(trigger warning: mentions of past child abuse)

Neither Bev nor Shelley would allow Lilah to work with her injured hand. Bev told her to give it two days before she went back or else she'd fire her. Shelley said to take one day off and then come back the next. She'd be put on waitressing duty instead of kitchen duty, as Shelley did not want to risk another knife injury so soon. She'd even have Olivia help her so that she didn't rupture her stitches.

It was out of kindness, Lilah knew, but it drove her up a wall. She needed to be busy. She needed to be doing something, anything to keep herself occupied so she didn't fall down the black hole in her mind. Her whole life she'd been busy. Sitting still felt like a death sentence.

She thought back to something Phoebe had said shortly after she had adopted her: honey, you're not a hummingbird, it isn't going to kill you to sit still for a little while. She had tried to work on that, without much progress.

She didn't think it was that bad of a vice. Not compared to other common vices. She liked to be busy, to do things for others. To cook for her family, to keep up a garden, to make sure they were well cared for and didn't have a thing to worry about. Yes, there had been many times that she'd driven Morgan nuts for helping her too much, for being so helpful she accidentally overstepped her boundaries, but it had all been out of love.

Love, and the desire to keep busy. To keep present in the moment and out of her mind.

She stood in the living room of her house in Forks and took in all of the things she could fix. It was an old house, nearly a century old, originally a cabin for a logging family, built only with the bare necessities. On the first floor was the living room, kitchen with enough room for a small dining table, and the bathroom. The second floor had two small bedrooms and just enough room for the stair landing.

In her month and a few weeks of living there, she'd done absolutely nothing to make the place feel like a home. She didn't even have a sofa, nor a television because she hadn't deemed them necessary purchases. She didn't miss them, but she did miss all of the quirky home decor of the Bishop house—the art on the walls, the cluttered bookshelves, the myriad of house plants, the plush Persian rugs, the rich scent of Morgan's favorite patchouli incense, Zoe's little knitting projects. Those were the things that made a house into a home.

The longer Lilah was away, the more she missed them.

She wished she was at work. She looked at her injured hand. She'd used her magic to help the healing process along. It wasn't fully fixed, but it was probably a little more than halfway there at this point, and, given another day or two, it'd be fully healed. She hoped that the stitches would dissolve too. Dr. Cullen had promised her that they would, but that was on a normal, non-magically aided healing schedule.

It was always her left hand. Always her goddamn left hand. It was her left hand that her father beat with a Bible, crushed beneath his fist against the dining room table. It was always her left hand and only her right hand because she was right handed. She needed that hand intact if she was expected to continue cooking and cleaning and gardening and helping with her siblings, which, of course, she was.

It only got worse the older she got. Especially after her magical powers started manifesting and things went flying through the house, as if pulled by invisible strings. The older she got, the more her father forced her brother Luke to join in on her torture. He wanted to make sure that Luke was a man by his proper definition of what that meant, and a large part of what that meant was that he was not to suffer a disobedient woman. And witches were, by their nature, disobedient.

Lilah couldn't stand it. She had to get out of the house. Do something, anything, get out of there.

She grabbed her bag, threw it over her shoulder, and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her and hopping into her Taurus. It grumbled to life and the radio came on full blast. She usually drove with it on, and on loud, as it was another tool of distraction.

She could go to the hardware store. Yes, that sounded good. She could get some paint and freshen up the horrid plain white walls of the living room. Maybe after that she could go to the thrift store and look for an inexpensive sofa. She wouldn't be able to put it in the Taurus, sure, but she could always ask Pete to pick it up in his truck. She could ask Bev to borrow one of the greenhouse trucks, too. Between the two of them, one was bound to say yes.

She turned the Taurus onto main street, and then hooked another right into the small parking lot in front of the hardware store. She'd been in a couple of times before to start pricing out greenhouse materials. She'd never gotten any because she couldn't quite afford it yet, and she was still holding out hope that she wouldn't be in Forks in the spring when it would be time to utilize a greenhouse.

Stepping out of the car, her head was on a swivel. It was her paranoia again. There were two trucks in the parking lot, an SUV, and an Oldsmobile. Across the street, in front of the post office, was a newer Volvo and a lady pushing a baby carriage. Nothing suspicious. Nothing to be worried about.

Until she glanced at the Volvo again, and the car came to life, its headlights flickering on. In a surprisingly, almost terrifyingly fast maneuver, it turned, and whizzed into the parking lot of the hardware store as well.

Lilah's heart started trying to break out of her ribs.

It was just a coincidence, it had to be a coincidence, she told herself. Her father would not be driving a Volvo, nor would anyone else from the church. It was just a coincidence.

Still, Lilah found her feet hurrying to get her inside of the hardware store. She knew better, she thought, but she couldn't help the paranoia. So she tried to swallow it all down, repress it, get on with her business. Busy herself.

"Anything I can help you with?"

Lilah jumped at the sound of the voice. Her jumping startled the kind-faced employee who'd spoken to her, causing him to jump as well.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. She wasn't used to accepting compliments, but she sure was used to apologizing, to the point that she apologized for nothing and annoyed people. "I…I startle easy."

The man smiled and simply asked, "Is there anything I can help you find?"

"Nothing in particular. But I'd appreciate it if you could point me towards the paints."

"Right over there, aisle six…you're sure you don't need help?"

"I'm sure, thank you. I haven't even decided what color I want yet…I'll let you know if I figure it out."

He nodded, and Lilah scurried off before she had to converse with him any more. The door had dinged, indicating that someone else had come in, making her paranoia flair again. She had to get away. She hoped she could hide in the paint aisle for long enough to calm herself down.

Of course, things were rarely so simple in her life. As soon as she started to look over the different shades of red, she noticed two figures meander into the aisle along with her.

She recognized one of them. Alice Cullen. She could only assume the guy she was with was one of her brothers. He had the same golden eyes, the same perfectly preserved youth, looking even younger than Alice, she thought, though he was good bit taller than she was, even taller than Lilah.

Her panic did not disappear. It merely morphed.

She knew Forks was a small town. But was it this small, to keep running into the Cullens? Or did they know more about her than she anticipated?

That was never what she wanted. Never what she meant to happen. She didn't want to drag anyone else into her messy life.

She did, however, calm down a bit. The door hadn't dinged again. No one else had come in after the Cullens. They had to be the ones in the Volvo. Not anyone to do with her father.

"Lilah! It's so nice to see you again!"

Alice decided to break the silence, bouncing over to Lilah with a luminous smile on her sharp, beautiful face. Lilah briefly wondered how old Alice had been when she had been turned. She looked young, of course, but somehow a bit older than her bronze-haired brother that stood behind her.

"Yeah, nice to see you too," Lilah said.

It was half sincere. There was something likable about Alice. Maybe it was just her infectious, bubbly aura, but it was there. Still, Lilah wanted to be left alone. She didn't need the Cullens to know what she was. All she needed was to be close enough to them, in their territory, to hide out.

"I'm sorry about your hand," Alice said. Her expression fell sympathetically; she resembled an angel from some lost Romantic painting. "My father told me he saw you last night."

"I'm just grateful he got the stitches in fast," Lilah said, lifting up her stitched hand. "I hate hospitals."

"That's quite understandable," said Alice. She glanced back at her brother, summoning him forward without word, so she could say, "Lilah, I'd like you to meet one of my brothers, Edward."

"Pleased to meet you," said Edward.

Unlike Alice, Edward lacked warmth. He came off as cool as his skin undoubtedly was and he stared at her like a puzzle to be put together.

At least he didn't look at her like a meal.

"Same to you."

"So, are you working on a home improvement project?" Alice asked, keeping things upbeat.

"Oh, I, um…I was just thinking about repainting the living room…you?"

"I've been thinking about redoing our sewing room for a while," she said. "I pick out everything, and then I make my brothers do all the work."

Alice clearly found that amusing. It sounded like Lilah's nightmare. If anything, she'd rather someone else pick out everything and she could do the work.

Behind Alice, Edward cracked a grin. It made him look less intimidating, more boyish, and yet Lilah didn't like it. There had been nothing to cause him to smile like that. It was almost as though he was trying not to laugh, although there had been nothing to laugh at. Just Alice's comment, which was not at all funny, unless Lilah was even less socially developed than she thought she was.

"Well, if you need any help with your project, I can lend you one of my brothers too," Alice added. "I'm sure it won't be easy with that hand."

Again, Lilah knew Alice was just trying to be nice. Yet she'd still touched an old nerve.

Lilah was hurt, she was not inept. She hated feeling like she was useless, like she couldn't do anything. Phoebe had tried to drill it into her head that her entire worth was not based on how much physical labor she could do, that she did not need to sacrifice herself, that it was perfectly acceptable and normal to relax.

She had tried her damnedest to take their advice in the decade that she had been their daughter, but it was still hard. Her father had abused his ideas into her for the first fifteen years of their life. They weren't so easily removed. Not even by love.

"I'm sure Lilah's perfectly capable of painting on her own, Alice," said Edward.

Lilah quirked a brow. How did he know? It was as if he'd stolen the words right out of her mouth…or her mind, rather, as they didn't have the chance to reach her mouth. Had he…heard her thoughts somehow? She knew vampires were more than human, but could they read minds? Constance hadn't mentioned anything about that. She had her own ability that she contributed to the magic she had in her human—witch—life, and she vaguely remembered something about the ruling group of vampires having powers, but did they all have some sort of power?

If so, vampires and witches were more similar than she thought. She just might have to suck it up and call Constance when she got home.

"Well, I should get going," Lilah said. She fidgeted with the zipper of her jacket. "I was going to go look at furniture—"

"Oh, not anywhere in Forks, I hope!" Alice said. Her golden eyes somehow got brighter as she suggested, "If you'd like, we can make a day trip out of it! Port Angeles isn't too far, and there's a couple of decent furniture stores there. And clothing stores, too, if you need anything new for your wardrobe."

With a gentle hand on her shoulder, Edward tried to calm Alice down as he said, "I think you're overwhelming our new neighbor."

Lilah smiled slightly. Edward didn't need to read minds to be able to see that.

Alice glared at him a bit, and then dug a small notepad and pen out of her fashionable purse, so unlike Lilah's worn old messenger bag. She scribbled something down and thrust it at Lilah, right into her good hand.

"My cellphone number," she said. "In case you change your mind…you can text me too."

Sheepishly, Lilah said, "Thanks."

She didn't bother to tell Alice that she didn't have a cellphone.

"See you later, then."

The Cullens merely smiled at her, Edward with that uncanny knowing in his golden eyes. She walked around them and past the store clerk, stuffing Alice's number deep into the pocket of her jacket, trying to hype herself up to go home and use the old landline to call Constance and come clean.

ok, SO i guess i should probably update this because it's going to be more of a slowburn than i originally anticipated. i have up to chapter sixteen written already and i can safely say it is going to be slow going...but sometimes that's the most fun. i'm also trying to make the chapters pretty short and sweet (personally my attention span finds shorter chapters easier) so hopefully things aren't TOO slow.

thank you for the support thus far, i really do appreciate it 3