A/N: Next chap is the End. Thanks. Love you xoxoxo

..::.. Chapter 75 - Barely Living ..::..

Present day …

I was purposely in plain sight. I couldn't hide. I knew this. Jasper or Emmett would somehow keep tabs. There's still loyalty out there. The Cullens and McCarthys were torn apart, but not their drive and their legacy. I felt I was being followed, watched. I stayed and lived life as normal as I could so they'd grow bored. I stayed, so eventually, they could turn an eye.

Disappearing would become a chase, an intrigue. They'd know what I was hiding.

So Jess and I planned it. Down to every meticulous detail.

Siobhan is a neighbor from my building. She was always friendly and kind … and alone. She said her kids were long gone, and she was content as a young widow. She was willing to carry the baby in and out of the building like it was hers.

Jess was familiar; she was a risk. I didn't know how much they knew of her, but Jess got the car and the chauffeur to drive Siobhan around wherever I needed to go. I'd go separately. Sometimes Jess would pick me up, or I'd drive myself. That's how we managed. Our destination was the same but at staggered times.

No one suspected, not even my doorman. Everyone thought Siobhan adopted a grandchild.

The day I left with Dad, Siobhan cried. Quiet time alone in a car with a baby grew warm in her heart. Her last job was to arrive at a checkpoint where the baby would be picked up by Jess in another car. No trace back to the Swan house—seamless.

To anyone watching, my apartment was still occupied. Until time passed and no one cared to notice my absence or follow me.

There was much to distract.

Emmett was found dead in prison. So many theories, but no one knows who left him with his guts out, glistening under the dingy cell lights, as he lay holding them in his bunk. The half-blood prince with eyes still open, but a mouth full of his own insides—a slow, choking death after a fast-paced life.

Word spreads, but not about who did it. It could've been enemies, or his family eliminating him from the bloodline. The McCarthys are desperate for position. This is their chance, but nothing has transpired. The FBI are so tight-knit and watching that it's impossible to make moves.

This leaves Jasper, the only one left of the uncles. It's quiet, eerily quiet, and that just feels suspenseful. All I know is, Jasper will never see the light of day as a free man. Confessing to his father's death added to the sentencing, which opened the case up again. He serves two counts of life for the deaths of Major and Carlisle. This doesn't include the time served for every crime done as a mobster.

I wonder, at times, if my words ring true in his ears—if his heart stopped when he remembered me as he walked to his cell with all his transgressions in his wake.

The only thing I'll ever forgive him for is saving me from Major and trying to save Edward.

But it ends there.

Thankfully, the city seems to have moved on.

In my mind, nothing has changed. Postpartum depression has made me different, so have the memories of this battle won. I won, but I don't feel avenged.

After that night of arrests, I walked out of questioning and never looked back. Ben turned up at the station I was taken to and immediately ordered my release.

"She's off the record. I don't want an iota of information spilled that Isabella Swan was involved. Get her out of here," he said. "Now." He slammed a fist on the splayed door, and the order was fulfilled.

With him leading such a large operation, everyone listened. He glanced at me and walked out of the room. I haven't seen him since. I was scratched off records, nonexistent, never involved. Not even the news picked up on me.

I walked out of that invisible.

But it doesn't mean I didn't feel all of it.

The way I found out about Edward was on the news itself. I was home, finally. I was free. But not my mind or body. I was healing and thinking of him, wanting so badly to see him, trying all the ways to get through to Ben to see him. But plans seemed to have made a turn no one expected.

Bright bold letters trickled across the screen and told me exactly what I needed to know. Edward died from wounds that were too vast and too deep. And suddenly, mine were, too.

I was inconsolable.

That night, the doorbell rang, bringing anyone who knew to my doorstep.

I don't remember much after that but for sagging over Jess's arms from my hysterics as I accept the blackness of faint enveloping me.

Coming to, I only remember time and again the painful truth.

He wasn't ever coming back.

"Move it. Get dressed." Jess says. She's been contacting me for weeks after moving in with Sue and Charlie. I avoid the subject, but I can't stay away. She'll persist until it's done. It's so like her.

I do as I'm told, per my obedience these days. I shower. I brush my hair into a ponytail without looking in the mirror. I don't look anymore.

She grabs the brush and finishes for me. I close my eyes and sit, feeling the calm before the storm about to brew within me. Then, we gather everything and stuff the car with all the necessities.

When the cemetery appears after many turns, my eyes blur. My throat closes. My breathing becomes choppy.

"Easy." Jess says.

The car comes to a slow stop and it's close. All we have to do is step out and we're there, staring down at Edward Cullen Jr.'s name etched on a tombstone.

Jess stays back. I'm alone but going through the motions. Obedience makes my feet move. I have no place left to go but forward.

The letters are so clean and new, the weather hasn't aged them. The reality is carved in stone just like in my aching heart. I fall to my knees, and here we are. Him gone, me barely living.

It only took days after his capture. His uncles took the life of their nephew. The headlines were clear and tragic.

The mystery of who he was and what he did remains. The young businessman who ran such a large empire was a tale everyone wanted more of. It made an infamous mark in a city's legacy, but a provocative, spellbinding story.

They just don't know about the story he's left behind. The bloodline, the child.

Jess bundles the baby up and carries him to me. We kneel here together. His eyes are open and alert, but he wouldn't know what he's looking at. He closes his eyes against the brisk wind, his lashes long and fluttering, his lips puckering.

"Say, Hi, Daddy," Jess angles him just enough. At the words, my tears pour out. I didn't want to do this. I've fought this for long, not even attending the funeral that was mostly private. But Jess has argued that no matter what, the baby should know who his father was. He deserves to know. She's the one to coo at him with stories of Edward. Your father this and your father that.

I just don't see it. How would that help? He'll know, and more questions will arise. He'll want the whole story and he'll want to search for that truth and bloodline. I want none of that to ever touch him. I promised myself he'd never know.

That was my compromise, because giving birth wasn't the plan.

When I found out, it was months far in. I was grieving Edward's death and healing from the trauma. I was half a person, barely present and numb. I wanted none of it. I planned to get rid of it. The past should stay in the past. It was a risk for the rest of my life and the baby's.

Jess begged and begged and threatened to tell Charlie. She said it was meant to be, that it was a piece of him I could keep.

Well, I did. A piece of us we created together on that island. I thought about it really hard. I agonized. But I was bulldozed when the baby kicked. And what a kick it was. I couldn't give him up, and I knew, for the rest of my life, I'd have to fight to protect him … just as I had in that torture room, trapped, fighting for my life. I was fighting for his also and didn't know it. A mother's instincts kicked in just as he had months later.

My focus shifted. I'd lie in bed at night with a stranger in my belly and we'd talk it out.

Your father would have been beside himself. Your father would be moving mountains to fix you a perfect life. Your father isn't here anymore.

I'm sorry.

He always did kick at the perfect times, and he came out shouting. He didn't stop. Jess held my hand and was as exhausted as I was in that delivery room. We marveled. He was just like Edward.

So, I can't escape Edward now. A miniature version; temperamental and stubborn, with a spellbinding charm in a look alone. We fight so much, it's almost like Edward hasn't been gone.

Some nights, when it's quiet, and the baby is settled, I watch his sleeping face and feel the wonder in what Edward and I created. Of course, I'd be left with this. Of course, Edward would leave me with something so substantial, so I'd never forget him.

Fight for me for all eternity. Fight to remember our love for the rest of your life. Tirelessly. I'll always be present.

He begs.

Words that come to mind like he's speaking to me. I sometimes get angry; I sometimes let it consume me with nostalgia.

"Okay, Edward. Okay. I'll remember you." I say when the words barrel in.

Now, in this cemetery where he lies, the sky clouds up, and our visit feels like it has finally found an end. I counted the minutes impatiently.

"I'll buckle him in," Jess says, lugging the carrier over an elbow. She's giving me time alone.

Well, I don't want it.

What is there to say? I think about it hard after a terribly long staring spell—eyes on his name, his name staring back.

"You were right; I regret it. And I hate you so much for it," I whisper about his heavy ask that night he was in cuffs. "I guess it's my turn to be alone while you're in bliss. I know how you felt when I left." I nod. "I get it now.

"I'll just have to save myself from now on, but not just me. You wanted him. You should've been here to protect him." Angry, I sniff back tears. "Damn you for leaving us." I trail away as I stand. I leave those words buried with him.

I walk to the car, and I'm done here.

I'm never coming back.

"I thought you'd never come," says a voice. I turn, startled.

A car pulled up, and I didn't notice. A pile of boys pour out from the caravan. Everyone is in their Sunday best; ties, little pressed slacks and polished shoes on their feet. And they're quiet. A contrast from what I've witnessed, watching out my window. They were loud and chaotic in Edward's old house.

I look at their mother. I look at Alice.

…..