.
two
bad blood
.
I go back to Starbucks at the same time for two weeks.
Edward's pattern: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays.
He doesn't recognize me. But why would he? I was only ten when he dated my cousin Rosalie for a measly three months.
Long enough for him to snap, though.
Beneath his camel wool coat today, he's dressed in a black suit and black tie.
Morbidly fitting for a casual Friday.
I purposefully pass by him, throwing away food I never ate.
When I turn around, Edward's eyes are everywhere but on me.
I'm invisible to him.
But I prefer it that way for now.
His name is called and I slowly walk back to my table, discreetly watching.
The barista smiles warmly at him, but his back is to me so I can't see if he returns the flirtatious gesture.
He says something to her. She smiles wider. And then he leaves.
Sitting back in my chair by the window, I note the direction he goes.
I don't follow.
Not yet.
I go about my day like a good, normal girl.
But later that night, I Google Edward Cullen.
It's a routine now.
The internet is generous and I find many things about him, even some old articles linking him to the incident.
Person of interest named in Forks' teenage disappearance
17-year-old Forks girl still missing
Boyfriend of missing cheerleader cleared, friend comes forward with new info
Even before Rosalie disappeared, my Aunt Katherine and Uncle Garrett tried to shield me from everything. They adopted me when I was three years old after my parents tragically died. To this day I sometimes feel guilty, like my aunt and uncle's overprotectiveness of me was too consuming, which led to them overlooking things with Rosalie.
No matter how hard they tried to keep me from knowing too much about her case, a lot of the information I learned over the years was secondhand—from the local news, overhearing conversations in our house, the internet, and kids talking at school.
But the story went like this:
After a football game, Edward and Rosalie were seen arguing at a party.
He left angrily, alone.
She was then dropped off at home by her friend Jane.
But later that night, my aunt and uncle witnessed Rosalie getting into Edward's BMW with him.
"Going to Edward's," she'd said. "Don't wait up."
So they didn't. It was Edward Cullen, after all. They didn't think they had any reason to worry.
The next morning, my aunt told my cousin Jasper to wake up Rosalie.
When he returned downstairs and said she wasn't in her room, Aunt Katherine called Rosalie's phone. It was dead. So she called Edward's parents to see if Rose stayed the night.
When Esme confirmed Rosalie was never there, my aunt contacted various friends, trying to figure out where she was.
It was just after noon when the atmosphere shifted from worry to dread.
I'll never forget the look on my aunt's face or how she dropped the phone when the last person she swore Rosalie would be with confirmed she wasn't there.
The police were called.
Because Edward was the last person to see Rosalie, he was eventually taken in for questioning. It was standard protocol, but he was no help. He'd been drunk. He didn't even remember leaving his house the night before. A whole passage of time was gone due to alcohol.
Things got tense because his parents quickly got a lawyer, and he was done talking after that.
He said nothing.
His lawyer said everything.
There wasn't enough evidence to pin anything on him, but the police didn't try hard enough either because he was a privileged young man and came from money.
Rosalie vanishing into thin air didn't add up, and my family accused him of lying. The last time they saw their daughter, she was with him. He should've had some fucking answers.
The town spent weeks scouring the woods, the lake, and nearby towns.
Missing posters were everywhere. A billboard on Highway 101. My aunt and uncle even offered Rosalie and Jasper's college fund as a reward for any solid information, but that money never left their account because no one knew where she was.
One night, I overheard my uncle saying the reason why Edward never joined the search parties was because he didn't need to look for her when the little lying prick knew exactly where he left her.
I had nightmares after that. All of them included Edward.
After a month of her being gone, Rosalie's friend Jane gave the police some information that turned the case from missing to runaway. She showed them a text Rosalie had sent weeks before she disappeared that said "I need to get the fuck out of this place." Jane didn't have any other details but said Rosalie had been acting shifty leading up to her vanishing.
Without answers, a narrative was quickly spun to make sense of her disappearance—she was troubled and didn't want to be found. We should wait it out and she'd eventually be back.
It was hard not to lose hope.
Rosalie was my best friend. The kindest, warmest. She was like an older sister to me. A constant. It was her bed I snuck into at night when I had trouble sleeping. She always offered soft reassurance that I'd never be alone and that she'd always look out for me. Even with college looming for her and Jasper, she swore she'd visit often and that we'd talk on the phone every night.
And then she was just… gone.
Two months after her disappearance, Edward's family moved away from Forks. There were rumors he'd finish his junior year at a private school out of state, but I'm not sure how true that was.
He and his family were getting a fresh start, though.
And mine? Started to unravel until we became threadbare versions of ourselves.
My aunt and uncle started to argue a lot. Jasper would sneak out often.
After Rosalie had been gone for an entire year, my aunt succumbed to her grief, taking her own life and further battering our bleeding hearts.
It was too much tragedy for one family to handle.
Loss after loss after loss.
That's why seeing Edward weeks ago casually living his life after what he'd gotten away with awakened something in me.
He's the reason I suffered a second major loss. He's the reason I lost the only family I've ever known.
And now it's his time to suffer.