Chapter Summary: What do sisters do? I had no idea. I never had a sister. Nor did Rosalie, so I guess she didn't know either. But I guess, watching us, it became pretty clear: they go skipping across the snow, right? Yeah, right. They fight a lot, too.
"Sisters?" I asked quietly, walking beside her.
I couldn't believe it. My whole body tingled in a funny way when I said the word to her.
She turned to me and smiled. "I thought you wanted an uneventful walk home..." she chided gently.
"'Home'?" I repeated.
Everything seemed new. Like I had never been here before until this moment, or like I had been here forever, and here was where I was meant to be, and I just got it.
"We're going home," I said. "To our home ... like, as sisters?"
I heard the wonder in my voice.
Rosalie looked at me as we walked, me, this time, floating above the snow, not noticing it.
She snickered. "Somebody certainly is feeling euphoric," she remarked wryly.
She turned her gaze back to the path-no-path through the forest, a smug look on her face.
I bit my lip, hiding my own smile.
"You look happy, too..." I whined.
But I was glad for it. She had just looked so despondent before, and seeing her now, pleased with herself and my silly little awe, made me so incredibly happy.
"I didn't say it was a bad thing, Lizzie," she reproached mildly.
I stopped.
She sensed this. She stopped, too, and turned back to me.
"What is it?" she asked, concern filling her voice and her face.
"You just called me 'Lizzie,'" I said, and as I said that word, that name, I felt my toes curling, and a delightful, warm feeling suffused my body. "You called me 'Lizzie,' like it's my name, like I'm your sister!" I squealed.
"Hm," Rosalie said, her eyes grinning as her mouth frowned thoughtfully. Then she said. "Mmhm, yes," she said thoughtfully. "Yes, I did."
She smirked.
I started to roll my eyes, but then she shrieked.
"What?" I screamed, shocked and surprised.
"Look, Lizzie!" She fell to her knees. "Look, this is snow! Can you believe it? It's snow! Oh, how wondrous!"
I felt my eyes narrow, and I harrumphed.
"No! You're not getting it!" she exclaimed, then got up and rushed right past me. "Is this ...?"
She was looking at the tree a few feet behind. "Is this a tree?" she whispered, her voice awed.
"O tree!" she exclaimed, then wrapped her arms around it, hugging it like it was some long lost ... something or other, and now I was getting really pissed at her mocking me.
"Rosalie!" I shouted in irritation. "Okay, fine! Enough already!"
She looked over to me from the tree, still in her embrace, her eyes dancing.
Then she smiled.
"No," she said. "Still not quite enough yet."
I was about to say something really intelligent, like: 'Huh?' when she blurred toward me. I didn't have time to react. I didn't have time to gasp, nor to have the air leave my lungs in a whoosh.
All I could do was hold onto her as we flew through the forest at speeds impossible to comprehend, faster than a race-horse, faster than a motorcar, faster than anything I knew.
She ran, me in her embrace, the forest flying past us in a blur, and I remembered running like this, me, wrapped in her arms, and her, carrying me as if I weighed nothing, the day she stole me away from my home in Ekalaka, and now, again, too, right now.
I remember her running. And her smiling, her smiling with delight and joy and an irrepressible exuberance.
And I looked up at her face, and saw the face of a god, untouched by mere mortal concerns, like when to eat and when to go to the potty, and what college you wanted to go to if you were smart and had money, and otherwise what socks needed darning and what to prepare for supper then when to do the dishes. No, she wasn't toying with me, or maybe she was, but she really did look at the snow as if it were the first snow in the world, she really just did hug that tree as if it were the only tree in the world. The World Tree, and she and it were one, and she admired it and gloried in that moment.
Just as she ran now, and exulted in her running.
And then, as fast she ran, she stopped. We had been going through the forest for seconds on seconds piling to minutes, trees whipping past us ...
And now the forest stopped, for we had stopped.
She set me down gently, providing a steadying hand on my arm. I needed it. You know how when you're swimming in the public pool for a while and you step over the edge and try to walk toward the girls' locker? You know that feeling you have of terror that your legs are going to give out, feeling gravity again for the first time in a while, and you're afraid that you'll collapse and hit your head on the concrete floor, slide back into the pool and drown?
You know that feeling, every time you get out of the pool?
And, no, I'm not paranoid, thanks for not asking. Nor (too much of) a klutz, either. I had ballet lessons when I was a little girl, and everything!
... for all the good that it did me.
Well, anyway, Rosalie's hand on my arm was a welcome steadying presence after the minutes of floating, flying backwards in her arms through the forest. I wondered how many miles we had come.
But this thought went right out of my head when I turned and looked toward what Rosalie was looking at.
There was a little natural clearing, and in that clearing there was this gigantic bush, two-, no, three-times taller than me, with fleshy leaves of a green color so dark to be almost black.
It was right on the cusp of blooming, there were blush of a light white-pink color everywhere, all over it, high and low, peeking out amongst its leaves. There must have been hundreds of buds on that one solitary bush. Some of the buds had opened up to very delicate flowers the size of my fist: white flowers with the tips of the petals stained with a breath of pink.
If I didn't have my golden-haired, okay ... sister ...
Oh, my God! Rosalie's my sister! Rosalie says I'm her sister!
I felt giddy and faint and short of breath, just thinking that.
Well, if she weren't standing right beside me, looking at the bush, I would've said it was the most beautiful thing in the world: strong, stark slashes of branches with meaty dark green leaves with so many buds and a spray of flowers floating, diaphanously in that dark green sea.
But compared to Rosalie ...? I didn't even need to look at her. I actually didn't want to. She wanted to show me this, so I didn't want to compare it to her: that would degrade it and insult her.
"Everything is beautiful," she said softly, next to me, "if you take the time to admire it. The snow, a tree, a rhododendron bush, ... a name."
I sighed. "Rosalie," I replied just as softly, but with just a mite of irritation, "hush!"
Nothing like a little teaching moment from Ms. Pithy to spoil the mood!
Rosalie hushed, then glided silently past me, right up to the bush. I wondered if I hurt her feelings? But she didn't look hurt nor displeased, and, as if to confirm this, she turned back to me, and smiled slightly, peacefully, even, and seemed to call me over to her with her eyes.
I walked up beside her and looked at the bush, taking it in. It was even bigger up close, filling my field of view.
"It's beautiful," I whispered.
"Yes," she answered quietly, and this time simply: just that, no lecture and no irony in her voice toward me for finally seeing the beauty she was trying to describe a second ago.
Something about the flowers seemed familiar. I looked more closely at one of the blossoms.
"Oh!" I exclaimed.
Rosalie turned to look at me quizzically.
"These are the flowers you brought the other day, weren't they!"
That's where she got those flowers from! They were so pretty!
Rosalie tilted her head to one side slightly, as if she were perplexed at what I said.
"The other day?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said, "you know, the ones you brought when you brought those blue berries, remember?"
She smiled warmly at me. "Baby, that was yesterday morning."
"Yesterday morning?" I asked surprised.
It couldn't have been yesterday! It felt like ages ago!
Rosalie pressed her lips together, suppressing her amusement. "Yes," she said, "it was yesterday."
"Oh," I said, amazed. That was only yesterday she brought the flowers for ...
For, well, not me, she said, but to brighten up the cabin.
They surely did. The forest floor was white with snow, and the sky was clear above, but it was a bright darkness in the forest, if you know what I mean: everything was bright during the day, but the trees gave the air a heaviness, and seemed to suck the light out of everything, so there was a silence that had a weight to it, making even the day seem somehow dark. Not scary dark, but it was there, this feeling.
But the flowers on the bush, even in mid-February, gave the feeling that Spring was coming, and was even just around the corner. In the silence of the trees of the forest, this bush, just beginning to bloom, gave a lightness and peace in the almost oppressive silence of the forest.
I remembered my dream of the rose, and these were so different from that one, but I still wanted to go up to the bush and touch a flower.
And remembering the dream, though, I was suddenly embarrassed again. Was Rosalie the protector of these flowers, too? Would she push me away if I tried to approach them? Would she throw me across the forest like she did earlier this morning?
I felt nervous, wanting to approach the bush, but now scared to.
"Go ahead," Rosalie said quietly. It was if she knew me like her own sis...
Well, like her own sister.
I blushed.
"I'm shy," I whispered back.
Rosalie was quiet for a second, then she said "I know." Then she added reassuringly: "It's okay."
I looked at her, and I felt myself biting my lip, and I knew I was blushing, but I didn't know why.
Or maybe I did know why. I felt like I was breaking a rule, like I wasn't supposed to be here, for some reason, like this was her find, and she was sharing it with me, something very private and personal to her, so I felt like I could look from a distance, but I couldn't touch, ... or I could, and so easily, but somehow I felt I shouldn't.
It was if there were a spell over this whole little clearing, her private grove, and my intrusion would disturb the magic of the place.
Rosalie smirked at me, but not meanly. No: it was affectionate, gentle and understanding.
God! I wish she were like this before! It was like night and day, and I so, so preferred this breaking dawn after the long dark night of her harshness.
I guess I was looking at her too long, thinking these thoughts, because she very gently turned her body, nudging me forward toward the bush with her shoulder and arm.
I was pushed forward almost into the bush.
I looked at it. It was overwhelming. If it were a creature it could enfulge me in a bear-hug, and I mean head to toe, wrapping around me. It could fall over the top of me and cover both my front side and back completely, it was that tall and imposing.
It was silly of me, being scared of a plant, and I wasn't! ...
... But I was. And I felt a bit shy around it and around Rosalie. The last time I was in front of a flower bush, I knew I was doing something very, very bad by wanting the touch the flower, by wanting to breathe it in, and then when I did do that little illicit move, wanting to taste its nectar.
I knew I shouldn't be doing any of that, but that's exactly what I did. I couldn't stop myself, and because I didn't, I was punished. I was ejected right from my dream, right into Rosalie's very reproving arms as I had to be carried to the potty and had to have my panties changed and why were they wet? I don't know!
I don't know. All I knew was that they were, and I wanted to die from the shame and embarrassment of it.
And here we were, almost in the exact same scenario, Rosalie looking over me, just like she was, invisibly, in my dream, and me in front of a flower blush.
And you wonder why I'm scared and shy?
There was a blossom, right in front of me, right at head-height, and I was tempted to lean forward, to touch it, to hold it. I looked back at Rosalie for confirmation and understanding. She simply smiled, watching me. So I looked back at the flower. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful, so light and ephemeral. A delicate flower on a very sturdy bush.
I reached up to touch it, but my mitten looked bulky next to it, so I withdrew my hand and jerked off the mitten impatiently and tucked it under my arm.
Again, I reached forward, tentatively, and pulled the flower down toward my face.
Just by that slight, light pull, the flower disintegrated in my hand, and the petals fell like a soft snow, drifting away from me as they fell toward the ground.
I gasped, and again withdrew my hand hastily, as if it had been stung.
I knew it! I cursed to myself. I just knew it was wrong to reach out. I knew I would ruin everything!
Rosalie, silent as the forest, was by my side. I couldn't look at her. I cringed in anticipation of her rage at my clumsiness.
"You have to hold the flower as if it were I holding you," she said softly. Not at a trace of anger in her voice.
She reached up, reaching her hand around the flower and grasping the stem of it lightly and pulled the branch down to me, the entire bush bending in submission to her will.
I looked over to her, confirming that she was giving me another chance after I so thoroughly screwed up the first time.
She was. She held the flower, the branch, the whole bush, it seemed, out to me for me to have and to do whatever I wanted to with it.
I looked at the flower in her hand, and I looked at her.
And again, I saw that they were one and the same. The flower wasn't a rose, but it was pure white where the sweet, girlish pink didn't stain the tips of the petals, and it had an ethereal, ephemeral beauty to it, unearthly, even, that only she had.
I grasped the flower by the stem, right next to her fingers, and she gently released her grip.
I brought the flower to my face. It was hard, because the branch was unyielding in its innate strength to return to its original position, but I held it there, and lifted up my face, and breathed it in, closing my eyes.
Talk about anticlimax!
I thought the flower would smell like Rosalie — you know? — like the sweet scent of rose or of honeysuckle, both smells now so intoxicating to me. But it smelled of nothing at all, even when I breathed it in more deeply, I couldn't make out anything. It just smelled like nothing!
And I thought: what a waste! All this beauty and no smell at all to go along with it, whereas I thought that it should be what an enticing perfume should smell like. But nothing!
I was going to let the stem go in disappointment, but as I was extending my arm, I looked at it again.
It was really, really beautiful.
A thought came into my head.
Rosalie had given me ... well, actually, not given me, but she brought flowers to the cabin yesterday, she said.
And what had I given to her?
I pulled off my other mitten from my hand with my teeth and let it drop onto the snow, then, using both hands, I bent the stem back against the branch.
It snapped with surprising ease, and I was holding in my hand a flower nestled in several dark green leaves.
Quickly, before I lost my nerve, I turned to Rosalie and extended the flower to her.
"For me?" I heard her ask in a surprised whisper.
Of course, I didn't see her reaction, because my own audacity caused me to blush pretty hard, and I was looking away in embarrassment, feeling awkward and inept.
I didn't react. I just held out the flower to her.
I felt a gentle hand take the flower from me.
"Thank you, Lizzie," she said softly.
I felt a warm glow fill my belly at the affection I heard in her voice.
I looked over to her, and saw her looking at me with a cautious air, as if I were dangerous, or bold, or maybe ... I don't know ... maybe she thought I would disappear or maybe I was being impolite or ...
I just didn't know. Did sisters do this? That is, show affection for each other? I thought maybe they did, but maybe I was stepping out of bounds for Proper Miss Rosalie? I couldn't tell.
She had to know she had my admiration and respect, albeit sometimes (very) grudgingly given, but ...
But did she know? She seemed surprised at my offered token.
Or maybe she was surprised at the way I was giving it, bumbling, little, shy me.
Or maybe she was surprised that I was giving it, and not ...
... And not, well, Edward. He liked to give flowers, apparently. He gave me flowers when I was sick that day at home.
Did he ever give her flowers?
"Hey."
My reflections were interrupted by her quiet voice.
Rosalie was looking at me regretfully.
"Help me pick some buds?" she asked.
"Okay ...?" I said, wondering at her sad tone.
She smiled at me, comprehending my unasked question. She shrugged. "This flower won't last on the trip back, the wind will tear it apart."
"Oh," I said. I didn't think of that.
"I could ..." I offered. "I could hold it for you, and, you know, block the wind from it with my body."
Rosalie shook her head. "'t's very kind of you, Lizzie, but ..."
She touched my cheek affectionately, and her lips twitched.
"Everything I touch dies."
I saw a bitterness in her look, a self-loathing that I recognized right away: she knew herself, and she hated herself for what she was.
She handed the flower back to me, and I was shaking my head 'no,' but she took my hand, extended my fingers, and closed them around my stem.
I felt the blood drain from my face, and I felt sick to my stomach.
"You're not ..." a voice came from somewhere, I don't know where, because I couldn't feel my mouth. "You're not gonna take m-my ... the flower?"
Rosalie looked at me with pity in her eyes. And now I saw how she said she couldn't take anybody's pity, especially not Esmé's, especially not mine, because her look was killing me with her sympathy.
I didn't want her sympathy.
I hated it.
I wanted her ... I wanted her ...
I was so hurt, I couldn't think.
"Hold it for me?" she asked sadly.
And I said, "Ohkay," even though it wasn't okay, but my mouth moved and the word was said that I didn't want to say. I wanted to say that it wasn't okay, and I wanted to scream, and to cry, and to throw the flower onto the snow and jump up and down on it in my fury and ask her if she wanted me to hold that.
She was rejecting it and rejecting me, and I wanted no part of it, and no part of her, nor her sympathy, nor her friendship, nor ... what did you call it? 'sistership'?
If she were gonna treat me like this, just reject me like that, then she could do exactly what I wanted to do to that flower, and be open and honest about it, just throw me down on the snow and step all over me until I was nothing but a bloody pulp, because at least she was being honest with me, and not this fake self-loathing kindness I was getting instead ... 'Everything I touch dies'? What kinda line was that? It let her opt out, and what recourse did it give me? besides none?
So all I could do is stand there like an idiot and say 'okay,' and because why?
Because I knew exactly why.
Because she was right. Because I was a little chicken-shit. I was a scared little chicken-shit, too scared to stand up for herself, too scared to appear impolite, so I had to take the flower back and — what did she say? — 'hold it for her'? Yeah, right. Hold it for her, because she wanted no part of it, and that was the real reason, and we both knew it.
But she was being 'nice' to me, and I had to play the part and be 'nice' back or else I would be the jerk, making a fuss and being a meanie for raising a stink about her giving back the flower.
I guess, if I were smart, I should've called 'no give-backs!' when I gave her the flower, and when she took it. That is: if I were smart, and wise to the world, knowing that people would do this to me, take something I offered, scared to, but did anyway, take it, and then ...
And then take it back.
But I wasn't smart to the world, and how cruel it could be, even if it wasn't personally against me. I guess that's why I never ventured out into it, because I somehow instinctively knew it would be out to get me if I ever did. So why even bother to try, when you knew that even just trying would be punished.
I looked over to Rosalie. She had turned to the bush and was reaching toward a bud. She looked back toward me as she pulled the bud down toward her, and she waited.
I looked down at the flower, and I was filled with conflicting emotions. I wanted to throw the flower down, hard, and just stand there and pout.
But it was her flower. And it was so beautiful. And it was her look to me.
And it was so beautiful, in the way she didn't plead with her eyes. In the way that she did.
I sighed, and gently placed the flower on my mittens in the snow. It didn't disintegrate, like the other one did so easily, and I didn't know whether to feel disappointed or relieved.
I trudged up next to Rosalie and began snapping buds off the bush by their stems, but I didn't look at her. I couldn't.
"I don't buy your line, Rosalie Hale," I murmured as I worked.
Rosalie pulled down the next bud for me. "I'm not selling a line for you to buy," she replied so calmly.
I glared at her. Which she totally ignored. Which miffed me. She pulled down the next branch with a bunch of buds on them. I resumed working. How many of these did she want? Was she going to make a bouquet? for whom?
I saw green thinking of her having me pick these buds for her to give to someone else. Someone she really liked and wouldn't say, 'oh, thanks but no thanks' to.
That was an unproductive thought. Except for my stomach acid. I felt like I was gonna puke.
I clamped my jaw down hard and swallowed.
I bore down and said quietly and evenly, "I just don't believe you is all. I thought you said not to denigrate myself, and I thought I told you the same thing, and I thought ..."
I paused, looking at the bud in front of me, collecting myself before I got carried away in a wash of emotion. I felt Rosalie's eyes on me.
"I thought," I resumed, "that you would, like, ..."
Collecting myself wasn't helping. I swallowed.
"I thought that now we're sisters, you'd be, ..." I took a deep breath, then expelled these words in a rush: "I thought you would at least be honest with me now."
I shrugged.
And hated myself for saying aloud what I felt. For not being strong enough just to eat my bitter words.
I snapped the bud off the branch gently and added it to the bunch under my arm.
I reached for the next one, but Rosalie's hand stilled mine, and the branch was gone, released from her grip and springing back up into the bush above our heads.
I had to look at her now, didn't I?
She looked so sad. "Sweetie, I am being honest with you." She shrugged. "I'm not denigrating myself, you have to believe me ..." She paused and reconsidered. "No," she said, "no, you don't have to believe me. I'm just stating facts, there's no belief necessary."
I looked at her, and I shook my head. "Rosalie," I sighed. "I believe that you believe what you're saying. But I don't believe it. You can see yourself as this ..." I waved at her. "... monster..."
She interjected. "Baby, because I am."
I stopped and crossed my arms, glaring at her.
She stopped, too, regarding me coolly.
Then she looked contrite.
"What?" she asked.
"You finished?" I hissed.
Rosalie looked down sadly, "Yes, Lizzie, I'm finished."
"Good," I answered curtly, "because you say you're some monster, but you're not, okay? I know you, okay? And I'm not going to listen to you say that you are any more. You don't want my flower, then fine!" I snarled that last bit, not feeling fine about it at all. "But don't make up some pleasant lie about it so my feelings won't get hurt, thinking I'm too stupid to figure it out, okay? Because, guess what? I will, ... I mean, I did, and that just hurts more, knowing you're lying to me, okay?"
I finished, panting, glaring furiously at her.
She glared right back.
Give it about 20 years or so, and it would be so hilarious: two girls, arms crossed, glaring at each other in a snowy clearing in the forest next to a flowering bush in Winter!
It was if we had nothing better to do than be angry at each other. And over a stupid flower that I gave her, too.
Rosalie visibly collected herself, turning her harsh gaze away from me and spoke very softly to me, as if her words were for only me and the bush, not even for the trees nearby.
"I'm very glad, Lizzie," she began slowly, "that you believe that I believe what I say, and ..."
And ... she stopped.
"And?" I prompted angrily.
She shook her head. "Just that, sweetie, I'm very glad you believe me."
"You don't look glad," I stated the obvious fact coolly.
Her face turned into a grimace of pain that others who didn't know her would call a smile.
"I don't like being called a liar," she said quietly. "I am one, Lizzie, and I do lie, and all the time. My very appearance is a façade, a falsehood, ..."
My hands fell to my side as I prepared to give a stinging retort.
I couldn't believe this fight: 'I'm bad,' she says, and 'No, you're not!' I shout.
As she says: ridiculous!
Her hand flashed up in a halting motion.
"Please let me finish," she said quietly. "And I could so easily lie to you, and tell you sweet, easy, credible lies and suck you right into your doom. I can so easily placate you, lull you into lowering your guard, as all my kind does, and then ..."
She shrugged. "And then, it's all over. But what's the point of that, Lizzie?" she added, her anger flaring. "What's the point of lying to you now when all that does is exactly what you say? I have nothing to gain by lying to you now, and everything to lose."
She became calm.
Then she continued, "So when I try to tell you a truth, and you call me a liar for it ..."
"'Everything I touch dies'?" I said incredulously.
"Yes," she answered simply.
"That doesn't sound like a truth to me, Rosalie," I said. "That sounds like a very convenient way to push me away because I just got a little too close to you for your comfort, didn't I? And now you have to find a way, any way to put that distance between us again, right?" I asked. Then demanded angrily: "Right?"
Rosalie just shook her head sadly.
"That's not dead," I said coldly, pointing at the bush behind her that she so recently grasped branch after branch of.
She didn't look back at it.
"These," I said, looking down at my arms.
Then stopped. Oops! I had let the buds fall to the ground in my anger, so I continued, pointing down to them at my feet instead: "These aren't dead."
Then I looked around for my mittens, seeing them a few paces behind me. I saw the flower on top of them, still in full bloom, obviously.
I jerked my chin back toward it. "That isn't dead, and you touched that, Rosalie." Then I added empathetically: "You held it."
"Yes," she said. "All true. Now."
Her admission didn't sound like her giving in, it sounded ominous.
"So ...?" I said, glaring at her.
She sighed. "So?" she asked.
"So," I said, "I'm not from the 'Show Me' state but ..." I glared significantly.
She just glared right back.
My temper was going to get me into big trouble one of these days, wasn't it?
"You say it's a fact, Rosalie," I said, trembling, "well, I just showed you three facts that doesn't jibe what you say. So, show me, Rosalie. Prove it, or take it back, and just be honest with me, okay? You don't want what I can ..."
I broke off.
"You know," I said sadly. "I was just so happy that I could give you something, you know? And it was nothing. And even more than that, you had to help me to get it so that I could even offer it to you, and then you just ..."
I swallowed.
"And then you just give it right back, like it's ... like I'm ..."
I couldn't continue.
But that didn't stop my little motor mouth.
I was looking down at the ground. "I know it was nothing, okay, Rosalie, but it was all I could give, and ..."
Strong, powerful arms wrapped around me.
I wanted to push them away so badly. I wanted to push her away from me. I wanted her away from me in my misery. Why did she always have to see me so weak? It shamed me.
"Don't ..." I stuttered. "Don't sh-shadyfroidy me, Rosalie. Don't hold me unless you mean it."
She didn't let me go.
"You know," she said. "I risked everything, too, baby. You gave me everything you could, and I hurt you. You know how? Because I am what I am."
Her words were supposed to be comforting? She hurts me because that's the way she is?
That's the way she thinks she is! I screamed in my mind.
But I was comforted, by her, by her embrace, by her soft, hurtful words.
"But when I said your name, you know what I hoped? Nothing. No, I couldn't hope anything. And why? Because what I expected from you, seeing me, what I am, I expected you either to laugh in my face, or to spit in it, and then tell me, and what I am, to go exactly where I deserve to be. That's what I expected."
She was silent for a moment. Pausing. Collecting her thoughts.
"What if I did that?" I asked, my heart beating again in trepidation.
"What if you did?" she asked back quietly, holding me so completely in her embrace that the universe was just us and nothing else.
"What would've you done?" I asked into her shoulder.
"I would've taken you back to the cabin and given you lunch," she said, matter-of-factly.
My eyebrows creased at that.
"And then ...?" I asked.
"Well," she said, nonplussed, "then quiet time, then supper, then bed, then the next day."
I voiced my question: "You wouldn't have ... well, been angry or ... sad? or tried to get back at me for saying 'no'?"
Not that I could imagine that possibility. She needed me. I needed her. We were sisters. I didn't realize it like that. I'm not smart, like Rosalie. Nor that generous, that I would've offered that, if I were in her position.
I wonder how Rosalie would react to me thinking she was generous.
And she was scared, thinking I would spit on her generosity?
She really, really was hurting.
"Baby," she said softly, "no. You are mine. Just that. I have responsibilities, and personal feelings have nothing to do with that."
"So you would be angry?" I asked, pulling back a little, searching her face.
She shook her head, her eyes so, so sad. "No," she said, "resigned."
I rested my head back into her shoulder.
"You are amazing," I whispered.
"... And a liar?" she asked sadly.
I was quiet, in her arms, and I bit my lip in shame.
"... It's just that, ..." I said hesitantly, "I'm not, and ... okay, I understand that, that..."
"Shhhh," she sighed.
"You still don't believe me, even now," she said in disappointed tones. "And that's fine, ..."
I squirmed in her arms.
"Shhhh," she said again soothingly, "but the sad thing for me is that you don't believe in yourself."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Lizzie," she said softly, but I heard a decision being made.
"I will show you."
I pulled back, and she let me go at the same time.
"What?" I said, disbelievingly.
"Gather your flower buds, fair maiden," she almost sang the words, then speaking more prosaically: "We'll go back to the cabin, and I'll show you my ..."
She looked away, losing all sense of lightness her tone had previously had.
"My Midas touch."
She smiled mirthlessly at her hollow joke.