learned to walk again with a custom-fitted, cushioned ball joint and prosthetic limb. I knew it wasn't easy; it never would be unless Carlisle and Rosalie could come up with something better. Alice was sentenced to an eternity of vampirism with a human handicap and all the pain and slowness that could come with it. Unfortunately for her, computerized prosthetics didn't go well with vampire brains or skin, and painkillers didn't work through venom.
If I hadn't already known she was going through a difficult time, I would have figured it out from one of the nights her anxiety and frustration bled from Jasper to the rest of us. Sometimes it was enough to wake me in the middle of the night, breathing heavy and on the verge of tears. Edward and I would leave the house to give them space sometimes, or Jasper would silently slip out into the wild with Alice in his arms, a shaky blanket of calmness wrapped around them.
Because I knew it was hard, I kept my mouth shut. I didn't confront her about her text messages to me, about how her meddling had nearly gotten us all killed. I hadn't told anyone—not even Edward—about her messages in the days before the newborns chased us right to Maria. I wasn't sure why I was honoring my promise to keep quiet—in so many ways, I felt betrayed by her and her gift—but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to say anything.
"What's going on between you and Alice?" Edward asked me one night. As always, he was in tune to the minds around him. There was no telling what he'd heard or from whom, but he seemed genuinely curious, not like he already knew the answer to his question.
"Things are just weird between us right now," I said with a shrug. We were sitting at the piano together, where he was teaching me "Simple Gifts." Surprisingly, when it came to piano lessons, he had the patience of a saint. I couldn't say the same for myself. I was ready for him to launch the piano out a window.
Edward looked at me, his fingers idly dancing over a few keys, making a light melody it'd probably take me years to learn. "What's weird?" He squinted his eyes at me, searching, and I looked away, down at the piano keys.
"Just all that happened in the clearing. With Alice." That was the truth, but I knew Edward would think I was referring to my blood and her mindless hunger, to human fears of vampirism, not the elaborate orchestrations and failure that led up to that moment. The conversation came to a close, like I knew it would.
Beyond that one time, I didn't have many opportunities to out her, what with Jasper and her so often being in the woods or in their private wing of the lodge. I thought, along with the pain, Alice found her injury embarrassing. Gone were the high heels and skirts she'd loved wearing for as long as I'd known her; she replaced them with modest dress pants that hid her disfigurement. Whole wardrobes were given away, and Alice stopped designing clothes.
I felt sorry for her, but after nearly four weeks since Maria's downfall, and almost two in Wyoming, I was tired of being nice and waiting to speak to her, tired of trying to figure out on my own why and how she could have gotten so many things so wrong. She owed us an apology, whether the others knew that or not.
Maybe Alice saw when I decided to confront her, because it wasn't long after I'd decided to that she confronted me. It was all so clearly planned that I should have seen something was up. Carlisle and Esme went to Cheyenne for a weekend, courtesy of a gift from Jasper that, looking back on it, Alice was probably behind.
Rosalie and Emmett were in New York, celebrating some anniversary or another; it seemed like they had a zillion dates to commemorate. And Alice, for the first time in days, had been in one of the common areas of the lodge, where she encouraged Jasper and Edward to go hunting together.
Even hearing her suggest it to them, I didn't sense her setting anything up. I'd wandered outside to one of the lodge's elaborate fire pits with plans to read a book.
Clearly buzzing with excitement for the hunt, Edward wandered out minutes later and kissed me goodbye, his mouth rough as he struggled to control a smile.
Jasper complained good-naturedly as Edward lingered, "Will you two lovebirds cool it already?"
Edward laughed and went in for another kiss. I heard the smack of the snowball as it hit the back of his head. Then Edward was running, chasing his maker into the woods, his laugh so golden and free that it made my heart hurt. Their relationship, while still new, was more times friendly than not these days.
I smiled to myself as I opened my book. The fire pit made everything cozy, even while all around, snow blanketed the ground. It was so quiet, especially at night, that you could think you were one of the last creatures on earth. I peered up at the stars through rippling smoke and thought they had never been so bright, not even in small town Forks. Maybe there'd been too many rainclouds. And I wished, maybe stupidly, that my dad could be with me, seeing what I was seeing, but I consoled myself that maybe, if something existed beyond this life, he had a better view.
My reverie was broken as I heard Alice before I saw her. These days, she couldn't sneak around on graceful vampire limbs like some apparition. She hobbled as she got used to the prosthetic limb. Her feet—one real, one artificial—crunched in the snow, then paused; crunched, then paused. It was hard to listen to.
"Bella?"
I forced myself to keep looking down at my book as I mumbled a hello.
"Can I sit with you?"
I resisted the urge to bark, It's a free country, isn't it? and settled with a nod. After all, this was what I'd wanted, right? To talk with Alice. Alone. Here was my chance.
A look of determination on her face, she managed the three steps down into the seating area of the fire pit. I should have helped her, but something stopped me, whether that was my own resentful disquiet over all that had happened or because I thought she wanted to learn to do things for herself. She sat on the opposite side of the round pit, so when I looked at her, it was through coiling flames and wisps of smoke. I wondered if it frightened her to be so near to fire but didn't ask.
Now that we were alone, I wasn't sure where to start, so we sat in silence for a long time. I was morbidly trying to read The Picture of Dorian Grey, but I couldn't keep my mind on the words, which melded together until they meant nothing. Finally, I shut my book and blurted out, "What the hell happened, Alice?"
She looked relieved that I was talking. Sad, too. "I'm so sorry, Bella."
"Forget sorry! I put all my faith in you! I trusted you to get us out safe. You nearly got us killed!"
Alice was shaking her head. "You have to believe I did my best."
I crossed my arms over my chest. "That was your best? Really?"
"I would never do anything to hurt any of you. You have to know that." Her eternally youthful face scrunched up in anguish. "How could I? I love all of you. This family…it's everything to me. I have no past or future without it."
Eyes narrowed, I stared at her, trying to remain hard and cold, like I'd felt months ago when Charlie was going through chemo and losing his battle against cancer. But I wasn't that hardened girl anymore, and my shoulders slumped. "I know you feel that way," I sighed. "But why…" Why, why, why? "What happened?"
"There was no other way."
"How can you say that? Do you really think your visions are that accurate?"
"When I have the same ones, over and over? Yeah, I do." I scoffed, and she added, "I've been trying to change some of these events for seventy years, Bella. That's a long time. This was the most important thing I ever had to do, and no matter what I did, I knew someone would get hurt. It killed me." She let out a humorless laugh. "Almost did, anyway."
"Fine. What did you see?"
"Horrible things," she confessed with a shiver. "But I didn't even know Maria was behind the newborns until Edward and Jasper met. I just—always saw her connected, to Edward, who was connected to Jasper, and you." She waved a hand. "Sometimes I feel crazy. I never see things in order. And sometimes what I see happens a few minutes later, or twenty years down the road, or never. It's all mixed up in my head. If not for Jasper, I'd never get a break from any of it. Everything's always changing while I'm not." She looked down at her legs. "Until now."
She shook her head. "I'd always seen Edward and Jazz linked together. I just didn't know how beyond how important you were to keeping them from killing each other. And I'd always known that once they were united, Maria would come—on purpose or by chance, it didn't matter. She was always wrapped up in their lives and reunion, for reasons I didn't understand, and I knew it was either them or her, because she'd lost it years ago. Someone was going to die, and there was a good chance some of us were going to go down fighting her. I did what I could to keep that from happening."
Her words hung in the air, heavy with their implications. "Why weren't you able to take Maria out? I thought that was what you were doing."
"What?" she asked, confused. Then her face cleared and she laughed a little. "No offense, but you humans have terrible memory. I said I'd keep Maria busy, not kill her. I would have, if I could, but there was no way to actually do it with the newborns around. But I also saw"—her voice cracked—"that I had to try, that I had to go after her, so she'd punish me; that would start the battle that would end it all. Jasper and Edward always had to be together, facing her, for her to die. And I had to be in the state I was in. I knew Jasper would come, and texting you was the way to get Edward there."
"But you told me to keep Edward out of it!"
She winced. Besides Carlisle, she'd always had the most human mannerisms of the Cullens. "I kind of lied."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Alice—more lies?" I stood up to leave.
"Wait, wait, wait, don't hate me yet. Please."
Scowling, I sat back down and stared at her.
"It's just you were going to let Edward take you away that night if I didn't say the things to you that I did. And I knew if you did stay, that somehow led Jasper and Edward to face Maria. That had to happen."
"And you just thought you'd risk our lives to work things out yourself? The rest of us nearly died in the process! You should have fucking talked to us!"
"Do you think I didn't want to? I mean, really, do you think I wanted to have this happen to me?" She sneered, "To go thousands of years as a cripple? Jasper brings me my food."
I knew that. I'd seen the bloodstained snow where he brought her his kills. Once, from a hallway window, I'd watched them, bathed in moonlight, as he laid a limp-bodied deer at her feet, a man presenting an offering to a god.
"It's horrible, Bella. I'm not even a vampire anymore—not really. I'm just some crazy woman with stuff in her head. I can barely walk. I can't run. I can't feed myself. But I got all of you out of there. Believe me, it could have gone differently. Almost every vision had one of you dying—or, worse, all of you one way or another. But I did what I could, and I'd rather have this happen to me a million times over than lose any of you."
My heart constricted at her words. I spoke after the air had cleared a little. "I forget sometimes that you see a lot more than the rest of us." So much that I couldn't even really comprehend it.
"I don't see everything. I'm not omniscient; sometimes the others think I am—or even I think I am—but I'm not. I've never been so scared as I was in that clearing. So many things could have happened to change everything, and by then I couldn't do anything to help." Orange flames reflected off of the blackness of her eyes. "What you did saved Jasper's life." Her voice cracked again. "So you saved mine, too."
If I was to go off of what she knew, she'd saved Edward. Twice. Once from Jasper and again from Maria.
"You can't ever play with the future like that again, Alice. No matter what you think you see."
"I wasn't playing."
"I know. I know you mean well—and maybe you did save all of us with your actions—but I don't want to be a pawn."
"You shouldn't worry. I don't think I'd get nearly as far if I tried anything like that again," she joked while patting her prosthesis.
"I'm sorry you got hurt. I wish we could do something to make it better." It was hard to think that if only Maria hadn't burned Alice's limb, she'd be whole and happy like always.
"Eh, I'll get used to the peg leg." Her smile was fragile.
"I still don't really know how to process everything, but…thanks. You know, for trying to look out for us."
We came to some understanding—that we both loved the same people and wanted what was best for them—and didn't say much else. After all, what had happened was in the past now. If there had been a better way of doing things, we'd never know.
With my book long forgotten, I moved to her side of the fire pit, where we sat together, shoulder to shoulder. I knew I'd never tell anyone the things Alice revealed to me then, about how it all might have been different if just a few tiny things had changed. The devil was in the details, and for the first time in my life I thought that maybe, sometimes, that was where he needed to stay—in the details, in the dark.
January passed, and Edward and I found our place among the Cullens. I wasn't sure when it happened exactly, maybe one morning over the eggs and bacon Esme insisted on making me for breakfast or over a Wii boxing match between Carlisle and Edward, but one day we weren't just a couple staying with them, nor were we just good friends; we were part of their family, intricately bound forever.
They felt the shift, too, and soon Carlisle and Esme were giving us passports that featured the Cullen surname. Isabella Marie Cullen. Edward Anthony Cullen. New names for a new life. We were given bankcards as well, despite my protests. I was too afraid to see how much money I had access to, so I didn't log in to the account, but Edward did.
"You could buy islands with this kind of money," he'd remarked while staring wide-eyed at his laptop screen. Then he'd laughed hard enough to wake Lucky, who snorted up at him from the floor beside our bed. "Apparently Carlisle already bought an island for Esme," he said, clearly listening to thoughts or conversations out of my human range.
I looked up from my book. "There's a Cullen Island somewhere?"
"Isle Esme, apparently."
That was the grossest, most extravagant and unnecessary gift I'd ever heard of someone giving another person. Worst of all, I wanted to visit it. I just shook my head in disbelief.
If private islands suggested anything to me personally, it was that my life had gone from miserable to incredible in the financial department, just from blind luck. I'd clearly never want for anything. More than that, though, I had a family and partner who loved me. I had a future where, at least from my perspective, only the sky seemed to limit me. But even with all this goodness, something held me back from taking that final leap of faith from human to vampire.
Edward knew what it was better than I did. One night while I sat on a floor cushion beside Lucky, eating in front of the fireplace in our suite, Edward laid an envelope down beside me.
I put my bowl of soup to the side and picked the envelope up. "What's this?"
"Something you need."
"What could I possibly need?" I squinted. "This better not be an island."
He laughed. "It's not. I'm told that's more appropriate for fiftieth anniversaries." He nodded at the envelope. "Go on, open it."
I tore at one side of the paper. Inside were plane tickets to Jacksonville, Florida, where my mother and stepfather lived. I stared at them, unsure of what to say.
"Bella?"
"This is really sweet," I started, "but I don't know how to face her." For so many reasons. I'd spoken to Renée twice since Charlie's funeral, and neither time had gone well. More because of me, though, than her. My mother was mostly oblivious. That was the problem.
"You have time. We don't leave for a few weeks," he replied gently. "Besides, we'll only be there for a weekend."
He covered my hand with his, and I distracted myself by studying the nearly invisible scar that ran around his wrist like a string bracelet; it was proof that that day with Maria was real, not only a nightmare. I knew all his scars, and he knew mine.
"You need to say goodbye," he continued, "and Renée needs a chance to say goodbye, too, if this is the life you want."
I puffed out a breath. He was right, of course. I was looking at living until a freaking apocalypse; it was probably a bad idea to go into that holding a grudge against anyone, especially my own mother.
"Okay, but you are going with me, right? I might need a fast getaway car."
"Oh, I'm going with you. There's no chance I'm letting you out of my sight until you're more durable." He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at the strands until they stood high. His eyes flickered over to a window and the snowy landscape outside. "I don't think I should be around Renée, though. Your eventual disappearance will be more suspicious if she sees you with me."
I nodded. "Good thinking."
Eventual disappearance… That was a nice way of saying faked death followed by…undeath that had to stay a secret. I felt a twinge of guilt whenever I thought about that, but I locked it away in a corner of my mind.
"So you're just going to be stalking me from the shadows?" I teased, trying to take my mind off things.
His lips twitched. "Something like that."
"Sneaking into my bedroom?"
"I don't know," he said. "We wouldn't want to sully your good name."
"Sully away," I laughed as I leaned against him. "So does this mean you'll…change me? After the trip?" All the soup I'd eaten seemed to hover at the back of my throat at the thought.
Edward sensed my anxiety. "If you want." Even after all we'd been through together, he was always so afraid I wouldn't want him. "I'm not pressuring you, am I?"
"No! And I do. Want this, I mean. I'm not having second thoughts. I'm just… I guess I'm chicken. About the pain. I know it's temporary…"
"Carlisle wants to try morphine on you. He thinks it could help."
I'd had morphine a few times. It could take you to a pretty happy place. "Do you think it'll work?"
"Perhaps," Edward answered, his voice full of doubt. "We'll try it, anyhow. It's the least we can do." He sighed. "I wish I was human so you didn't have to go through such pain."
The tender and frustrated expression on his face soothed my nerves, and I smiled. "It's okay. There'd be pain if we were both human," I said, feeling calmer. "Everything will work out. I'm sure of it." And suddenly I was. "I'll get through the change, and then we'll be together. Like we should be." I leaned up and kissed him. "But first—braving my mother. Thank you for the tickets."
It didn't matter that I knew I was living my last month as a human. It was like when Charlie died. Knowing how little time there was didn't change how fast the hands on the clock moved.
My past adjusted and bled into my present of its own natural accord. Jacob and I emailed each other twice. I wasn't sure why it happened, but part of it seemed to be out of some sense of obligation and a shared thankfulness for our families' survival than for any other reason. We ended things as they'd begun between us, long ago: as friends. Or at least as people who wouldn't be total enemies. For some reason this mattered, that settling of a human past we'd shared so long ago, before vampires, werewolves and soul mates, the past that was gone forever and probably for the better.
The Quileute tribe knew I had left with the Cullens; they weren't saying anything about it, and I knew that was Jacob and Billy's gift to me and to the vampires who'd helped wipe out the newborns that threatened their way of life. Carlisle said we'd visit Forks whenever I wanted, but the Cullen family would never live in that part of Washington again. Never seemed like a long time when talking about eternity, but I understood.
Through emails, Lauren and I dealt with the loss of Angela, Ben, and the baby we'd never get to meet. As the days flew by, sometimes I struggled with guilt about how I lived when others didn't, about how Angela might still be alive if she'd never chipped in for the trip to The Rosebud, where Edward and I met. I began to understand a fraction of Edward's guilt. I wasn't even a vampire yet, and it already felt like blood was on my hands. Maybe it was.
Would Angela be happy to see Lauren and I were doing well after her death, or would she be jealous of the lives we lived? The dead were silent outside of Edward's music, though, and the frequency of my and Lauren's emails to each other dropped off sharply after our initial grief; we had our own, separate lives. She would be all right when my replies stopped altogether.
I tried to make the most of my human time, and my inhuman family encouraged me—and, I thought, lived through me sometimes. Surrounded at the dining table, I ate all my favorite foods, from lasagna and cheeseburgers, to homemade ice cream and smoked salmon that made me think of my dad.
I got drunk and made love to Edward on our bedroom floor; his cold hands soothed my hangover the next day. He ran with me in the darkness and in the light, took me on a motorcycle at top speed—round and round on twisty-turny-icy roads only a vampire could navigate; these things wouldn't feel so daring when I was like him. For now, my heart raced, and the wind chilled, and I felt purely, achingly alive. There was no other way to feel when I knew my life was in my hands and in his.
With the help of Red Bull and video games, I broke my record for staying up without sleep—and then slept fourteen hours straight until I felt Emmett drawing on my face. He'd given me eyebrows and a mustache in the style of Groucho Marx. With permanent marker. Rosalie helped me remove his artwork while Emmett teased me in the background and Edward chuckled when he thought I wasn't looking.
In a sign of the growing trust between Jasper and Edward, nothing was said when Jasper offered to take me to a ranch to learn to ride horses. I could tell he wanted to ride with me, but he couldn't; animals were too afraid of vampires. Instead, he stayed just outside of the ranch's perimeter.
"Live it up," he told me with a small smile, and all around me was a sense of longing.
When I returned to his motorbike hours later, sore in places it didn't feel right to be sore in, he asked how it was. I'd discovered horses scared the hell out of me, but I wasn't about to say that to him.
"Uh… How 'bout I skip the next lesson? You can start teaching me to play the mandolin instead."
"Suit yourself." Jasper smiled and winked, as if to say he knew I'd hated the horseback riding and that was okay.
Snowmen were built, games were played, books were read, movies were watched, and all my days were filled with laughter. It was the quietest, nicest vacation I'd ever had.
This was how February slipped through my fingers. Before I knew it, Carlisle and Esme were taking us to the airport, where they hugged us before we surrendered ourselves to metal detectors and disgruntled security personnel.
"Even if you've had your differences with Renée, try to find it in your heart to forgive her," Esme whispered as she held me. "She loves you, and I know you love her."
"Thanks, Esme," I whispered back.
She kissed my cheek with her chilled lips. "I know I won't ever replace her—I won't even try—but I'll be here when you get back. We all will. We'll be the best family to you and Edward that we can be."
I guessed Esme didn't know that she'd been more of a mother to me for the past few years than Renée maybe ever had. I didn't speak the truth aloud, though.
Edward and I made our way to our gate and boarded. We were in First Class, land of leg room. I'd never been in First Class. My brain reminded me I'd only be on it one more time as a human—on the trip back to Wyoming.
Human time was running out.
In the air, over surprisingly tasty food, I felt strange, like I was already dying. Like maybe I'd been hovering between life and death for a while now, ever since Edward and I met, or maybe since James' freaky girlfriend and I had just happened to cross paths years earlier. Maybe the last month hadn't been living it up as a human, but transitioning into something else, something between what I was and what I was becoming. Maybe the change had already begun and didn't just come down to venom, but to the choices I was making.
Did Edward feel it, too? He was quiet on our flights, and as we neared Florida, he held my hand a little too tightly.
"Are you okay?" I whispered, wriggling my fingers away from his. "Is it hard being in planes with all these people?" It was hard enough for me to listen to the ponytailed brat three seats behind us. I couldn't imagine having to listen to her while knowing I could shut her up by eating her for dinner.
Edward looked at me as if he was surprised to hear my voice. "I'm sorry. I must be an awful companion today. I'm distracted."
No kidding. "Is it their thoughts?" I asked in a low voice, while glancing around the cabin.
He didn't answer me as he stared out the window. We were up high in the clouds, and it was pitch black nighttime out there to me, but maybe he could see things humans couldn't. "I hope things go well with your mother," he murmured.
"Um, me too…" What's up with him?
"I think I should keep my distance when we're there."
I frowned. "You've already said."
"Mm."
I tugged on his arm. "Edward? What's going on with you? Are you sure everything's okay?" It felt like he wasn't telling me something. I didn't like that feeling. I'd felt it before. I narrowed my eyes. "You better not be keeping secrets again."
He turned and smiled his crooked smile, the one that almost always made me feel like the world itself was glowing from the inside out. "Everything is fine," he said. "Only I'm selfish. I'll miss you while you're with Renée."
Shortly after we deplaned, Edward kissed me farewell and slipped away to some other part of the airport. He promised I'd see him later and wished me luck with Renée.
Boy, did I need it.
Then it was just my mother and me. Or it would have been if she'd been there on time.
After waiting for fifteen minutes, I called her. "Mom, where are you? I can get a cab if that'd be better." I could get a whole island if I whip out my credit card.
"I'm on my way!" Renée answered, sounding flustered and flighty as always. "Promise! I thought it was 9:30 you were getting in, not 8:30. Just realized my mistake. Shh, don't tell. I'm speeding like a bat out of you-know-where. I'll be there in no time."
I sighed. "Okay, I'll be here. Be careful driving, though."
"Don't worry. I've got my seatbelt on!"
I didn't bother pointing out that she was talking on her cell while driving. I just said a prayer for the other drivers on the road with her.
The strange thing about Renée was that she was constant in her inconsistency. You could count on my mother to be flighty and selfish and short-sighted, and sometimes what hurt the most about all of that was to know how little she meant to be that way. Like with Charlie, as much as I'd all but hated her when he was alive, time and distance had allowed me to accept that Renée was just being Renée. I could hate it or begrudgingly accept it; there'd be no changing it. This understanding didn't mean I wasn't bitter about her inability to be a responsible adult, though, and by the time she pulled up in front of the airport, I wasn't sure the trip to see her had been such a good idea.
But then my mother hugged me. I wanted to be stiff. I wanted to teach her a lesson by showing her I wasn't ready to let her back into my life, what little there was left of it. But I couldn't do that, and I hugged her back while crying. She was the only biological parent I had now, and I was about to say goodbye to her for the rest of her life. Without her even knowing.
Who was the horrible, selfish one?
"I'm so glad you came. I love you so much, Bella."
I closed my eyes and breathed in what smelled like patchouli incense. "I love you, too, Mom. Always." That was what hurt so much.
Renée had cooked dinner, which was never a good thing. She didn't believe in recipes, only following her spirit, which was apparently as clueless about cooking as my mother's corporeal form. At least the night was nice. We sat outside on the deck, where it was comfortably warm and Florida-balmy; I could hear waves lapping at the beach and, distantly, the sound of a party.
"How's school?" Phil asked after a while of our pretending dinner was edible. He gave me his polite, stepdad smile with his too-white teeth. He was a really nice guy, and good for my mom, but there'd always been a little awkward tension between us. There was bound to be after Renée told me intimate details about their sex life when I was sixteen.
Phil used to be too vanilla.
"School's…uh, good."
"I bet you're making all A's," my mother cooed. "You always were my little bookworm." She laid a hand on Phil's wrist. "Do you remember how Bella just devoured your Sherlock collection?"
"At least someone's read them," he joked.
Uncomfortable and feeling a little queasy, I looked down at my plate of "Moroccan-styled" food. My palms were sweaty, and my fork shook in my hand as I pushed my mother's idea of couscous around with its prongs. "I'm thinking I'll take a year off," I commented in what I hoped was my best casual tone.
The Cullens had told me saying something like this would be a good way for Renée to deal with my disappearance. I hoped they were right.
"Oh, honey, that sounds great. You need to get out and explore the world! You know I went on a road trip with your father after high school."
I stared at her. I didn't know that story. How had she never told me?
"One of my best decisions," she continued. "We saw the Grand Canyon and went to Four Corners, and Santa Fe—you know there's a motel with a ghost there; I saw it—and we kept on right down to Mexico, but your dad got a stomach bug and couldn't cross the border like that. Guess that was okay—the car was dying." She seemed to finally realize she'd gone on a tangent and asked, "What are you planning to do?"
"Not sure yet," I replied quietly.
"Well, if you want a little money for a trip or something, just let us know. We could contribute a little, couldn't we, Phil?" She not-so-subtly poked him under the table. "We've got some saved up."
I couldn't get past the rush of blood in my head to even enjoy how dismayed Phil looked at my mother's suggestion. "So you have money for me to potentially squander my future, but you couldn't contribute a dime to Dad's chemo?" Or any of those bills that piled up or the tuition I'd not been able to afford when push had come to shove.
Renée's eyes widened. "Honey, it's not that—"
"What, simple?" I stood up from the table, my eyes stinging. "Look, I'm going upstairs. I'll see you in the morning."
"Bella—"
I didn't look at her as I left the room. "Don't."
I lugged my backpack with me to the second floor. I stopped in my tracks in the doorway of the guest bedroom. It wasn't a guestroom, not really. I'd assumed that, by now, Renée would have changed it, but she hadn't. What awaited me was my room, a girl's room filled with girl's things. Blast from the past. I'd never lived with my mother and Phil, but she had brought my Phoenix room over when they'd moved to Florida; I'd thought it would be different four years later.
The giant, white teddy bear Phil had bought me sat in one corner, a lilac and pink, hand-knitted blanket draped over one of his fuzzy legs. Grandma Swan had knitted it for me when I was a baby, and even as I'd gotten older, I'd never wanted to put it into storage. I ran my hands over the worn material, thinking I might take it when I left.
The walls sported my favorite things of years past, including a boy band poster and picture of some verdant landscape with ancient stone ruins and stormy clouds on the horizon. It was a travel poster for Iceland; if you looked closely you could see the lines where I'd unfolded it from whatever magazine I'd pulled it from, maybe National Geographic. I'd always wanted to go to Iceland when I was younger and didn't fit in. It seemed like a far off, remote place, one where I could disappear and not be made fun of for enjoying books more than boys.
I was glad now that I'd read more books than I had kissed boys.
A corkboard was beside the poster of Iceland. Pinned to it were pictures of old friends, some whose names I couldn't quite remember, which probably meant we'd never been as close as I'd believed at the time—no matter how much the eight-, ten-, and thirteen-year-old faces smiled for the camera. A couple of report cards—all A's. A birthday invitation; I still remembered that house party, how I'd sat alone for most the night. I'd had my first beer and hated it. Now, I couldn't remember why I'd gone to the party or why I'd thought to save the invitation.
There was a Christmas card from my dad that I immediately knew I'd take with me. It was almost strange to see how intact my past was, like I'd actually disappeared the day I left Renée, at seventeen, to live with Charlie.
A quiet knock sounded at the bedroom door. "Go away," I said crabbily. "I'm naked."
The door cracked open, and I turned to lash out at my mother's intrusion, but it was Edward's face I saw as he slipped into the room.
"Liar," he snickered. "You're dressed."
I let out a disbelieving laugh. "How'd you get in?" I whispered.
"I have my ways, unethical as they may sometimes be."
"I'll say."
Edward surveyed the room. "So, this is Isabella Swan, teenager. I think I like her."
"She's too young for you."
"Anyone with a Backstreet Boys poster is no longer young."
"Oh, shut up."
He went to stand before the poster. "Were you attracted to any of them?"
"Would it matter if I said yes?" I blushed. That poster had aided in self-discovery.
He smirked as he looked at me from the corner of his eyes. Then he shook his head. "No, it wouldn't matter. They're all washed-up has-beens, and I'm the superior musician."
We laughed, and he wrapped his arms around my waist while we looked at my corkboard together. "Are you all right?" he asked after we'd been quiet for a while.
"I'm guessing you heard the blowout?" Of course he did.
"Yes."
I sighed. "Why does it have to be this way? Why can't I just move on?" That's what I wanted. That's what I'd thought visiting Renée was about. Closure. Getting over everything. Instead, I felt raw, like my wounds had met salt.
"Because she's your mother, and we're all programmed to be a little masochistic when it comes to love." He kissed the top of my head and inhaled deeply.
I touched his cheek. I didn't like to think of the pain my blood caused him.
"I just don't know how I'm going to get through the next day and a half," I said. "What do we do? What do I say to her? She doesn't know me, and I don't really know her anymore. I wish you could come."
"I think I'd only get in the way of things. You can get to know each other again. Just try to enjoy the time you have and know she does love you." He looked down at me with a smile, his eyes warm. "I'll never be far from you, unless you ask me to give you some space. If you want a break from your mother and need me, message me, and I'll meet you wherever you ask."
Slowly, I felt myself smiling back at him. "You'll meet me anywhere?"
"Anywhere."
I sniffed and joked to hide from all the emotions I was feeling, "A dark alley?" I waggled my brows.
"Intriguing," he said with a snort, "but let's not do something like that until you're more immune to human germs."
"You're no fun," I teased.
He tugged on my hand as he walked backward to the small, double bed in the room. "I think I can convince you of otherwise."
"What? Here?" I resisted a little, but I'd never been good—and never wanted to be good—at refusing Edward Masen. "In my mom's house?"
"You were talking about dark allies." He nodded at the teddy bear in the corner. "We can turn him around if his staring makes you uncomfortable."
"Ha. Ha. You're so funny."
"I'll know if they hear anything." He tapped his temple, then dropped his hand to the bottom hem of my shirt.
I helped him pull it off. "It's really creepy that you're going to keep one part of your brain on my mom's thoughts while we make love."
"It's only creepy if you put it like that."
"What other way is there?"
"Just come here, Bella." He pulled me to him and sat down on the edge of the bed…which squeaked and creaked beneath his weight more obnoxiously than any other mattress on the planet ever had in the history of modern mattresses.
"Floor?" he offered.
When I woke the next morning, it was to an empty bed and a folded letter.
The sun has begun to rise, and I feel I should leave while I can. Your mother keeps waking. Try to have a good day and know I am not far, come rain, or more likely, shine. You are loved, Bella. —E
I rested the letter on my lap and ran my fingers over Edward's swooping cursive letters. It felt strange to wake up alone, even stranger to know it was maybe one of the last times I'd wake. At all. Soon, I'll never even sleep.
Imagine all I could get done.
I sighed. I thought I should feel bad about disturbing Renée's rest, but instead all I wanted to do was call Edward and run away. Fuck closure. He could change me in the everglades, for all I cared. He was my future. These problems with my mother were in the past. I held onto my anger from the night before for a good five minutes, let it burn on all its bitter fuel, but it eventually slipped through my fingers. I'd managed to find some closure with my father; I had to try for the same with my mother.
That was that. Suck it up, Bella. Showering and forcing a smile on my face, I began the day.
Renée had made pancakes. It was one of the few things she could actually cook, and I smelled them as soon as I set foot in the sunlight-flooded living room.
Pancakes were a peace offering.
"Morning, Mom."
Renée jumped in surprise, her hands flying apart from where she'd been wringing them seconds before. I pretended not to notice.
"You made pancakes," I said.
"I know they're your favorite." She set down a plate of them beside a bottle of maple syrup on the kitchen table, then pulled out a chair. "Here, sit. Chow down."
Clearly neither of us was going to bring up the night before. That suited me fine.
"Where's Phil?" I asked while stabbing four pancakes with my fork.
"I made him go play tennis—you know he's taken that up too? I swear he gets more active every year. Can barely keep up with him. Anyway, I thought we could have a girl's day."
"Oh."
Renée's face fell. "I can call Phil if you're wanting to see him. If I'm monopolizing your time—"
"No, no, it's not that. A…girl's day sounds good." I distracted myself with butter and syrup. "So you've made plans?"
Plans and my mother didn't really go well together and could mean absolutely anything when they did combine forces.
"I've got it all figured out," Renée said, smiling as she confirmed my fears. "We're going shopping this morning, then seeing a photographer—"
"A photographer?"
"We haven't had pictures taken together in ages!"
I had once hated having my picture taken, but knowing how little time I had left as a human gave me a different perspective. "That sounds like a great idea."
"Good! I thought we could spend the afternoon out on the beach; you don't get much sunshine up in Washington—then…well, tonight's a surprise, my little treat!"
I swallowed a bite of pancake that went down like concrete. We were so out of touch. (Had we ever really known each other in the first place?) I hadn't told her I was in Wyoming. I couldn't. And a surprise? I still didn't like them. But this was the last full day I'd have with my only remaining parent, and I had to try to find closure.
"I can't wait," I said.
Renée dragged me through a dozen shops, her credit card at the ready. She'd never been one to hunt for a bargain, and that hadn't changed; what she saw and liked, she bought, budget be damned. One bag quickly multiplied into several others.
Three pairs of shoes, a necktie Phil would never wear, and one horrid orange-sequined dress later, and we were at the photographer's. Renée had met the portly, bald-headed Francis in a pottery class, and he welcomed us with open arms into his private studio. He had us pose together and snapped candid shots in between takes. I forgot about the orange-sequined dress that Renée had made me wear; I even forgot about how angry I'd been at her for months on end.
We were smiling in the pictures he showed us on his laptop. We were happy—even me in that dress that would have appalled Alice. I asked Francis to send hardcopy prints to Charlie's address, knowing they'd get forwarded to a Wyoming post office box with Edward's name on it.
We returned to Renée's house, exchanged dress clothes for shorts and shirts, and headed to the beach. My mother swung a snack-filled picnic basket back and forth between us as we meandered through cold ocean froth.
"This is nice," I commented while watching a seagull swoop low over the water. We'd wandered to a quiet strip of the beach. "What if we set up here?"
"Bella?"
My mother's tone made me turn and look at her. We both had stopped, and she'd let the picnic basket drop to the sand. The early afternoon sun caught the soft, round angles of her face. Her blue eyes shone with unshed tears.
After years of looking out for her when it'd just been the two of us, I felt my heart jump. "Mom, what's wrong?"
"I'm just looking at you. Sometimes it seems like you grew up over night."
"Yeah, I'm legal and everything," I joked awkwardly. "Just like last time you saw me."
"You came into this world a tiny adult, I think." She gave me a watery smile. "You know, I wish I could go back to when you were little—make better decisions."
"Oh." I swallowed a painful lump in my throat and shrugged. "You…did the best you could," I said as much to soothe myself as her. "You were a single parent."
"Honey, there's no need to sugarcoat it. I've been a horrible mom." She laughed brokenly. "You were always the one making sure my head was on straight. At forty, I think I'm old enough to admit that to both of us."
I bit my lip, unsure of what I should say, if anything. We just stood there, staring at each other and the surrounding scenery. The wind tossed my mother's hair and shoved at my body, as if it wanted me to fall back into the ocean's waiting arms of salt and seaweed.
"You didn't come with a how-to guide," Renée said, "but I wish I'd done better."
My eyes burned. What hurt so much was I wished she had, too.
"What's brought this on?" Why do this now when I'm trying to say goodbye? "I'm leaving tomorrow."
"That's why I need to say this, baby. I need you to know that I'd change so much if I could. I don't know that I've ever told you that, but it's true. I'd have given you a stable home, and a dad, and life with us—like it should have been. You, me and Charlie. Like it should have been."
Her words conjured up so many things—anger and hurt and the fairy tales I'd so longed for as a child. It's every child's dream: that perfect, safe home with two loving parents and no fears. "Why would you say that? You can't change any of it."
"I know I can't change it. But I need to say I wish I could, and I know if I don't now I may not get a chance to."
Something in her voice, the words she chose, made me freeze beneath the sun. My skin prickled. A wave crashed against my ankles, making the sand suck at the sides of my feet.
"We may not be close like we were when you were little," she said, "but I'm still your mom. I know things."
I tried to keep my tone even. "What do you think you know exactly?"
Renée cracked a smile, even as tears slipped past her eyelids. "What I know is sometimes I feel like I've lost you, but then I remember you were never mine to lose." She shrugged at my confusion. "I didn't know how I'd have you—how I'd survive you—but… God gave me a sign. He intervened in my life. You came into this world with a future already set in place—one I can't even imagine."
"I don't think—"
"You were always more like Charlie, but I've known—I've known—since the very first day I found out I was going to have you, that you were chosen. My life was spared so I could have you. It's blown me away ever since you were just a little thing. It bothers me to know I've messed up the time I've had."
What was she talking about—thinking? My eyes scanned the beach, looking for signs of Edward. I longed to have his gift of mind-reading in that moment. But even though I knew he must be around, I couldn't see him anywhere.
"Have you been talking to that guru again, Mom?"
"Don't have to," she laughed. "I know you. You're saying goodbye, baby." She smiled at my obvious discomfort. "You never could lie to me—not even when you were a kid. Just tell me you're happy. Can you tell me that?"
"I am," I replied softly. "I'm happy."
"That's all that matters in my book."
She held open her arms, and I walked into her warm embrace, the one that hurt and comforted—the one that scared and confused me in that moment.
Renée whispered into my hair, "Please forgive me, baby. I should have been better—with you, with Charlie. I know it. I'm sorry."
As we held each other, my chin resting on her shoulder, I let myself cry. No one ever told me how hard it'd be to forgive as an adult; somewhere between childhood and twenty-one, the transgressions had evolved from playground bullying and stolen toys to shattered hearts and broken promises. Forgiving my mother for not being the woman I wanted and needed her to be was one of the hardest things I'd ever done.
But, for whatever reason—maybe just mother's intuition—she was right. I was saying goodbye, and I needed to do it right. I had the chance to do it right.
"It's okay, Mom. There's nothing to forgive."
Renée's strange behavior didn't last, though it still niggled at me hours later. I was dying to ask Edward how she knew I was saying goodbye, if she really did know that. But I resisted the urge to message him and instead lived in the present with my mother.
We spent the afternoon lazing in the sun like we used to in Arizona. When the sun began to set, Renée revealed her surprise for the night. She'd made a reservation for us at a restaurant called The Gator Shack. With a name like that, it wasn't surprising that it was an hour away, tucked in backwater swamps. It didn't really sound like the kind of place you needed to make a reservation for, but I went along with it with a smile.
"I read online they have the best frog legs," my mother told me as we climbed into her ancient Ford station wagon.
"I'll, uh…try them, at least," I replied, trying to sound excited. Frog legs were probably some sort of cosmic payback for all the times I'd unknowingly made Edward eat human food. He'll enjoy watching me suffer through this. I could just see his smirk.
With pop music blaring and my mother chattering away about Phil's latest sports interests and her newfound love for candle making, we headed south on the 95 out of Jacksonville. Just like old times, I was on map duty, an outdated atlas of Florida laid open on my lap.
As I laughed and got along with Renée on the journey, I began to see how painful saying goodbye would be, how permanent this separation was. There'd be no more visiting, no more phone calls or packages or cards or feline-filled email forwards. I'd be dead to her, which meant she'd have to be dead to me. With Charlie, there'd been no choice involved. With Renée, there was.
The hard part was I already knew what I was going to choose, and it wasn't going to be my mother. I'd have to live with that choice. Forever.
No pressure.
I'd become so distracted by Renée's chatter and my own preoccupations that I hadn't paid any attention to where we were going for quite a while. We'd taken several turns, and suddenly we were in the sticks with no signs of life around us. I glanced back and forth from the map to the narrow, rural road we'd somehow gotten on. It was the kind of road that suggested you'd hit dirt before too long.
"Mom, where are we?"
"I followed signs to The Gator Shack a few miles back. I'm not seeing it, though. Oh, and we've missed our reservation—darnit. I hope they still have seats."
Yeah. Darnit. "Wait, there were signs?"
"Of course. I told you they had the best frog legs."
Right. "I think we need to turn around and get back on a main highway."
She flicked on her headlights. "Maybe we'll find another sign. I'm sorry I've gotten us lost. You know how I am."
Knowing Edward was near, I wasn't so worried that we were lost, anyway, just a little embarrassed that he was witnessing our ineptitude. If absolutely all else failed, I'd just call him. With his senses, he probably always knew where he was. And where I was, what with his penchant for stalking.
I looked into the darkness. I couldn't see him anywhere, but I thought I sensed him like you sometimes sense the rain—a force of nature picked up only on some animalistic periphery. Maybe it shouldn't have, but it made me feel safe.
It never came to calling him, though. Renée turned the car around and began heading back in the direction we'd come. It was pitch black on the winding, hilly roads that veined the swamps and forests; the headlights pierced the darkness.
"Bella, do you remember that big hill on the way to Tucson?"
I grinned. "The one I used to beg you to go fast on?"
"These roads are just like it." She looked at me, her eyes crinkling at the corners with her big smile.
"I don't know," I said hesitantly. "It's really dark."
"Oh, it'll be fine. No one else is on the road."
She had a point, and anyway we'd see another car's headlights a mile away. I bit my lip and thought for a second, but only a second. "Okay, let's do it!"
Charlie once said my mother had a lead foot. On another occasion I heard him tell her he'd have given her a ticket for speeding if she'd been in his county, that he had half a mind to call Child Services over the reckless endangerment of his daughter.
What I remembered most, though, was the fun, the speed as Renée and I flew downhill, the way my fingers crested and fell on waves of air as I stuck my hand out the passenger's side window.
Renée pushed her foot to the floorboard, and that old station wagon, the same one we'd flown in when I was a kid, roared its best impression of any Cullen luxury car. My insides lifted with the descent of the first hill; we both squealed on the second. It was halfway down the third hill that things suddenly went wrong.
A knobby-kneed doe bounded onto the road at the base of the hill. She stopped, turned and froze in place, her eyes reflecting bright green as she stared at the headlights.
"Look out!"
Renée jerked the wheel—hard—to the right to avoid the deer. Everything came down to scrambling—to right the wheel, to slam on the brakes, to manage the skidding as the tires screamed on asphalt, to avoid going off the road.
My mother's arm flew out and covered my chest to hold me in my seat as the car popped over the edge of the road. For a second, we seemed airborne. We hit the graveled shoulder and slid; the gravel propelled us that much more, slingshot us toward trees.
A long, thick branch pierced my side window, entered the car like Death's hand. The broken point of the limb stuck into my side like a pin going into a voodoo doll. The car rammed into a waiting wall of tree trunks. Someone screamed.
Darkness.
Somewhere I heard the screech of metal, the hiss and scent of a smoking engine, the snap-crack of wood. I heard my name and tasted metallic blood.
"No, no, no."
I heard coughing, the sound of retching.
"You…came…for her."
"Yes."
"Always knew…guardian angel."
"I have to take her away." A whisper so soft. "There. There, that's it, Renée. Rest. It's all right. I have her."
I blinked but only could see out one eye. The world came in flashes—of stars and a smiling man in the moon, of Venus so blinding and skinny tree limbs that were like fingers pointing out the constellations.
Falling, sinking, slipping away. It was so…comfortable. Like falling asleep, only deeper.
Suddenly, I could see myself on the forest floor, as if I'd stepped right out of my skin. I could see Renée beside me, her features slack and bloody, that old station wagon crumpled and smoking. And over my body was Edward. His hands worked over my chest, tirelessly pumping up and down.
Pinch the nose. A lover's kiss. I could almost taste him.
BREATHE.
But I didn't. His arms were covered in ribbons of my blood as he set to pumping my chest again.
I fell deeper…
And deeper into darkness.
Deeper…deeper…down and down through the crust of the earth, until I was in the core of the planet. In the belly of the sun.
Burning. Not the heat of Phoenix, but boiling water, skin to star fire, flesh to flame. A sting so encompassing that acid must be in my veins. It was every word for Hell that man knew—and words we didn't know and couldn't make.
Then the burning faded, lessened to a dull throb, a simmer.
Some part of me had returned to my body, which stilled and stiffened more with the passing seconds. My heart thudded hard and heavy, and longer stretches of time connected each subsequent beat. Like the slow beats from the night I'd sat with Edward at his piano, as he explained tempo with his usual patience.
Lento. Very slow.
Allargando. Slow, broad, loud.
Grave. Slow and solemn.
Larghissimo.
His crooked smile, the way he turned with mischief in his eyes. "Here, let me demonstrate," he'd said. He kissed me until gravity lost its hold. Larghissimo. Kissing…very, very slowly.
Morendo. Drifting away.
I was drifting. I was dying. I knew this.
Coda. The tail end. Finale.
Silence.
Several moments passed. Or maybe they weren't moments. Maybe they were lifetimes. There was no sense of days or hours or minutes or seconds. No night. No day. No atoms making matter. Just…
Here.
The new world was one of contrasts—white-bright light and shadowy, wispy forms I knew to be bodies. There was Gran, smiling and reaching—not with her hand, but with herself, the very essence of who she was. I thought I saw others in the background—was that Angela? And there was my third grade teacher, Ms. Simmons. She used to sit and read with me during recess, when the other kids wouldn't play with me, the eternally clumsy kid. I'd not thought of her in ages, but I felt myself—what was left of me after the fire—wave to her.
And when I turned, my breath caught, because Charlie was here, too. He wasn't like I'd last seen him—gaunt and sick—but how I liked and wanted to remember him: sturdy and calm, maybe even happy looking.
"Dad!"
He came toward me in the way all the other shadows moved—not quite clearly, as if floating, instead of walking. But when he hugged me, it felt so real, so crystal clear, like everything else I'd ever felt hadn't been real, just some virtual reality to a another reality. I smelled him—the scent of coffee and evergreen Washington air and home. Just home. I cried as he held me.
"Shh," he hushed, smoothing my hair, "everything's good, Bells." He said this as he began to pull away. I tried to hold on to what felt like flannel, but my fingers slipped through the soft material with my every effort. I could touch, but I couldn't keep.
"No!" I cried in despair, grappling, claw-like. "Dad—Dad, what's happening?" My voice sounded funny, echo-like, like I was listening to an old tape recording of myself.
"It's okay," he said, and he leaned in once more and kissed my forehead. He was warm. Real. Crystal clear.
"Don't go," I begged.
I felt his smile. "Not going anywhere. You are, kiddo. You gotta go back, Bells."
"What? What do you mean? Go back where?" There was only here.
He began to fade into the distance, just like he had so many times in my dreams from another time and place and life.
Then I realized he wasn't fading away. I was.