Chapter Nineteen: My Mother's Child
Jasper didn't stay long. Just long enough to see that his girls did indeed have things under control.
And then he left.
And we followed not long after.
Alice wanted to do some shopping.
It was what she said...
But I think it was really just an excuse to drag me out of the house.
To get my mind off of Edward being gone...
It didn't work.
The absence of him is everywhere.
In the silence.
In the noise.
In every drop of rain.
In the cold air that accompanies it.
And the gloom.
In the sun that tries - but fails miserably - to peek through it all.
Like me.
I'm trying. Remind myself constantly that it wasn't me he left. That he just had somewhere he needed to be. Something else he needed to take care of. Someone else who needed him...
I'm trying.
Telling myself over and over and over again that we're fine. Better than fine. Just like I told Alice.
Really trying...
But like the sun, I'm failing miserably.
To peek through the gloom that has settled its relentless self on my heart.
And my mind that can't form a clear, untortured thought.
Or my eyes, that can't seem to find a clear path in front of me. "I'm sorry, sweetheart."
The little girl I just nearly knocked down looks up at me with strangely familiar eyes. "That's okay. I bump into stuff all the time. And people. My dad says I get it from my mom. He says our heads are always in the clouds and our feet get confused without them."
"Well, maybe that's what happened to me when I bumped into you," I tell her, unable to take my eyes from her face.
"Probably," she says with a confident nod of her head.
"Alexandra!" a woman calls out suddenly, sending an eerie chill through me. "Where are you, baby?"
"Coming!" the little girl calls back and then smiles at me. "That's my mom. I was supposed to stay where she could see me, but the book I wanted was over here where she couldn't."
She holds it up as she tells me this. It's one of mine.
And I'm just about to tell her that, and ask her if she'd like me to write something in it for her, when the woman's voice calls out again, taking mine from me. "Alexandra! Hurry, baby, Daddy's waiting for us!"
"I have to go now! Bye!" the little girl says, and runs off with a wave.
But I don't want her to go.
Her, who I follow.
Her, with the eyes and the face I know.
Don't want the calling voice silenced. The one I haven't heard in so long.
The one that never said goodbye to me.
My mother.
Who takes my breath from my lungs as she stands just feet away from me.
While I stare.
Unable to take another step.
Unable to utter a sound.
As she pulls the little girl into a hug. "There you are! You scared me."
"Sorry, Mom. I was just getting my book. You said I could have a new one."
The little girl who is my little sister.
Who she looks at in a way she never looked at me.
I know because I'd remember a look like that.
From her.
A look that says 'I love you more than anything in the world'.
Much different than any I ever saw from her.
Me.
The child she didn't.
The child she left.
The child that grew into the woman that she walks past now, her daughter's hand clutched firmly and protectively in hers.
Her other daughter.
The one she'll never leave.
And the one whose face she'd never walk past and not recognize.
Never in a million years, no matter how many it had been since she'd seen it.
She didn't recognize me.
The child who had her father's face instead of hers.
The face she turned her eyes from and her back on.
The face she didn't care to ever see again.
The one she doesn't see in the little one she loves.
The new one.
The one she wants.
The one that isn't mine.
The daughter that isn't me.
…
…
I followed them out of the bookstore.
I couldn't help it.
And watched as they rushed with smiling faces into the arms of a man waiting outside of a restaurant half a block down.
Mother, father, and child.
A family.
Happy.
Something ours never was...
Though I didn't know it until she was gone.
Until whatever we were was shattered with the close of a door.
One I didn't hear.
Or see.
Or understand would never open again.
I didn't understand at all.
And I waited every day for her to come back.
Come home.
I waited and waited and waited...
For something I'd never get.
Waited until the understanding was stronger than the hope.
Not that I did understand...
I never did.
And I never will.
The why...
And the how...
But I understood the what.
She left us.
Her husband and her child.
And she wasn't coming back to us.
Because she didn't want to.
The leaving was all she wanted.
I thought it was too much for her...
The husband and the child.
It's what I told myself.
That being a mother and a wife was simply a chapter of a story she had never meant to write for herself.
Wasn't a part of the life she dreamed of.
Her... the girl who fell in love too young. Got pregnant. And married. And lost...
I told myself she had to go. Had to leave us. To find her lost self.
I tried to understand.
To not hate her for it.
But that was a long time ago.
When my heart was still capable of forgiveness.
It's not anymore.
And it doesn't.
I don't forgive her.
And I can't not hate her now.
For leaving us.
To find herself.
And a new life just like the one she already had.
The one she threw away.
The ones...
Mine and my dad's.
Me and him.
The husband and the child that just weren't good enough.
The husband and the child she said goodbye to...
When she didn't.
…
…
"Bella? What's wrong?"
"What?"
"What's wrong? You look like you've just seen a ghost."
No... not a ghost. She was real. They were real. "Nothing." Exactly what I was to her.
"I know you better than that, Bella. Something's wrong."
Me. I'm wrong. Don't you see it? You must see it...
She saw it.
And him.
They couldn't see anything else.
Anything that made them want to stay. Or come back.
Not when it mattered.
Not when I still had hope.
Not when I was still waiting.
Like I am now.
For Edward.
Whose voice I need to hear.
Now.
Today.
And tomorrow.
And every day for as long as I can.
I pull my phone out of my bag and my heart falls. It's dead.
"Bella?"
"I'm fine, Alice. But do you mind if I back out of our dinner plans? I'm not really hungry, and there are some things I need to take care of-"
"I found you standing in front of the restaurant looking like you were about to pass out. If you're not hungry, then why? Did you see someone or something that upset you?"
Yes, I saw the life I should have had."No, nothing. Well, until now. I forgot to charge my phone. I-"
"Feel disconnected from him. Say no more. Come on, I'll drop you home... if you promise to eat something as soon as you're hungry. And relax as soon as you take care of whatever it is that you need to take care of. You really do look pale. I hope you're not getting sick again-"
"The only thing sick is my heart. But the cure for that is just a charger away. So, don't worry. And I will eat, as soon as I'm hungry, and relax while I do it. I promise."
"Do you need any help? With your 'need to take care ofs'? I could stick around and-"
"No... "
The only one who can help me this time is me.
…
…
I called Edward as soon as I got home and plugged in my phone, desperate to hear his voice.
Desperation that wasn't soothed or calmed when my call went straight to his voicemail.
My message was short and to the point: I need you.
Because I did. And do more and more with every second that passes that I know he won't call back.
He'd tried to call me, too. And left a longer message than the one I left him.
He said he hoped that I was alright, and just in the shower or taking a nap. And that he couldn't get me off of his mind. And that he couldn't wait to have me someplace else.
It made me smile.
But then the smile fell, because he said he'd be unavailable for a few hours and that he'd talk to me as soon as he could.
I missed his call by mere minutes...
And I hate myself for it.
For forgetting to do such a simple thing.
And robbing myself of something I need that isn't.
Edward Cullen isn't simple.
He's the most complicated person I've ever had in my life.
But he wants to be in it.
And I want him to... more than I've ever wanted anything.
Or anyone.
More than the little girl I once was wanted her mother. Or her father, who left me after.
He was there...
I could see him...
But see him was all I could do.
All that told me I wasn't alone.
All that told me my father existed in my life at all after she left.
Her...
The woman he loved more than the child he was left with.
And probably left for.
The woman he waited for to come back.
Come home.
Longer than I did.
So much longer...
He's still waiting for her.
With what's left of his heart.
And his mind...
I wasted a year waiting for my abandoner.
The second one.
365 days.
My father wasted his life waiting for his.
And mine.
Thousands of days...
For nothing.
What he was left with.
What else.
He was left with me...
The daughter he didn't see.
He could...
But he didn't.
Didn't recognize me, even when I was right in front of him.
Like she didn't today.
The daughter I was didn't exist.
Still doesn't...
To either of them.
The life they created wasn't the one they wanted.
And I was left to live it alone.
Something I don't want to be anymore.
Ever again.
…
…
I fed Figaro his dinner and ran out of the house.
Said goodbye before I did.
Gave him a kiss.
And a hug that he tried to squirm out of.
And promised I'd be back.
Because I will.
After I get rid of what could take me from him.
I don't know why I've waited so long...
But I'm not waiting anymore.
For that ax to fall.
And destroy the life I've found.
The box is on the seat of my truck beside me.
I'm taking it away.
To a place I never dreamed I'd go back to.
Before it takes me to another. A place I've never been, and never want to go or know.
I'm taking it home.
Where nothing that's left behind is ever found again.
…
…
Edward still hasn't called by the time I get to the house I grew up in.
It's been over three hours.
And the silence is becoming unbearable.
It's eating at me. From the inside out.
Or maybe something else is...
But I can't let it take over.
It or the something else.
I came here for a reason.
To the place where I was robbed of a happy life...
So that I could give myself a chance at one.
If it's not too late.
The house is dark, but for one lonely light.
Lonely like the man inside.
I peek in the window, knowing what I'll see through the glass, but needing to be sure...
My father is passed out on the couch, lulled into his drunken sleep by the empty bottle still clasped in his hand.
His favorite bedtime story.
His only.
Nothing has changed here.
Though I knew that before I came.
He's oblivious to my presence, just like he's been for the last twenty one years.
Nothing has changed at all.
Nothing but me...
Who turns her back on the wasted life before her.
The one I left ten years ago.
The day I turned eighteen.
The day he watched Jasper carry box after box of my things through the front door without a word.
He never even asked where I was going.
Where he was taking me.
Like the hundred other times he hadn't.
It didn't even matter to him that I wasn't coming back that day.
Or maybe it did...
Maybe he'd been waiting for just that. For me to go away.
Maybe he thought she'd come back to him if I was gone.
Maybe that's why he said goodbye...
Yelled it as I was pulling out of the drive.
Because he wanted me to hear it.
The sound of it.
And the meaning.
That I hear the echo of as I take the shovel from the back of my truck. Feel the vibration of as I carry my box of secrets into the woods behind the house.
Goodbye...
Feel the freedom of as I break the surface of the cold, hard earth.
Feel the weight lift off of me with every new depth reached.
Is this what it felt like to him? Watching me back away...
Did it set him free? Free to bury himself deeper in his misery? In his pathetic hope that she might return to him?
If it had been her who came back tonight instead of me would he have heard her? Felt her presence? Woken from his drunken slumber and...
And what?
What is he waiting for? What was I?
An answer?
An explanation?
An I'm sorry?
Didn't we already have them?
Didn't their movements scream them at us?
That we weren't worth any?
His screamed them at me.
My father's.
The ones he didn't make when I needed him to.
And the ones he does now...
When I don't.
"Isabella?"
Isabella? He never called me that. Ever. Only she did.
And it makes me angry to hear it.
That he broke his silence with it.
So I say nothing.
And continue my task...
Burying my ugly secrets.
And leaving them to die.
So I can live.
Because, as much as she didn't want me...
I am my mother's child.
xx
I kept you waiting all of this time for this? Yeah... looks that way. Shoot me.
And for those of you waiting for For Better or For Worse, it's coming. I swear it is. Soon.
