Chapter 3: The Almost Invisible Girl

Edward sat at the dining room table with a book of staff paper, writing out his new composition. Their composition. He didn't need to see it written. His mind would remember those notes for eternity. He worried about Bella's ability to recall it: her memories would fade over time.

He could hear Rosalie upstairs tapping away on her keyboard. He tried to block out the sound of her thoughts by conjuring up the memory of the piano notes that had poured from his and Bella's combined fingertips.

Emmett was intruding on his awareness, still wondering about Bella's strange gift and what would happen if she accidentally felt too safe. Edward tried to blot out Emmett's thoughts too, with the memory of Bella's scent.

Alice was going through Esme's closet, frantically. She'd already raided clothes from Rosalie. Her mind was like a beehive, her thoughts buzzed as they multiplied, but she never really focused on one thought. In her head was a writhing, buzzing mass of consciousness that kept her from ever staying still. Edward didn't know how she could stand herself.

Jasper and Esme were of similar mindset. They were both wondering how Bella was fairing with Charlie Swan. Would Waylon Forge fade away as so many others before him, or would the murder bring unwanted attention to the strange family that lived on the outskirts of town?

He heard Bella's car pull into the driveway.

So did everyone else.

He'd tried not to overthink his discussion with his family. Bella had a right to know, of that he was sure. He was also sure it would bring her no relief to know that her whole life might have been a lie.

He heard her enter the house, listening closely to the sound of her movements. He could hear her hanging her coat. The keys jingled in the pocket. Her heartbeat was slightly elevated.

"Edward?" She called.

"In here."

She walked into the dining room and sat in the chair next to him. If she'd had any thoughts of being upfront about her blown identity, they went out of her head when she saw what he was doing.

"Is that…?"

"Mm-hmm…"

She moved her chair closer to Edward, so she could watch him set the little black notes across the page.

"You know how to read these?"

"Yeah."

He finished one sheet and flipped to a fresh one.

"I'm almost finished… But it doesn't have a name yet."

A song with no name.

Bella thought about the sweet notes drifting up the stairs this morning. A delicate wake up call, luring her from bed to find the beautiful surprise of Edward sitting at the piano. His eyes had been unfocused as he called the notes from somewhere deep inside his mind. His long fingers had stroked the keys so fervently she'd been jealous. She'd been jealous that her hands weren't capable of such dexterity and jealous that the hands that once stroked her lips were now touching something that was not her.

She'd slid onto the bench beside him and, even though he could produce no body heat, she felt warmed by the action. His music faltered. She'd thought the musical piece had reached its conclusion. She couldn't imagine that Edward was struggling, until he admitted it.

She'd wanted to hear it again. She wanted to hear it from the beginning. This composition felt like the most important thing she'd ever learned about Edward. This is what he dreamed of in the night.

It started slow and steady and as his fingers touched the keys he began to string more tones together, the tempo speeding up, the sound growing… Bella felt the music call to her, the same way it had when she'd been slow to wake. She'd moved an inch closer to Edward, letting the sound envelop her. She heard it then, the sound of incompletion as his fingers simply stopped.

"Play it again."

She'd felt greedy asking.

She closed her eyes and just let herself feel. It felt familiar, it felt like home. She felt more aware of his body next to hers. The song picked up speed and she felt excited by it, the notes multiplying as his fingers moved faster, she felt joy, she felt love. Her fingers ached to join his on the keyboard and she dreaded the interruption of silence that she knew was coming.

When she'd asked him to play it a third time, he was frustrated, she knew. But desire was driving her now. The desire to hear his dream, the desire to join it.

She had no explanation for what happened next. As he began again, her fingers landed on the keys, creating a meek echo of the notes he'd already played. As she let herself drift upon a melody born of happiness, her fingers began plucking notes that would compliment his. His hands faltered and hers continued, taking his excitement and merging it with her warmth, her desire. His hands were playing again, creating a sound like fire.

"What inspired it?" She asked.

His eyes, the color of molten gold now, darted sideways to her face, and then away.

"You," he said. "I was writing it for you."

"Oh."

He wrote that for me? Edward hadn't touched a piano in a century. His first time back at the piano was to compose a song for her. The significance was not lost on Bella.

He sighed and put his pen down.

"We need to talk about something that happened today."

Her heart beat faster as the confrontation with Charlie popped into her head. Did he already know what a terrible actress she'd turned out to be?

He twisted in his chair to look at her.

"Rosalie's been looking into your past." He said it so ominously Bella felt her anxiety spike.

"How bad is it?"

Edward looked at her pale face, drawn with worry. He'd been dreading this moment all day and he briefly considered lying. He'd overheard thousands of conversations, millions of minds, and nowhere in his history of eavesdropping had he ever encountered the guide book on telling someone they were already dead. The closest he'd come to that conversation was waking up to Carlise telling him he was a vampire.

"Your family's not looking for you… The police aren't looking for you. They think you're dead."

Her face relaxed.

"That's good, isn't it?"

See, I told you that was good news, Rosalie told him.

"Edward, why isn't that good?"

You don't have to tell her about the dead girl, Emmett advised. It might ruin your date.

"The Volturi arranged it so that the day you left prison would also be the day that you died. They didn't want anyone looking for you. There's a thorough autopsy report detailing an oxycodone overdose and it's signed by a state ME. There's even paperwork identifying what grave you're buried in."

"Autopsy? They couldn't without a…" Not without a body. Bella understood why Edward looked so stressed. She started to feel sick. In order for an autopsy to occur there had to be a body. The Volturi had arranged her freedom at the cost of someone else's life. "Oh."

"Bella, breathe."

She did not breathe. Somebody died because she didn't want to be in a prison anymore.

"Somebody died because of me."

"No! You were a child and they took advantage."

Vampire royalty had arranged to have her freed, her death faked, and had her transported across the globe and back again. They'd set her up in a house that she had walked away from without a backwards glance. A coven of ancient bloodthirsty monsters had gone to a lot of effort to secure her a future. She'd effectively thrown that gift back in their faces.

"Oh!" She gasped. "They are looking for me!"

Edward reached his hands out to trap her face.

"Look at me." Her face was hot in his palms, her eyes wild and wide. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you. You need to breathe."

She breathed in and then out.

"We think they can't find you, even if they are looking."

She peeled his hands off her face, but she didn't take her eyes from his.

"What does that mean?"

"They'd be using trackers to try and locate you. Vampires who have the ability to psychically hunt their prey. Their abilities would be similar to mine. If I can't find your mind, neither can they. You're invisible." He thought about James, the ill fated tracker at the baseball game. Had Edward run with Bella, that sadistic hunter may never have found her again. Edward hadn't considered the possibility then, he could only see what James had done to the others he'd hunted. It was a ridiculous gift for a vampire to have, as if their sense of sight, scent, and hearing wasn't enough. As if their speed and strength could ever be outmatched by a mere mortal.

"I need to ask you a question about your family."

"My family?"

"Do you remember ever living somewhere other than Phoenix, Arizona?"

"No. I lived there right up until I didn't."

"Did they?"

"My mom grew up in New Mexico. My dad never mentioned where he was from… Oh! Jesus fucking Christ!" Bella pulled her hands from Edward's and covered her face. She was connecting the dots. "He could speak Italian."

"Campbell isn't Italian."

"He took her name. You think he was a member?"

"I don't know… Member, sympathizer, loyalist? Whatever he was, I don't think it was an accident that the Volturi found you at the exact moment they needed you."

"So you think that my dad told the Volturi that I could start fires with my mind, and they were so desperate to get their hands on me, they murdered a drug addict and kidnapped me?"

"It's certainly a possibility," he hedged.

"What's the other possibility?"

"Rosalie couldn't find a birth certificate with your name on it."

"So?"

"We've considered the possibility that you might not be your father's daughter."

Bella was slow to understand what he was implying. As understanding began to dawn, it felt like a vacuum was turning on, sucking the oxygen from the room. Her face was getting hotter and she couldn't see Edward's face, even as she looked directly at it.

He heard her heart stutter under the weight of a panic attack and he began to panic too.

"Bella!" He reached for her, but she surprised him as she fought her way from the haze.

"No!"

She stood up so fast her chair overturned. She didn't hear it crash to the floor, she wouldn't have cared if she had.

"We've considered the possibility that you might not be your father's daughter."

So that's what they thought? That she'd been raised by strangers for vampires to someday use. She thought of how cold her parents had been to her, how cruel. She thought of the verbal abuse, the exorcisms, the nights they didn't let her eat, and the times they'd hit her until she'd bled. If power was what the Volturi wanted, they'd never have let them try and destroy her, would they? She thought of Arianna: capricious and unmerciful, she'd been outside of the abuse but not above adding to the misery. Anthony, largely innocent in it all, had been confused and frightened by the erratic behavior of the adults in the household.

As bad as the memories were, they could always be worse.

"No." She repeated. "They were my parents. They were mine."

Edward tried to choose his words carefully. "Just imagine for a moment. If they weren't-"

"NO!"

Didn't he get it? Why couldn't he understand?

"YOU IMAGINE! YOU HAVE NO IDEA!"

It felt good to yell. An outlet for the pressure building in her chest.

"MY PARENTS WERE ASSHOLES, BUT THEY WERE FUCKING MINE!"

He wanted to present her a world where everything she knew had been a lie. Except he couldn't take away the pain. The pain had been very real. She could not, and would not, tolerate the idea that her parents may have been strangers. If strangers had raised her, that meant somewhere out there was a second set of parents that hadn't wanted her…Or worse yet, what if there was one set of parents who had wanted her?

This was her reality.

She was born Isabella Marie Campbell to Richard and Bethany Campbell. She'd lit her crib on fire one night and sentenced herself to a childhood filled with hate. She lit her family's house on fire a month before her thirteenth birthday. She spent two years in a juvenile detention facility getting pushed around by girls who were just like her parents. She tried to kill herself with bed sheets. When all hope was lost, a vampire had come and taken her away. A girl had died so she could live. And if she hadn't walked out of the YCYR when she did, she'd have never found Edward.

She'd never love anyone the way that she loved him, but she would not allow him to tell her that her parents weren't hers. That somewhere in the very wide world, existed a family that might have loved her.

Edward watched her cry, tears coursing silently down her face. Her hands in tight fists at her sides, like she wanted to strike out at him. He'd gladly take any blow she could deliver, if it would lessen her pain, if he wasn't sure she'd break her hands trying.

"They were my bible thumping asshole parents. They were mine. Don't act like you know my life better than me because your sister's got wifi."

"I'm sorry," he said.

He had never been more sorry in his life.

"They were your parents."

They were certainly the only parents she'd ever known. The tragedy was, they didn't deserve her acknowledgement.

Alice's mind intruded on the discussion.

Let's call it a day, Edward, the human's got better things to do with her afternoon than cry.

Alice came skipping down the stairs as if nothing was amiss. He heard her plans clarify in her mind and Edward cringed. She skipped into the room, a distraction from the tension. Bella turned to her in surprise, quickly wiping the tears from her face with her hands. Alice politely pretended not to see the action.

"Alice, please don't upset her with that nonsense," he whispered below Bella's hearing range.

You've upset her enough for the both of us, brother. You are going to have to learn to share her… Do you think the rest of us are blind to how lovely she is?

"Such language, Bella," Alice sarcastically admonished with a grin. "You'll have to forgive Edward. He's spent most of his life thinking he knows everything, and you're right… He really has no idea sometimes."

Bella's anger was replaced with chagrin, she blushed in response.

"Oh! That smells good."

"Alice-"

"Come on." She offered Bella a hand. "We have some work to do."

"We do?" Bella asked.

"Absolutely."

Bella glanced at Edward, before accepting Alice's invitation to escape the awkward conversation. She reached out and took Alice's hand.

He watched as she was led from the dining room and then diverted his attention back to transcribing the manuscript. He picked his pen back up, determined to finish it for her.

If I were her, I would decline your invitation.

"Fuck off, Emmett." Edward said calmly, knowing Emmett's sharp ears could hear him just fine.

Bella followed Alice up to her bedroom. It was her first time stepping into someone else's private space, other than Carlisle's office.

She was surprised by the gray on white tones of the painted walls and carpeting. She'd imagined Alice as more of a pink person. She and Jasper had a chaise lounge chair on one side of the room and Bella had no problem imagining the intense couple curled up on it together. On the opposite side of the room was a pair of mannequins and a sewing machine.

The bed that sat in the center of the room was more ornate than the one she shared with Edward; the king size sat in a four poster bed frame, black lace curtains were tied back to reveal a black comforter with a crisp white geometric pattern. But it was the frame that drew Bella's attention. Carved into the wood was an assortment of miniscule stars and planets, and the more Bella looked the more detail she noticed.

"You like that?"

Bella looked back at Alice.

"Jasper carved it. Four poster bed frames were going out of style and the commercial ones were just a little too commercial."

Bella reached a hand out to touch the carving. It seemed too perfect to have been done by hand. Too detailed to have been designed with the naked eye.

"Why stars?"

Alice giggled.

"When we first met, we were much like you and Edward… We didn't have a roof over our heads. We just had the stars. We spent a lot of time looking up at them. Making love by the light of them."

Bella looked at Alice in surprise.

Alice shrugged, unashamed.

"Jasper, if you can believe it, is quite the romantic. All those nights we lived apart, under the same constellations. He believes the universe will always guide us back to each other… I'm more of a pragmatist. We won't ever need a guide because I'll never agree to be parted from him." She glanced at the carvings Bella's fingers were tracing. "Still, it's a reminder of just how beautiful the night can be."

She changed the subject. "Now I didn't invite you here just to admire the woodwork, did I?"

Bella dropped her hand back to her side and looked at Alice, but Alice had already flitted away to the mannequins. There were two, but only one was clothed. A red dress was pinned to the doll. Alice pulled the figure away from the wall and gestured to Bella so that would come have a look.

Bella approached slowly as if the mannequin might bite.

Alice laughed.

"I'm running low on supplies this week, I need to reorder. I did the best with what I had available…" She spun the mannequin so Bella could see the back of it and then spun it back around to the front. "What do you think of it?"

"Um… It's nice?"

Bella was stunned. It never occurred to her that Alice would want to talk about fashion design. She hated to break the news that she had more of an interest in Jasper's woodwork.

"Don't give me "nice" unless you can tell me why."

"It's just… Alice, I don't know anything about fashion."

"You don't have to know fashion to have an opinion. That's the great thing about this century! Everyone can have an opinion!"

"Maybe it would be easier, if I could see it on you?"

Alice balked. She blinked slowly at Bella as if she were stupid, which unfortunately made Bella feel stupid. Then Alice softened her face in understanding.

"Silly, the dress won't fit me. It was designed to fit you."

Bella stepped away from Alice at the declaration. The truth was horrifying.

"You made me a dress?"

"Well, yeah? To be fair on quality, you two didn't give me much time. Who makes a date with less than twelve hours turnaround to find an outfit?"

"I. Am not. Wearing. That."

"Oh, I know. I figured that out on my own. But come on, Bella… You're not wearing that, either."

Bella looked down at herself; dressed in her usual long-sleeved tee with jeans. She looked back at Alice and felt herself getting irritated. She couldn't tell if she was being insulted.

"Edward doesn't care what I wear," she told Alice.

It was Alice's turn to look irritated.

"It's as if you two start each new day with the intention of being difficult."

"I'm leaving," Bella announced.

She turned for the door only to find Alice, with arms stretched wide, blocking it.

"Wait," she pleaded. "Think about it."

"I'm not wearing that dress."

"I'm not asking you to wear the dress… I'm asking you to think about your first date. With a boy you love. A night out on the town. Being seen as a couple. How do you want to remember it, when you look back on it? Do you really want to be old and gray remembering that you wore the same old thing you always wore?"

Bella opened her mouth and no rebuttal came out.

The truth was, she'd never thought about going on a date. When she lived in Phoenix she was too young and she'd always had bigger concerns. When she was in the rehab center, she'd wanted nothing more than freedom. When she was free, she'd wanted nothing more than survival. When she'd met Edward, she'd wanted nothing more than just one more day with him.

Alice seized on Bella's hesitation. She sashayed playfully up to Bella and placed her hands on the little human's shoulders. She turned Bella back around to face the mannequin and guided her back over to it.

"Come on, Bella. I'm not asking you to wear the dress, I'm asking you to think about… What dress you would wear if you had one." She stepped back next to her project. "I'll make it easy for you. Name three things you hate about this dress, whatever pops into your head first."

Bella looked at it critically and found it wasn't that hard to do. "The color. The open back. The bottom is very catholic school girl."

Alice pulled at the skirt. "Nix the pleats, got it. What colors do you like?"

"Um…" Bella looked down at herself.

"Oh, boy," said Alice, but then she smiled brightly. "To be fair to you, it is hard to go wrong with a little black dress. Now the open back… You didn't strike me as the type to want to show off your cleavage so I just assumed…"

"No! No cleavage!" Bella glanced down at herself and looked away, feeling self-conscious. "I don't actually have any."

"Honey, that's what push-up bras are for."

Bella's face turned bright red at the thought.

"So you don't want to drop the neckline a bit? Well, you have to show some skin, don't you, you're not a nun!"

"I don't have to do anything." Bella's tone was angry.

Alice's smile flickered away and back again.

"Okay. So in your world, you're going on a date wearing a smooth, little black dress that shows no skin whatsoever… My sister, the fire-starting nun."

"Getting kind of mean."

"Your neck is skin."

"And creepy."

"No, I mean if you were to have a dress like that, you could wear your hair up."

Bella sat down on the bed and covered her face in frustration. She'd been looking forward to her night out with Edward, but now she was stressed. She truly hadn't given any thought as to what she would wear and now realized she didn't have anything to wear. All she knew was she wasn't wearing that red monstrosity and even if she had a little black dress, she didn't have the nerve to put that on either.

Alice pulled out a sketchpad from her nightstand and sat down next to Bella. Her hand raced across the paper in a blur. She made a face that suggested unhappiness, but presented the sketch.

Bella looked down and gasped in surprise. In a few short seconds, Alice had drawn, with shocking detail, a likeness of herself wearing a knee high dress with a flowing hemline and sleeves.

"I'm thinking of chiffon, to give it some movement."

"I don't know what chiffon is, but it looks like grandma's nightgown."

"Now who's being mean?" She snapped, tearing the page from her book.

She drew a second sketch and passed the book back to Bella.

"Solid black fabric to the bust line. We'll overlay lace on top so everything's covered up. We could do sleeves in the lace… No?"

"It's just kind of…"

Alice took the book back rather than wait for Bella to find the word. She thought carefully about Bella's figure. Slender from her head to her toes. Not much of a bustline. Modest in taste despite her confidence in confrontation. She needed a dress that walked a razor's edge between modesty and modern.

She drew a new form. A sharp sheath dress with an off the shoulder neckline, long sleeves, and a fitted bodice. The waist could be embellished with beads or rhinestones, something to accentuate the girl's tiny midline. The fabric would continue down to about knee height. A slit up the back of the dress would allow Bella's legs freedom of movement while keeping the fabric skin tight and wrinkle free… She sketched Bella's hair into a bun to leave her slender neck bare.

She handed the book back to Bella.

"Wow," Bella said. "Sexy."

"And classy. Minimal skin is shown, but it leaves little to the imagination. The woman wearing this dress isn't looking for attention… She already has it."

"You want to make this? For tonight?"

"Not for tonight. I don't have the right fabric."

"Then what's the point?"

"The point was getting to know you!" Alice said. "And ending an ugly conversation that was getting dangerously close to ruining your evening. I've pulled some clothes from Esme's and Rosalie's closets for tonight."

Bella looked at Alice who was writing a shopping list underneath the sketch.

"You're a part of this family now and you need more than two sets of clothes, Bella. And at least one dress."

Bella didn't acknowledge that last part. Her mind was now retreating back to the ugly conversation Alice had interrupted.

Her dad had been in bed with the Volturi, a ruling coven of vampires, who had been willing to kill to keep Bella to themselves. The Volturi seemed to govern from a well of hypocrisy. They would kill Edward for his choice in companion, when they themselves couldn't abide by their own laws.

She thought about the girl, buried in a box in a government plot, under a plaque bearing someone else's name. This girl had been just like her, so similar that a qualified medical examiner hadn't been able to tell the difference. She was someone no one would miss, no one would search for. She should have had her whole life ahead of her and instead, her future had been snuffed out by a colder, more calculating monster than Bella could ever claim to be.

She'd like to think if Marcus had told her the cost of her freedom, she'd have turned him down. If she couldn't kill her parents, and she was certain someone like Edward would have, how could she have condemned a stranger to death? What would have happened to her if she'd stayed? Could she have finished her sentence, or would she have eventually succeeded at taking her own life?

"Bella," Alice said, softly. "If you make yourself cry again, you'll never get the bloodshot out of your eyes."

Bella looked at Alice, whose expression was sympathetic.

"They killed someone because I wanted to go."

"That's not true. They killed someone because they wanted to add you to their collection and they didn't want anyone to know that they'd done it. What do you think? If you said no, they'd have just walked away?" Alice leaned forward. "It's the problem with us. We take what we want because we can."

"They didn't kill that girl because she did something wrong or because she knew too much or because they were hungry and she was food… They shouldn't get away with it."

"Stop." Alice's voice was nervous. "That is a dangerous line of thinking. You have your life and you have us."

"I should have killed my parents when I had the chance," Bella continued, spitefully.

"We can't change the past. Just the future."