When You Love Someone
Chapter Four
Alice
Isabella Renee refuses to look at me.
At first I think I might be imagining things –that maybe she is merely tired and falling asleep because this is the last period of the day, but, when I pass her a note, she covertly lets the wind whistling through a crack in the window blow it away toward another student. And, when I try starting a conversation with her like the last time we were in class together, she stares straight ahead, straight at the gigantic mole on Mr. Lombard's upper lip.
Isabella Renee is ignoring me. I am being ignored.
I find myself torn between the novelty of the experience and sheer infuriation. I am, after all, her aunt Alice (Yay me! I'm an Auntie!) , and she should have a lot more respect for me than this.
But, I have to remind myself, I don't know what Mason has told her, what he remembers about Edward that has shamed my brother into an internal exile so deep not even Jasper can sense the slightest tremor of emotion from him.
Something is very, very wrong.
So, after class, I walk directly over to the girl, heedless of my speed, and stand right in front of her where she cannot dodge me as I can see her planning to do.
"You didn't take any notes today," I glance good-naturedly at the empty notebook in her hands. "Want mine? Of course, you and Mason could always come to my house and have Edward tutor you. He would love that. He's really good at Calc–"
"Please stop," she interrupts me in a hurry and rushes out of the classroom, thinking she's on her way to freedom only to walk right into Edward himself on his way to our car as usual.
He stops in his tracks.
She stops in hers.
They stand toe to toe staring at each other for three full minutes while kids pass around them, watching them with matching frowns of confusion and realizing for the first time –the very first time –that Edward Cullen and Isabella Renee Swan look strangely alike…very, very strangely alike.
Human kids.
"Isabella," Edward says her name like it's a prayer, in a pleading whisper so agonizing it puts tears in the girl's eyes and before she can catch herself she's reaching out to him, slowly, and he's reaching back. Their fingers come close. They're going to touch until…
"I can't!" she snaps to reality with a jolt and snatches her hand away before it touches his. "How could you do that? How could you leave Mommy?"
"Please let me explain it to you," Edward begs her, reaches out to her a second time but she's fast in walking away, in the parking lot before either Edward or I make it to the door, but Edward surges ahead heedless of the human kids around us and desperate to stop his daughter from getting in the car where Mason sits waiting to take her away.
"Bella, please! Listen to me. I said what I said to your mother to protect her. I was tired of seeing her get hurt because of my life, because of what I am. There was no other way to save her. I had to leave her, but I had no idea I was leaving you and Mason as well. Leaving your mother was the hardest thing I have ever done, but to leave my children would have been unbearable –unthinkable!"
"You broke her heart," Isabella Renee is crying now, wiping tears and the angel-like hairs soaked with her tears from her face with the back of her hand. "Mason felt it, you know? He felt her heart break inside of her. He heard every word you said, and he felt Mommy grieving for you and wondering if you would ever come back. I never felt any of those things because, I didn't know it, but Mason used to erase those memories and those feelings for me. That's what he can do, did you know? He can erase things. He…he asked me if I wanted him to erase meeting you."
"No!" I can't help but intrude on the conversation now even though I really want to let them have this time alone. The thought of Isabella Renee forgetting all of us is too painful and too abominable to keep me quiet; too much like losing Bella, her mother, all over again only in a more torturous way.
"Isabella, please don't do this! Don't let Mason make decisions this big and life-altering for you. Make up your own mind! What do you want? Do you want to forget your father? Do you want to lose us as your family? If Mason really wants to help you, tell him to erase what he showed you about your parents!"
"He showed her the truth, Alice," Edward stops me from speaking any further, a look of pure determination on his face. "It's a truth I'm far from proud of, but it is the truth. Nevertheless, I will not let it come between me and my chance to have Bella –even just a piece of Bella –in my life again."
Before either Isabella Renee or I can register what he's doing, Edward has crossed the parking lot to the outdated, very used car Mason drives.
It's a Volvo.
I wait for Edward to catch the irony, the like-father-like-son parallel, but he's too blinded by anger to see it. As it is, he bangs his fist against the glass of Mason's window until the boy lets it down, takes one look at his sister in our company, and puts his scowl on.
"I specifically told you to stay away from my sister."
"My house. One hour," Edward tells him and takes hold of Isabella's arm as incentive. "We need to talk just you and me. Isabella will be waiting for you when you get there."
"Edward, don't pressure him!"
"Mason, no!"
But my warning and Isabella's come too late.
In a blink, Mason is out of the car, Isabella is on the ground where Edward has dropped her, and Edward and Mason are locked by the arms, both snarling venomously in each other's faces, long canines poised for tearing at each other's jugular. Edward moves first, too quickly for Mason's young strength to apprehend, and flings the boy backward, nearly catapulting him into a light pole standing three yards away. But Mason rights himself at the last minute and manages to launch himself over the top of the car toward Edward, slashing his father across the shoulder and making absolutely no apology for it.
"That's it!" I announce and stand between them with an expression that dares Mason to take one step toward me.
He doesn't. Smart boy.
"Mason and Edward! What does this prove? What does this solve?"
"Don't you ever lay your hands on my sister!" Mason howls and birds roosting in the trees around us scatter into the air in a panicked plume. "Don't you ever use her some sort of hostage, like some bargaining tool you can use and reuse whenever you want! Is this a game to you? Is that what we are –a way for you to occupy your eternity? That's what our mother was, wasn't it?"
"You have no idea what your mother was to me!"
"You know what she is to me? Gone! Because of you! And I've been taking care of my sister ever since, watching out for her the way you never did! I'm the one who works two jobs to make sure she can pay for her ballet classes, and I'm the one who goes without to make sure she can get her hands on clothes she isn't ashamed to wear in public even though they're nowhere near what she would like to wear. I do that! I take care of her, yet you want to stroll up to me making demands now like you're somebody who matters? You don't mean a thing to us!"
His rant leaves him breathless just as listening to it, the pain dripping off of it, leaves Edward and me breathless with shame, with self-loathing, as we realize for the first time what a truly hard life the twins have had, how they have suffered to be fed and clothed –two things we took for granted daily, two things no one should ever have to go without.
And it's our fault. We let this happen to them.
I want to be furious with Mason for the way he has behaved, the way he has disrespected Edward, but as I look at his hair tousled and too long, at his jeans faded and thin, and at his hands calloused from all the hard work he did to take care of himself and his sister, all I feel is genuine grief and a deep, aching desire to take care of my nephew and my niece. I just want to take them home and…
"Where is Isabella Renee?" I ask aloud when, in a quick sweep of our scene, I see with cold clarity that she is missing.
The horror hits Mason immediately.
"Oh, my God!" he hisses, wrenches open the car door, and cranks the engine without any further thought. "She knows better than to run off! The last time she did this…!"
I want so badly to ask him what happened the last time his sister ran off, but I'm too preoccupied with keeping up with Edward as he pounds across the pavement to our own car where Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper are waiting bored and anxious to leave.
"It's about time!" Rosalie shrieks when she sees us. "We've been waiting on you two for the past twenty minutes! Where have you been?"
"Did you guys get in a fight?" Emmett frowns first at Edward's torn shoulder then at my terrified expression.
Jasper is beside me instantly and I let myself fall into him gratefully, knowing he can feel the panic and grief raging inside of me with no way of getting out without smashing me to bits first.
"Edward, what happened?" he demands, but Edward is already starting the car, heedless of the rest of us, and only I know why.
"Edward, answer me! What's wrong with Alice?"
"Yeah, and what's wrong with you?" Emmett stops the car from making a single movement by placing his gigantic , bare hand on the end of it, making Edward turn a murderous glare on him.
"Move!"
"What's the magic word?"
"Not now, Emmett, please!" I reach out and take his hand away from the car in time for Edward to speed off, only a minute behind the slower but frantic progress of Mason's car tearing down the road.
"Edward and Mason got into a fight," I answer my siblings' questioning frowns on me. "I guess Isabella got scared…or merely fed up. Anyway, she's gone now, and Edward and Mason are trying to find her before…"
"Before what?" Rosalie looks sincerely concerned which makes what I have to say all the more difficult. "What is going to happen, Alice?"
"I have no idea."