20.
"Hi Ed", says Lauren as she comes over to where I'm sitting. She looks between Bella and me with suspicious eyes before turning back to me. "Can we talk?"
"Yeah. Sure", I tell her.
I follow her to the front of the house and wait for her to speak. "I got back three days ago", she says. "I feel so terrible about missing the funeral."
"Rose would have understood." My sister wouldn't have wanted her best friend to rush back to town during finals to simply attend her funeral. No, Rosalie wasn't that selfish.
She sniffs. "I know… But that's not what I want to talk about."
"Lauren, you can tell me anything. Maybe you'll feel better by letting go of whatever's on your mind."
"The day Rosalie and Emmett died", she began. "They were fighting. Oh and it wasn't a small sort of fight. They'd been arguing since you left on your trip."
I didn't know that. "Who told you that?"
"Rosalie. We might not get to see each other all the time, but we always stayed in touch through calls every now and then."
"I see. What were they fighting about?"
"Emmett told her that as soon you'd be back, he wanted to propose to her and Rose, she got so angry! She told him that she would never marry a guy she didn't love."
Now, that can't be right. My sister and Emmett weren't a couple after Masen was born but everyone, including myself, knew that they loved each other and one day, they'd get married. When they were ready for that. Why would Rosalie get upset about that?
"She said that she wanted to see the world, go to different places, date other men and enjoy before she even considered settling down. Em tried to convince her that they could do all those things together, except for dating other men….. He wanted them to be a real family", continued Lauren.
I feel terrible. Emmett always thought that he wasn't truly a part of our family. He said that Rose, Masen and I were blood related while he was simply my nephew's father. He called himself an outsider. He felt as if he never fit in with him.
Oh Em, if you only knew that I've never considered you as an outsider. Neither has Rosalie. You're family to us. You're one of us.
"Rosalie thought that they were already a family", I add. "She didn't want anything to change."
Lauren nods. "That's right. But Edward, what I'm trying to say here is that Rosalie did love Emmett but she didn't want to tie him down to her. She said that he had so much potential to become something more than a small town mechanic."
"She wanted him to have a choice."
So what do ya feel about Rose and Em? Sad, right?