Izzy rubbed her wrist. As always when snow was on the way, the once smashed bones were making their displeasure known.
Snow day. The magical words every American child dreamed of. After years of living in sunbaked Arizona, it was finally time for Izzy to see what all the hype was about. While a trip to the local sledding hill would be tempting fate, she did have big plans of spending the day curled up by the fire sipping hot cocoa with the love of her life. All she had to do was make it from her truck to the front door in one piece.
"Take that, Swan!" Emmett bellowed as the freezing ball of snow collided with Bella's stomach.
Bella shivered. "A snowball? Really? What are you, twelve?"
"All hail the snowball king of Forks!"
Emmett had no idea his days of ambushing anyone who dared set foot in the Cullen's lawn were over. Jasper and Edward had gotten up early to fill any available container with premade snowballs. The king would lose his throne In three...two...one.
"Eat snow, Emmett!" Jasper screamed and he and Alice rounded the corner dragging a garbage can of snowballs behind them. Without wasting a single second, they started pelting Emmett with rock hard balls of snow.
With Emmett distracted, Edward came around the other side pulling a sled full of snowballs. He grabbed Bella's hand and dived for cover behind her truck.
"Care to help me take "the king" down a peg or two?" Edward asked with her favorite crooked smile on his face.
Bella couldn't help but smile back. "I thought you'd never ask."
Edward kissed Bella on the cheek and handed her a perfectly round snowball. "Let's show that fool what we're made of!"
Bella blushed. She'd gladly go to war a thousand times for those soft, warm lips.
"Marie?" Nurse Julie said, snapping Izzy back to the present. "Are you paying attention?
"Of course," Izzy said.
Five years ago, a memory like that would have brought Izzy to her knees. Now, she didn't even shed a tear. Memories were just memories. They hurt sometimes, but she couldn't let them ruin everything she'd worked so hard to accomplish.
Nurse Julie sighed and continued their journey to the second floor of the Talkeetna Clinic. "As I was saying, situations like require a great deal of patience and understanding. For your own safety, it's best to avoid any physical contact for the time being. One of the others nearly…"
Izzy went back to tuning Nurse Julie out. She'd heard it all before in Toronto, Boston, and Chicago. Unlike in the movies, there wasn't always a happy ending when it came to the victims of kidnappings. Many didn't recognize their loved ones and wanted to go back to their kidnappers. Some lashed out while others flinched at even the most gentle touch. Many turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with their emotional wounds. It was naive to assume things would ever go back to the way things were before the search parties, police reports, and desperate TV interviews.
"When can we take them home?" Esme asked, seeming unbothered by Nurse Julie's warnings.
Nurse Julie hesitated. "We still don't know the full extent of their injuries. For now, it's best to just take things one step at a time."
"Just wait, my sons will surprise us all," Esme said, a rare smile spread across her face. "They're some of the bravest, most resilient people I've ever met."
Izzy rubbed her wrist. Hope, even for a moment, was a dangerous thing. Esme and her descent into madness was evidence of that. The snow would probably turn to rain before it hit the ground and the men claiming to be the Cullen brothers would turn out to be imposters leaving behind nothing but a broken-hearted mother.
Needing something less depressing to focus her mental energy on, Izzy went back to composing the song she'd started while white-knuckling it through the plane ride. Izzy had nearly nailed the chorus when she ran into Esme who'd stopped outside patient room 7.
"He's in here," Nurse Julie said, with her hand on the door handle. "He's still asleep, but the anesthesia should start to wear off soon. You can go sit with him for a few minutes, but remember, he might not be the Edward you remember."
Someone screamed and an alarm started going off in a room down the hallway.
Nurse Julie took a deep breath. "I have to go take care of that, but I'll be back as soon as I can to take you to the others."
With that, she charged down the hallway leaving Izzy and Esme to confront whoever was waiting behind the scratched up wooden door.
Izzy led the way into "Edward's" hospital room. The sooner they got this over with the sooner they could find a hotel for some much-needed rest and a long-overdue conversation.
Izzy gasped when she saw the ghostly pale figure lying in the bed. Obviously, he wasn't her long lost fiance. Edward, voted senior class best hair, wouldn't be caught dead with that scraggly beard and mid-back length rat's nest on his head. Izzy's gasp was a response to the man's horrific injuries.
As someone who lived in a house with half-dozen guys who didn't always see eye to eye, it was clear Not-Edward's injuries didn't come from a shoving match between friends. Someone had tried to kill him and nearly succeeded. His right knee, neck, and left arm were wrapped in gauze. His right leg had a scar as thick as Izzy's stretching all the way from his knee to his ankle. What little skin was left exposed was covered in a rainbow of bruises. Unfortunately, things only got worse from there.
Worst of all was his mangled face. His swollen nose, still bleeding a bit, was obviously broken and the same was true about his left eye socket. There was a nasty gash on his cheek and a bloody bandage wrapped around his forehead. Izzy looked at his hands and frowned. There wasn't a single scratch on them. The man hadn't even tried to fend off his attacker.
"What happened?" Izzy thought as she watched the man's chest rise and fall. "Why did someone do this to you?"
Izzy dared to take a step closer when she noticed a series of tiny red marks covering his skin. Chickenpox? No, chickenpox didn't come in pairs like that. Dog bites? Maybe. The police could have sent a canine officer after him for trying to escape. Izzy discarded that theory when she noticed a row of white scars peeking out from behind the bandage on his neck. Whatever happened to him wasn't an isolated incident. It had been going on for months, maybe even years.
Izzy was trying to come up with a new theory when a fragment of Professor Smith's lecture popped into her head. "There were dozens of people, including children as young as four, spread out over the compound with their incisor teeth sharpened to points."
No. That couldn't be possible, right? What kind of a lunatic would bite another human being? The same kind of lunatic that would sharpen his teeth to points and murder his followers.
Izzy took a shaky breath. It was hard for her as a stranger to see Not-Edward bloody and bruised. How would his family cope? Would they even recognize him? She thought back to the story about Nessie's mom.
"Guys like him prey on desperate, broken people."
After Izzy's parents died, she felt lost with no place to call home. If not for Jake, she probably would have ended up dead or in prison. What if Not- Edward had also lost his family but there were no friends there to stop him from hitting rock bottom? Maybe, like Nessie's mom, Edward met a man promising sanctuary only to end up fighting for his life.
Ever the pessimist, Izzy's thoughts went to a darker theory. Maybe he came from the kind of family not worth finding. What if they kicked him out as a penniless teenager or were so abusive that life in a cult sounded appealing? In sharp contrast, Esme made monthly televised pleas begging for any information about her sons. While it was a terrible thing to do, Izzy could see why the man gave the doctors the name Edward Cullen. Maybe all he wanted was a loving mother at his side telling him everything would be okay.
Izzy continued feeling sorry for not-Edward until she looked over her shoulder at Esme.
"My baby boy," Esme whispered, tears in her eyes.
Any pity Izzy felt for Not-Edward instantly evaporated. Whatever tale of woe landed him in that bed didn't matter. Nothing gave him the right to break a grieving mother's heart.
"Esme," Izzy said softly. "This isn't Edward."
"Yes, it is," Esme insisted. "I know he looks a bit...different, but this is Edward. It's a miracle."
Izzy bit her lip. She wished more than anything that the slack-jawed man laying in the bed was Edward. If anyone deserved a miracle it was Esme.
"Esme, this isn't Edward," Izzy repeated.
Over the years, Edward fakers had come in all shapes and sizes but they all had one thing in common, they didn't know about his birthmark. If Izzy could just show Esme the man's crucial mistake, then they could leave and start trying to put this awful experience behind them.
Ignoring the nurse's warning, Izzy gently spread the man's pinky and ring finger apart. She had to steady herself against the bed when a tiny half-moon shaped brown mark appeared.
Izzy was starting to hyperventilate when the man stirred and opened his eyes. "Bella?"
No. No. No. It couldn't be. Not possible. His eyes were a stunning golden color. The color she'd spend years looking for, but could never quite replicate.
"Bella?" he repeated, grabbing her hand. "Is that you?"
It was the same velvety voice that haunted her nightmares. The same one that told her not to jump.
"Bella, are you okay?" He said, squeezing her hand. "Talk to me."
Izzy didn't reply. All she could do was stare at her fingers interwoven with his while her mind flip flop between fight and flight.
Someone said something, but Izzy's panicked brain couldn't process it. Her vision was hazy and it felt like the life was being squeezed out of her fingers. A hotel, the airport, or a moldy cardboard box under a bridge. Any of those places would be better than spending a single second more in a room that seemed to grow smaller and hotter by the second.
Izzy yanked her hand free and ran out of the room. Someone shouted something and tried to grab her arm, but she didn't stop. Her very life depended on putting as much distance as possible between herself and...him. It wasn't until Izzy was out of the hospital and halfway down the street that she realized she was crying.