A World Full of Strangers
Disclaimer: All the characters in the story are the property of Stephanie Meyer. I have borrowed them for my entertainment and (hopefully) your reading pleasure. I make no profit from their use.
Chapter 3: The Vote
We are all sitting around the same table as yesterday. Each of us has had the chance to discuss the issue with our mates. Since none of us will separate from our other halves, it is logical that we vote in pairs. Carlisle speaks first on behalf of Esme and himself. Each couple will speak before we officially vote.
"We are in favor of the move," he says simply. "I want to go back to work and Esme wants her family back. I have made some initial inquiries and the hospital in Whitehorse is eager to take me on. Presently, if the residents of the city need any kind of specialty surgery, they have to wait for a visiting specialty surgeon. Their technology situation isn't too bad, but we can improve on it."
"And I have been exploring the housing situation on the Internet," continues Esme. "There are several good possibilities outside the city. One of them has several wings that would give us more privacy from each other. The population is sparse, but the roads aren't bad. The way that we drive, we could easily live fifty miles out and be in town in less than a half hour."
"I know Bella's going to vote for that one," comments Emmett suggestively. "We all know how she loves her privacy with Edward."
Edward and I glare at him.
He smiles cheerfully and asks, "What?"
"Just get on with it," says Carlisle, rolling his eyes. "We all know that Emmett and Rosalie want their privacy as much as the rest of us."
We all look at him in surprise. Carlisle usually doesn't get mixed up in these sibling brawls.
"Well, I've checked out the hunting possibilities," Emmett continues. "And they look very good. There's lots of everything. There aren't as many humans hunting as there are down here, so there will be almost no impact on the environment, even with eight and a half of us hunting."
Everyone laughs at the way he counts Renesmee as a half. As she has grown older her diet has shifted more towards human food.
"I just want to come back home," adds Rosalie. "I miss everyone. Okay, I admit it, Renesmee more than anyone else. But you all know what she means to me. I will even go through another three years of high school if it means that we can all live together again."
"Jasper?" asks Carlisle.
"It's always easier for me when we are settled," he explains. "Traveling means spending more time among humans that I don't know. It's easier to stick to the diet if I have more people around me for encouragement. And I would be happy to live farther north."
"Where Maria can't find you," comments Emmett.
Maria had actually visited us looking for Jasper a couple of years ago. Luckily, he was away at the time so it wasn't a long visit. She had not changed at all, so we kept Renesmee completely away from her, just in case. In the end, Edward drove her out to Montana before she got thirsty enough to want to hunt in the area. None of us would be sorry if we never saw her again.
"Well," says Alice. "As all of you have been making up your minds, I am getting a better sense of the future. Right now I can see all of us living very happily in an extremely cold place. The temperatures up there seem to be in the same range, if not colder, then where the Denalis live. And it's a relatively short distance away from them over the Al-Can."
"The what?" Emmett asks.
"The Alaska-Canadian highway," explains Edward. "It begins in Dawson City, BC and ends in Fairbanks. Bella and I have discussed this at length and we are also in favor of the move. We want Renesmee to have a chance to go to school and have a shot at making friends in her own age range.
"She hasn't spent a lot of time with humans. We will have to be very careful to prepare her, but Whitehorse is so isolated that even if she makes a mistake, the chances that the Volturi would hear about it are very small."
"Very," agrees Alice. "They stopped watching us so closely about two years ago. And once in northern Canada, we could easily move to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories if we needed to. It's even more isolated."
"Which leaves the Jacob issue," I say. "I can't even begin to think what he will do. I suspect that he will first try to get us to change our minds. And when we don't, he will try to go through Renesmee to get at us. That's why we have to tell her first and convince her that this is the best thing for all of us."
"Do you think that he will actually want to come?" asks Emmett. "Isn't he, like, tied to the reservation or something?"
"Technically," answers Edward smoothly. "He should be the single Alpha of a single pack. Ephraim was the last chief. Billy acts as the de facto chief now. As Alpha, Sam could claim the title but I don't think that he wants to push his luck. There are still some traditional Quileutes who think that Jacob should be the Alpha and therefore the chief because it is his birthright."
"I've never quite understood why he threw that away," muses Carlisle.
"It was probably my fault," I admit. "He first phased later than he should have because he was my friend. Then he started to break the wolf pack rules to be with me. He told me once that he didn't want to be a werewolf, let alone the Alpha. But he can't seem to get away from it."
"The individual wolves have a different sense of connection to the whole pack than we do to the coven," explains Edward. "Their ties are a part of their identity. And they don't have the same level of free will that we do. Sam was deeply resentful when Alice and Jasper left, even though he discovered later that was a ruse.
"He views Carlisle is a kind of Alpha. And the idea that they would have subverted his will in that way was incomprehensible. And he has the power to give a mandate that the other wolves must obey. Jacob only escaped from Sam's pack because he was the true Alpha. Then, unwittingly, he ended up Alpha of his own pack when Seth, Leah, Quil, and Embry followed him. If Jacob ever chooses to claim his birthright, Sam wouldn't have a choice he would have to give it up."
"It was very interesting out on the battlefield when were fighting against the Volturi together," I then add. "I discovered that when Sam was behind my shield, I felt all the life forces of all the other wolves in the pack, even if they weren't geographically, so to speak, under the shield. That's how tightly their minds are bound to the leader."
"You never told me that," Carlisle mildly scolds me.
"You never asked," I shrug. "I haven't had to use the shield since, so there was no reason to discuss it."
"And after the battle I was so caught up in my discussions with Nahuel and Huilen that I didn't think to ask," he says almost regretfully.
"You must be slipping in your old age," jokes Emmett.
"He's sharper on a bad day than you are on a good day," replies Edward without rancor.
Carlisle sighs. Can we ever have a conference without there being at least a dozen tangents?
"Back to the main question," he says. "It is time to make our decision. We will only leave if the vote is unanimous. Emmett and Rosalie?"
"Yes," replies Rosalie emphatically.
"Jasper and Alice?"
"Yes," says Jasper.
"Bella and Edward?"
"Yes," we say together.
Carlisle looks at Esme, who smiles.
"Yes," she says. "It looks like we need to make preparations to move. We want to get there before the school year begins."
"How and when do we tell Remesmee?" asks Rosalie.
"I think that we should tell her as a group, and very gently," replies Carlisle. "Because it was a group decision, unanimously agreed to by the coven. And we need to do it as soon as possible."
"And Jacob?" I ask.
"I think that it would be better to tell Renesmee first and start explain the advantages immediately," answers Edward. "If she asks about Jacob, we will tell her that he is welcome to join us. Rather than allow him to use her to manipulate us, we should turn the tables and let him be the one forced into the choice."
"I like it," says Rosalie. "It puts the burden of the decision of whether or not they stay together on him. I still don't like the way he manipulated us the last time. It would be good to give him a taste of his own medicine."
"There is no need to be vindictive, Rosalie," remarks Esme.
"Let's get off the topic of Jacob Black and return to more pressing issues," says Carlisle firmly. "I think that Renesmee needs to know about the move so that we can begin to educate her as soon as possible about the logistics of living more closely with humans. We will tell her tonight."
"At least we won't have to worry about her wanting to drink their blood," comments Jasper. "She doesn't have any problems when she visits the reservation, Bella, does she?"
"None at all," answers Bella. "We are going to have to get her to eat human food in school though. At her age, Esme will be getting phone calls about her eating habits and eating disorders if we don't."
"I hadn't realized that," says Esme happily. "I get to play Renesmee's mother for the next few years."
"Yes," answers Edward. "And at her age, she will have to call you Mom in public. I don't think that will be a problem."
"Are you okay with that Bella?" Esme asks me, suddenly concerned.
"No problem, not at all. She will also have to get used to addressing Edward and I by our first names," I say. "At least in public. It will be weird during the years that we are all in high school together."
"In that case we should start her off in seventh grade," says Carlisle. "That way, there will only be two years of overlap. It's lucky that human girls mature more quickly than boys. And that she isn't very tall. Although seventh grade girls have been known to tower over seventh grade boys."
"She's so pretty that she's likely to have lots of admirers," comments Rosalie.
"We'll take care of that," grins Jasper. "None of those boys are going to want to mess with her three big brothers, especially Emmett."
"And not with a guard dog hanging over her," says Rosalie sarcastically.
"Alice you've been very quiet," I remark. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that I wish that Renesmee and Jacob were not blind spots for me," she says honestly. "We are going to have to watch her very carefully before we leave."
"You don't think that Jacob would try to do anything stupid?" asks Esme anxiously.
"Edward would have a better idea of that than I would," she says.
"Well, he certainly is capable of stupidity, but he better not take any chances. In a case where the two of them vanished," Edward says. "I think that the one who Jacob would really need to worry about is Charlie. He's always been a little concerned about Jacob's unexplained attachment to Renesmee. And now that she's older, he's starting to think it's creepy. Remember that he has no idea of what imprinting is all about, or that it even exists.
"If Jacob disappeared with her, it would be a threat to all of us. Charlie would no doubt involve the FBI and that would really complicate things. Renemee's face could end up all over the Internet. We want to keep a low profile with the RCMP anyway, but that's not the way to start out."
"RCMP?" asks Emmett.
"Royal Canadian Mounted Police, remember?" replies Edward. "Thanks to Maria we had to run away from them when we lived in Calgary."
"Well, if he does try anything funny," comments Jasper. "It won't be easy to track him because Alice can't see either one of them."
"We won't give him the chance," replies Carlisle. "First we tell her and then the nine of us will tell him. Watching her won't be difficult because none of us sleep."
"He won't like that," says Esme. "He is always looking for more time alone with her."
"Yes, and considering the way that he's been hovering for the past seven years," answers Rosalie sharply. "Now it's his turn to step back. It's time for him to play by our rules. We aren't Native Americans bound by tribal law, and neither is Renesmee."
"Where is Renesmee now, Bella?" asks Carlisle.
"She and Jacob went hunting," I reply.
"We will tell her when they get back then," he says. "Then we will tell him later tonight. Make sure that he's completely gone when you bring her over."
"If I have to chase him off when I'll hear his thoughts, it won't bother me at all" says Edward. "The sense of entitlement that this imprinting thing gives the wolves is pretty scary."
"It was scarier when he told you to throw Renesmee out the window when you tried to give her to him so that you could save Bella," says Rosalie.
"He said that?" I ask in horror.
"That's what gave me the strength to walk back into all that blood," replies Rosalie. "And then to clean her up. She was practically dripping with it. But if I hadn't come in, Edward would have had to choose between you and her. I couldn't let him do that."
"I never realized that," I say in wonder.
"After what you went through to give birth to Renesmee, I couldn't let you die in her place," answers Rosalie. "Once when we were arguing, Jacob told me that I wished that you had died giving birth so that I could have her all to myself. He never knew how wrong he was."
"Actually he does know," says Edward. "I told him once when he was complaining to me about you. He forgot pretty quickly. That if things had been left up to him, there would be no Renesmee. I am the first to admit that even though I was furious at you at the time, I have never regretted the way that you protected them both. Until he imprinted, Jacob behaved very badly with regard to Renesmee."
"Esme helped save her too," adds Rosalie modestly. "I knew before you got home, but once she knew, she was totally on our side."
"Okay, I'm tired of talking about this," says Alice. "Girls, why don't we do some shopping for winter wear on the Internet."
As the four of us go upstairs, I can see that the men are conferencing about something. I am hoping that it is about the move and not Jacob. Until we actually know what his reaction is, there is no way to really plan around it. However, we do need to figure out how we are going to move our lives to northern Canada before the end of the month.