Esme rose abruptly at my question and walked into the side room. She came back a moment later with a fresh set of clothes. "Here," Esme said quietly. "Alice said you would need these. She was right, as always. She said you would smell...oh, the smell." I saw blood-filled images flash through her mind. I looked down at my clothes, realizing again that I was covered in blood. Centuries had passed since Esme had drunk human blood, but the memory was still fresh in her mind. The semi-dried blood on my clothes was enough to spark that. For the first time since I joined the Volturi, I felt ashamed. I took the clothes without looking into her eyes and walked into the side room.

The room was small, quaint, full of Esme's small touches. I knew immediately that this room had been set up for me. The west wall consisted of a continuous pane of glass. I always loved to watch the sunset. She had set up the room with a lounge couch, a laserdisc player, a dresser. I closed the door softly as I walked toward the dresser, my eyes drawn to the trinkets laying there. My fingers brushed across the cover of an old novel. The comb that held her hair up on the night of prom. I touched the corner of the picture frame holding the faded image of me and...

I turned away, resisting the urge to smash everything in the room. How could she? How dare she remind me of everything I had? Everything I lost. I clenched my fist against my chest, fighting to regain control. Esme didn't mean harm. She was loving, kind. The first person to make me smile in years.

I took an unnecessary breath as I tore my clothes from my body, replacing them with the clean clothes Esme had handed me. Only after I pulled the shirt over my head did I inhale the scent.

Bella.

I looked down and realized what it was that I wore. I glanced down at the pants too and saw the same. Alice had orchestrated this event, years ago. I had worn these last around Bella, the day before it all happened. The day before Jasper...

I didn't want to wear the clothes, but Esme had given me nothing else to wear. I left the room to find Esme, still needing the answers I had sought before. She was still in the main room, seated by a window and browsing through terrain maps. I knew she heard me as I opened the door, but she waited until I approached her to raise her eyes to mine. I drew a seat up next to her, facing the window. Her thoughts were quiet, apprehensive, as if she knew the question I would raise again.

"Esme, what happened to Carlisle?"

Her eyes wandered from the maps to the mountain peaks outside. I could see Carlisle in her mind, but I couldn't place the location. I had never been there, but he was practicing medicine in a small commune, similar to the one I had just destroyed. But the foliage was wrong, somehow. The attitude toward him, different. He wasn't here in the former States, of that I was certain. Even in her memory, he seemed...sad. Distant. He looked directly at her. At me. His gaze pierced through me, and I knocked my chair backward as I stood hastily.

Esme didn't move. She didn't think. Her eyes glazed over to black as she started to speak. Her flat voice carried no emotion; it only relayed information.

"After you left, after she was...it was like walking on eggshells. Carlisle and I tried to hold the family together, but Jasper's fluctuating emotions made the household uncomfortable. When they were gone, though, it was so much worse. After they left, we shattered. Emmett and Rose vanished without a word one evening. I think the stress of our twisted emotions upset Rose too much. Alice stayed in her room, half-mad. She disappeared one night too, left a note for me to wait here. Wait for you." She stopped and looked at me with lost eyes.

"And Carlisle?" I urged, hoping to push her back to the original question.

"He left."

Her words didn't register in my mind. Of course he left. She had left, and so, he would follow her. But while looking around the quiet living room, he wouldn't leave his mate. "But where is he, Esme? He is coming back?"

"No, he left," she emphasized again. "He took it so hard when you left, as if through your absence he had failed at some task. But when Jasper and Bella left poor Alice, it destroyed him. Everything he built his life upon, it was as if it crumbled before his eyes. He wouldn't touch me, wouldn't come near me. He couldn't love me in this new world, void of our family. We fell apart. Then he left."

I realized then why Esme's memory seemed wrong. The memory wasn't hers. She must have formed an image based on something. A farewell greeting? A passing message? A letter sent in haste during travel? Just as we had all done, Carlisle had left her without saying a word. Vanished. All she had left now were the memories.

She was in my arms before I could stop myself. My poor, broken mother. I had done this to her, just as I had done this to Alice and to Bella. I had done this to my entire family, over...what? I didn't know. But it was over. I would change now. I couldn't change the past, but I would fix it all. I would fix this. Not for myself, but for Esme. She had never been anything but a loving mother to us all, and she deserved no less from me.

She clung to me in quiet desperation, and we remained there in the silence until the sun set.