Silent Night
In her closet hangs a gauzy pink dress. The color of clouds at dawn. Its translucent over-layer is dappled with faux pearls that sheen like tears. On the floor beneath it, are a pair of sateen Cinderella slippers, also pink, their iridescence shifting between silver and gold depending on the light. Now, of course, invisible in the dark of her closet.
To say that her father had been surprised when she'd brought these things home would be an understatement. When she'd told him about the trip to Port Angeles, and how her friends had picked them out for her, and how it was TOTALLY fine if he wanted to send them back, and she would give the refund to Lauren, who'd bought them on her mom's credit card, and she wouldn't tell anyone that they'd sent back the purchase, so no one's feelings would be hurt —- he'd taken the hot shame and grief on her cheeks for shyness.
"Do you like the outfit, Bells?"
"It's beautiful." Don't cry don't cry don't cry.
"Let yourself have it, honey. Let yourself have a good time."
She'd hugged her father tight at that. The only way to hide the wringing in her chest from him. And then escaped with the dress and the shoes to her room.
He'd watched her disappear up the stairs, remembering the good time that had begun her life. Then he went to get his checkbook.
The nightlight has flickered out, its bulb vanquished by fifteen months in a town where the sun seldom shines. Bella sleeps like the dead on her bed. The nights in the closet have worn her down, too.
March has turned into a lonely, fearful vigil. Edward has not returned since the night her father woke to haunt the station, and then her bedside. Each successive solitary sleep has stabbed her again with loss. The journal, the boy who wrote it, the he that he became, the companionship she has shared with each of these, the ephemeral unions that had begun to feel as natural as breathing, inseparable as the cycles of night and day — she is terrified that forever has risen up against the breaking of its laws and has reclaimed its own before she can complete the cloth.
Exhausted by all the freights of her heart, she sleeps like the dead.