"When a child first catches adults out – when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just – his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing."

― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

19

"How was Japanese?" Alice asked, opening the door to me.

"Delicious."

"I'm not talking about the fucking food, Bella."

"I know."

We giggled, just like teenagers again, except the look that passed between us when we fell silent had never been there when we were younger. Rose would have loved this conversation. She hugged me with one arm then led me to the couch. There were Chinese food boxes and chopsticks on the coffee table.

Jasper was starting to do a few more nights at the restaurant to relieve James, who had been covering for him. There was definitely a point at which we all felt we couldn't push the generosity of time that people had given us. Alice and Charlie were both going back to work next week. I had my meetings the week after. No matter what you told yourself, it still irked that going back to things you had put a hold on felt too much like moving on. It was like I needed a badge so everyone would know I wasn't a bad person. I'm at work, but I swear I haven't forgotten what happened. I'm going on a date, but I promise I'm still grieving for you. I probably didn't need a badge to tell people. I'm pretty sure it was all over my face.

Japanese had been delicious, in multiple ways. I was finally letting myself look at Edward how I wanted to, without feeling guilty. We didn't talk about what I'd said; we just had casual conversation like friends would. Friends who checked each other out pretty blatantly. It was a good start to seeing where this would go. I would try not to hold back or deny him something just because I thought it wasn't any good for him. Who was I to decide that on his behalf? Progress. I was making progress.

"Good to see you eating again. You were wasting away; I thought I was going to have to start drip feeding you in your sleep soon," Alice said through a mouthful of vegetables, gesturing to me with her chopsticks.

"Everything lost its appeal."

"I know exactly what you mean, I just didn't have an option with Jasper force-feeding me each day."

"He's a good man, Ali."

"The best." Her sincerity with anything regarding Jasper was a wonderful thing. I was starting to hope that I could have something similar some day.

"I got Emmett to agree to see a counselor next week. He can't get the crash out of his head. He screams at night sometimes. To be honest, we wake each other up with our panics and screams. For once, Ben is the best sleeper in the house."

Alice had frozen mid-mouthful, worry in her eyes.

"You didn't tell me."

"It's pretty awful. I didn't really want to. The actual crash is something he doesn't want to burden us with, so I told him he needed to get it out with someone else."

"That's good. And you – you'll talk to me?"

"Always."

We ate quietly for a bit. The TV was on mute and Counting Crows were on the CD player. My sisters and their generational music identifiers. My vast range of music taste was definitely thanks to them.

"I was thinking about Renee after her no-show at the sentencing."

Alice groaned. "Me too."

"Mrs. Mallory from the shop next to hers in Phoenix called to see how the family was doing. I haven't been there in ten years, and she still wanted to check in. She told me Renee's business is in the toilet. Apparently Renee is never there anyway, always off fluffing with cappuccinos and appointments and whatever the fuck it is that man has her doing. But she said he's run it in to the ground. The young girl they got to work for them told Mrs. Mallory the dickhead skims the till and doesn't pay the bills. Reckons the IRS are sniffing around."

"Well that's not a surprise, is it? We're outsiders, and even we could tell all of that from the shit they spin when they talk about how much money they've got. She's always known how to spend. Whether it was Charlie's money before the divorce or the settlement funds after. She pissed away Poppa's inheritance decorating her fucking house. Living beyond her means is Renee's forte."

"Yeah, but of course the outcome of this is always going to be worse for her than for him. He's not legally tied to it. She'll be the one investigated, bankrupted, and out on her ass. Just watch, he'll drop her faster than a flaming turd when he can't get anything more out of being with her. It's not like it's about love or sex. He's always gotten that gratification from hookers, not her."

"She'll never see his faults through the wool he's pulled over her eyes," Alice responded. "I had no idea emotional abuse could be so powerful. She used to know deep down that she chose wrong, and if she weren't so pigheaded about sticking by her decision, I'm sure she would have gotten out. She didn't want everyone else to see that she'd made a mistake. So instead she pretends it's perfect and that she's untouchable. "

"Every day I'm just waiting for everything to implode around her. And it sounds terrible saying I'm just waiting for it, but we're powerless to stop it happening. We've told her time and time again that that man will destroy her. She thinks we just hate him because he's not Charlie. She can't see that we hate him because he's a bad person. He's ruined her. If she'd left Charlie and stood on her own two feet, I might have respected that. But she sold her soul to a devil. He's brainwashed her, and piece-by-piece, he's picking her life apart. Eventually he'll take everything she's got and leave her for the crows."

If there was one thing we were good at talking about and analyzing, it was Renee – though we tried not to waste our breath too often. Despite her being completely baffling, it was all pretty fucking obvious. It was nothing we hadn't discussed before, the evidence against the man she'd left our father for stacking up year by year. From the drunken display at one of Alice's birthdays, after which he at least had the sense to not come around us anymore, to the time Emmett saw him picking up a hooker when Renee was in Seattle with him, to the colleague of Charlie's who told us of the three woman he'd played, scammed, abused, and deserted before our mother. He was a real piece of work, and there wasn't a thing we could say to Renee to get her to see it.