title: a pearl in my head (and i roll it around every night)
summary: 1921. following a failed suicide attempt, esme platt is facing the possibility of being institutionalized or worse by her in-laws until the doctor who saved her offers another path: a marriage of convenience. safety from those who hurt her and a family to care for is everything esme ever wanted—well, almost everything. but she gave up on being loved like that a long time ago.
carlisle cullen's past made him sure being alone was the best thing. he needs a wife to prevent his siblings from being taken away, but he never imagined the light esme would bring into his life. everything is going so well—as long as he doesn't ruin it all by telling her he's in love with her. all human.
but it's just that i fell in love with a war
and nobody told me it ended
and it left a pearl in my head
and i roll it around every night
just to watch it glow
— a pearl; mitski
chapter one: so much love to give.
June 1921
Columbus, Ohio
"I told you the girl was sick in the head. What did I say? She's cracked." A man's low, venomous voice.
"What a mistake for Charles to have married her. There isn't justice in this world when this ninny throws herself off a cliff and lives, and Charles and the baby..." A woman's, higher but no less hateful. "My God, if just one of them had lived instead of her…"
Esme was pretending to be asleep, but Matilda Evenson's words struck something raw and searingly painful in her chest, and she had to make an effort to keep still. As though Esme didn't wish the same thing. As though Esme didn't think every day that she wished her baby had lived and she had died.
She didn't feel the same way about Charles. He could rot.
A tear pricked in her closed eye, and she willed it not to fall. She had no doubt the two of them would have spoken exactly the same way to her had she been awake—they had in the past, after all—but she just did not want to exchange words with them right now. She hadn't wanted to exchange words with them ever again. That was the point of leaping off a cliff to her death.
It was obvious that Matilda and Robert Evenson knew she had done it on purpose. They had always regarded her as unstable, a burden, a fool. She was too outspoken, not devoted enough to their precious son, not devoted enough to them. When Charles had died after a night of drinking, they had berated her for not being distraught enough. They had still expected her to cook and clean for them and their mourners, mend the dress Matilda would wear to the funeral and shine Robert's shoes for the wake, and Esme had done all of that without complaint, and been appropriately solemn at the funeral, too. She had been so grateful that Charles' beatings would stop that she had barely minded at all—but when no one else was around and the mourners had all gone home, they had shouted at her that she was unnatural, ungrateful, a cold and wicked creature from Hell, unable to cry even a single tear for her poor husband who had given her everything.
Not even that could bother her much, because of her other recent discovery. Matilda had slapped her during the tirade, but in the moment Esme was just happy she hadn't had to tell Charles she was pregnant.
He didn't deserve to know.
Neither did his parents, but there had been nowhere else for her to go. Charles had owned her, and it was as if they did now—she had no living family, no means of escape. They kept her on a strict allowance once they had moved into what had been her and Charles' home, and never let her hold any money in her hand—it was all charged to accounts. They retained a maid, and Esme was sure she was spying on her.
When Joseph—her perfect, soft, wonderful little baby—had died just three days after Esme had first held him, Matilda and Robert had berated her endlessly for being too distraught. Even in her haze of grief she had thought it was hypocritical, not just after their complaints over her reaction to Charles' death, but because Matilda had been obsessed with the baby, constantly trying to take him away from Esme even in the few days he got to live. They had remained at the hospital because of the complications with the birth, and Matilda had intimated that his name would be Charles Jr., that he would come home with them if Esme took any longer to convalesce. She was his mother, not Matilda, and he would never be named Charles.
Yet when her baby was gone it had been a new round of vitriol. She had barely held him. How could she be so sad? What reason did she possibly have to fall apart when she couldn't even spare a few tears at the funeral of her husband, the father of the infant? What was wrong with her? What was wrong with her?
She had returned to their home a few days after she had lost Joseph and resumed her daily tasks. Every night she ran her fingers over the blanket she had knitted for him, that she had wrapped him in when the nurses had first let her see him. But a few days after that, when she had got up the courage to ask when the funeral was going to be while serving them tea one afternoon, Matilda glanced up at her and said very casually, "We buried the baby a week ago, Esme. Are there biscuits lefts from this morning?"
Her baby hadn't had a funeral. Her baby hadn't had a headstone. She hadn't even seen him buried. She hadn't even known he was in the ground.
That was the breaking point—and it felt as though something in her body had physically shattered. Esme had dropped (thrown?) the teapot. She screamed and she raged. The maid came running to hear the commotion. They had locked her in her room eventually, but that didn't stop Matilda from shouting at her through the door. It didn't matter, she knew very well what they thought of her. She was a madwoman. She was disturbed and deranged. She was incompetent and foolish and unstable, and now they were stuck with her for the rest of their lives.
They weren't so wrong, she had thought to herself, still holding Joseph's blanket in her hands, sitting on the floor, as far away from the door as possible. That was when she made the decision. There wasn't anything for her here. There wasn't anything for her in this world. There was only one way she could think of to escape—escape the way women who went mad did.
When she had awoken in the hospital, part of her wondered if she shouldn't be furious. She had failed to be a good wife, choose a good husband. She had failed to keep her baby alive. And now she had failed at ending her miserable, failed life. How apt.
But she couldn't bring herself to be sorry to live still. She had told herself she would leave her regrets on the peak and fall towards her baby. She didn't care if she went to Hell, like the preachers said you did if you killed yourself. Living here was Hell. If she was dead, no matter where she went, she would know her baby was in Heaven, wouldn't she? It couldn't be any worse than how she felt every day.
Yet in the moments of free-falling through the air, heading towards the ground, it was as though things were heartbreakingly clear all a moment too late. There was no solution, there was no plan and no hope, but there was her own voice echoing through her mind. I still have so much love to give. And she was sorry she had done this, so sorry—
And then she hit the ground.
She didn't remember the impact, but the remaining bruises and pain that shot up her shoulder every time she shifted, even weeks after the fact, reminded her very well of what had happened. She was lucky to be alive, one could say. She had somehow escaped without any crippling consequences, at least. Her most time consuming injury was a rib fracture, apparently (she realized that if that was what broken ribs felt like, Charles had broken her rib that first spring they were married), and that had been declared healed two days ago. She was well on the road to recovery, Dr. LeRoy had told her.
She had decided she wasn't going to try again. Whatever happened, she wouldn't try again.
"We have to be rid of her," Matilda said. "She's out of her mind. She'll only try again. What if she decides to slit her throat on the living room carpet next time? And the neighbors will talk. They're talking now. Dr. LeRoy said he could make the recommendation a soon as tomorrow or the next day, and when she's cleared to depart the hospital she can be taken straight there."
Terror gripped her at that. The idea of being sent to some nightmarish sanitarium was no less pleasant than staying with the Evensons. She knew it would not be difficult to have her declared incompetent. Her husband was dead and so were her parents, so the Evensons were the only people who had any authority over her left in the world. Charles had always threatened her with the idea, told her she was crazy, but he'd never gone through with it. She believed Matilda Evenson might. She seemed to have halfway arranged it already.
"And you think they won't talk when Charles' widow ends up in a lunatic asylum?" Robert sounded annoyed. "And I have to pay wages for a cook, besides? No. She'll stay on. She behaved when Charles was alive because he kept her in line. We've been too lenient with her these weeks after the child. I'll deal with her more harshly. She'll remember her place."
Matilda sniffed in disapproval. Esme fought to remain calm, afraid they would notice the sharp intake of breath. Her whole body froze in fear, not only because of Robert's threat, but the way he spoke of her. Even when Charles was alive, sometimes she had caught Robert looking at her in a way that made her shiver. Before, her husband and then her pregnancy had served as a deterrent. Now she had neither.
"God, Robert. Charles deals with her for years, we deal with her for years and she couldn't even give us the courtesy of a baby who would live through the night."
The tears were pooling in Esme's eyes again—she always thought she was inured to Matilda's hatred by now, but when she talked about her baby…oh, her sweet little baby.
His birth had been difficult—been awful, really, with more blood than the midwife knew what to do with and a haze of blinding pain that she now knew had left her barren. But when she had seen his face for the first time, red and delicate and quieter than she knew babies usually were, Esme had thought that there was nothing in the word she could not face for him. She hadn't cared when the midwife had told her she wouldn't have another child. Her husband was dead, she'd never subject herself to another one, and she had a precious baby to love. She would fight for him, she could die for him. But she wouldn't. Here was her reason to live. Here was the only good thing in her life, and he was so good. He was better than she'd ever deserved, ever imagined. Watching him fade away before her eyes, knowing there was nothing that could be done…
"All we have gotten out of this is a dead son, a dead grandson, and a basketcase we can't get rid of. Your fists won't keep her in line. I tell you, Robert, if you bring her back to our house I might take a pillow to her face and end this myself. I can't stand her anymore." Matilda's voice was low but deadly serious.
"Do that and you'll get it worse than she will, Matilda, I swear it. I told you, I won't be paying for a cook—"
"Mr. Evenson, Mrs. Evenson, it's after six. I would ask that you leave the patient to recover." A new voice, stern and uncompromising. Esme remembered it only vaguely and did not recognize the speaker. "You may visit again some other time."
"We aren't visiting, Doctor." Matilda said briskly. "We just came to wake her and dress her. She's coming home with us."
"Who told you that was permitted? There is no way you will be taking Mrs. Evenson out of the hospital for the next week, at least," said the doctor, with such authority that Esme couldn't help but feel a sliver of satisfaction. Matilda Evenson hated being corrected.
"We don't need permission. She's our son's wife," Robert broke in gruffly. "Her parents are dead, and she isn't capable of taking care of herself. It's been five weeks. Doctor LeRoy told us her rib is fine again."
"Mrs. Evenson is not free to leave the hospital just because her fracture has recently healed. I don't recall the legal rights of in-laws to their sons' wives," said the doctor coldly. "Nor do I recall Mrs. Evenson being declared mentally unsound. You may take it up with the constable, though, and he can come deal with me. Otherwise, I will bid you both a good evening."
Esme heard sounds of annoyance as the Evensons took their leave. Then their footsteps faded down the hall and there was silence.
She breathed a sigh of relief and opened her eyes.
The most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life was still there, standing at the foot of her bed. He was looking directly at her, and she almost leapt out of her skin.
She recognized him immediately, of course. When she was sixteen she had fallen out of a tree and broken her leg, and been treated by Mr. Cullen, who was a medical student there on internship. Her father had driven her in the wagon to the city hospital, which took a jolting three hours, agonizing with a fractured bone. He had complained about the expense and inconvenience of the journey; her mother wailed about how no well-bred young woman climbed trees, much less fell out of them and broke her leg, and how beside herself she would be if Esme was lamed and unmarriageable from this.
Mr. Cullen had been the only one with kind words for her, and she had found herself talking about the most foolish things, and he hadn't even laughed at her or looked at her like she was crazy. And she had never seen someone with eyes so blue. She had never forgotten the interaction—in fact, she remembered it in mortifying detail. Her thoughts had strayed to him far more often than they should have, considering the few hours he had spent in her probably-poor company.
"Mr. Cullen—Dr. Cullen," she greeted quietly, and then felt foolish. Surely he didn't remember her. He had been a medical student then and was now a doctor who certainly saw dozens of patients a week. And it had been so many years ago. "I didn't know you worked in Columbus." Stupid thing to say, of course. There was no reason for her to know.
"Esme Platt." He was smiling slightly. She blinked, stunned he remembered her maiden name. Perhaps he had seen it in the hospital records. "Yes, I—I returned to Ohio only recently." Then he frowned. "You're crying."
"Oh." She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, and brushed the tears from her eyes. "Yes, I…" she didn't have an explanation. She let the sentence trail off and looked back up at him. "I'm sorry."
She hadn't seen him here before; since she had awoken she'd mostly been cared for by nurses coming in and out, and the occasional visit from Dr. LeRoy to check the progress of her ribs. They all looked at her suspiciously, probably all suspecting suicide just like her in-laws. Suspecting that she was mad.
"There's nothing to apologize for." Dr. Cullen stepped closer, right up to her, and handed her a handkerchief from a pocket on his coat. A moment passed before she took it. The gesture was unfamiliar to her. Tears coming down her face in front of this near-stranger made her feel exposed. She took another breath, trying to control herself.
"I—thank you. I'm sorry. I mean—" she tried to smile. "My husband was always angry when I cried."
She had meant it to sound lighthearted, but Dr. Cullen's face only creased into a frown of concern. She had done it again. Maybe she really was warped and broken beyond repair. Of course she knew what Charles had put her through wasn't right, but sometimes she wondered if it had made it so she couldn't be around normal people. That would be his final, cruel punishment, that even after he was gone the things he did lingered to keep her alone forever.
"I'm sorry to be disturbing you, Mrs. Evenson—"
"Please call me Esme." The words came out in a rush. She knew it was inappropriate, but she couldn't help herself. "I'm sorry. I just don't want to think about…Mrs. Evenson for a moment." She hated the fact that even her name now meant that she belonged to Charles, to Charles' family.
Dr. Cullen didn't seem affronted, though. He only nodded. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Esme."
"That's alright. I mean, you aren't disturbing me." She felt almost out of practice with conversation, surrounded by nurses and the terse inquiries of Dr. LeRoy.
"I wished to speak to you about something sensitive."
Esme nodded, unsure what he was talking about.
"Do you mind if I close the door?"
"No, I don't."
He crossed the room to close the door and then returned to her beside, but instead of standing over her, he pulled up the wooden chair next to the bed and sat down. No one had done that during her stay in the hospital thus far. The Evensons had hovered over the foot of her bed. There had been no visitors who wanted to sit and stay.
Ridiculously, Esme felt slightly flustered at his increased proximity. She glanced away.
"Like I said, feel free to tell me to go, Esme," he said quietly. "But rest assured whatever you tell me will not leave this room. I hope you will not be offended. My question comes from a sincere desire to help you. You are here because you survived falling from a cliff."
"Yes."
"So you did fall off the cliff, then?" He pressed his lips together. "You did not...jump?"
Heat burned her face, her girlish feelings totally forgotten. She knew it was what they all thought, but hearing him say it aloud embarrassed her. How humiliating to have this handsome gentleman looking at her thinking she was unstable and deranged, just as her in-laws had. "I'm not mad," she whispered almost without meaning to.
He looked perturbed. "I don't think you are mad." He seemed to want her to believe it, because he leaned over and took her hand in his, looking intently into her eyes. She realized how cold her hands were when they were in his own. She realized that she couldn't remember the last time someone had taken her hand. She stopped breathing for a moment, half wanting to pull away. "I don't think you're mad at all. I think you have…endured much. And in such circumstances, anyone can be driven to desperation. That doesn't make you disturbed."
Shame ripped through her. He had probably heard the Evensons' whole conversation. She didn't know why it mortified her so terribly to have other people know how Charles had treated her, how his parents had treated her. She knew they had been wrong to do it. She knew she hadn't really been the bad one. And yet having other people know it filled her with shame. She pressed her lips together. "Did you hear them talking?"
The look on his face told her that he had, and that he knew she had, too. "I take it this was not the first time you heard them speak that way."
"No." She shook her head.
"Then I am very sorry, Esme."
He spoke the words, she was sure, just as a perfunctory way of showing sympathy. But he had a very genuine voice, and that combined with the way he looked her in the eye, the way he still had hold of her hand—
She tried to remember ever hearing the words sorry and Esme together since her marriage. She was sure it had never happened. She was always the one apologizing, just trying to get him to calm down, get him to stop, to let her go…
"It's alright." She blinked, trying to look composed. Not unstable, not deranged. "Many men are rough with their wives. I only…" she didn't even know why she was telling him this, when she was trying to seem less mad, not more so. But the words had never passed her lips before, and sometimes she felt she was suffocating in her own mind, unable to share any of her thoughts that tumbled around inside her head like a cyclone. Somehow she felt she could trust Dr. Cullen. He had been kind to her. He had sent the Evensons away. He didn't seem to want to commit her to an institution. "I could have got through it if I had been able to keep my baby." Her voice dropped to a whisper at the end as her throat closed up.
"I was very sorry to hear about your son." Dr. Cullen said.
She pushed away the sharp stab of grief that gripped her at the mention of her sweet baby. Ever since she had found herself in a hospital bed when she had expected to be dead, the pain had changed shape. It was just as raw and terrible, but different somehow, more malleable. It made her think of just how much she had loved Joseph, about her thought just before she hit the ground.
"I don't want to die. I didn't even want to die when I...when I jumped." She glanced away as she said it, the first time she admitted aloud what she had done. She didn't look at Dr. Cullen when she said it, although glancing away sent an ache through her neck. "I wanted to escape. I wanted to be with him. But I don't want to die. I love…loved…him so much, and if I die, all my of love for him dies with me. I don't want that."
"I understand." His eyes met hers.
"Do you think..." she took a breath. "Do you think the Evensons have a good chance of having me committed, if they wished me to be? My husband is dead, but so are my parents. They don't own me like Charles did, but they are my only legal relations."
"It...it is not outside the realm of possibility, as a single woman with no other family, if the Evensons can establish that you are a danger to yourself. A court would have to make the determination ultimately, at least officially, but even if they did not...someone would have to be inclined to force the matter to be handled legally." He frowned as he spoke.
Esme understood. Perhaps the law would make it more difficult for them, but she couldn't imagine the law was stringently enforced in this sphere. If the Evensons had he put in a lunatic asylum, even if it was in contravention of the law, who would care? She had no one to care.
"I admit I didn't tell your in-laws the truth. Your injuries are mostly superficial at this stage. You could heal the rest of the way at home—but not their home. I could not send you back there in good conscience." He let go of her hand, and she was startled at how much she missed the feeling. "Do you have any family, or even friends who could help you?"
Esme went to shake her head, then thought better of it. "No. I don't…I did not leave the house much for friends. And my family is all gone now. If I had either I would have left when I found out I was pregnant." She sighed. "I'm not going back, though. I'll leave—maybe go West. Anywhere they can't find me." She had thought of it a million times, as a desperate little daydream, when she was with Charles. But it never seemed possible, and then she was pregnant and he was dead, and even staying with the Evensons seemed safer than risking her baby on a dangerous journey westward. "I don't have any money. They won't let me take any of my things, I'm sure." Her things. Her eyes suddenly widened. Joseph's blanket—she had taken it with her when she jumped. She wanted to die holding it. Of course it was gone now, and that was her own fault, but she still missed it sorely.
She put it out of her mind. She had cried enough. Now was the time to be strong. If she was still alive despite great odds of her death, she shouldn't spend her whole life crying and being afraid. "But that doesn't matter. Nothing there matters to me anyway."
Dr. Cullen nodded. "Your resilience is…it's admirable, Esme. But it would be a dangerous trip to make alone. Especially when you are not yet recovered, and you have no prospects once you reach your destination—a young woman traveling by herself..."
He wasn't mocking her. His words were spoken with a genuine concern which made her almost uncomfortable after years of hearing no words of care from anyone. But they also stirred up the determination she thought had withered and died long ago upon her marriage to Charles. "I don't have any choice, do I? I don't have anyone else. I don't think they'll let me leave on my own." She lifted her chin. "And I have no prospects here, either."
He nodded. "You're right. I apologize."
"I'm sorry. You're being very kind to me." His face had fallen slightly when she spoke harshly, or was that her imagination? She felt bad no matter what. "You're—you've been kinder to me then I think anyone ever has." Immediately she was embarrassed at her words, the subtle shift in his expression when she said them. "That is…you're right. There isn't anything for me out west. But I can't stay go back to that house. It isn't just the work, or that they dislike me." She pressed her lips together. "My father-in-law…he…worries me." She felt very small, admitting that, but the way Dr. Cullen had spoken to her tonight had made her feel safe around him. "I can't be alone with him again. Even while I prepared to leave. Especially then."
Something like anger flared in Dr. Cullen's eyes. "You won't ever be alone with him again, Esme. I'll guarantee it. They won't be admitted to your room again—I should have stopped them earlier, but I have been…distracted, lately." He looked at her. "I don't yet know how to ensure it. I don't have much time. But you will be safe, Esme, I promise."
He left the room then, and Esme stared after him, trying to take in everything that had just occurred. Her encountering Dr. Cullen again after all these years, and his unexpected perceptiveness, his kindness and her candor. And what she had overheard of the Evensons.
One thing was clear to her: she had to get away from them, from here. She wanted to live with a ferocity that surprised herself, awakened and enflamed by the prospect of being imprisoned in an asylum or in the Evensons' house that was little more than its own prison. That was death. She had thought death was the answer once and she had been wrong.
The whole morning passed with Esme wondering when or if she would see Dr. Cullen again. She felt certain he had meant to come back. He had said he would ensure she did not go back to the Evensons, and while she didn't expect much of him—he could do little about the state of the world, where a woman could be as good as owned and tossed aside by her relatives if a word was breathed that she was unstable—she had sensed the sincerity in his words. He wanted to help, at least.
She would have to save herself, though. She had accepted that long ago. She was aware of the great risk of trying to travel by herself to an unfamiliar place and find some way to make a living. She was aware that nothing would sever her from the Evensons, that she was an unmarried and thus unprotected woman considered part of her in-laws' family, no matter how far away she got. But she had to hope that they would not care enough to pursue her. Dr. LeRoy's evaluation of her mid-morning did little to put her at ease; his searching glances made her certain he was considering what the Evensons had said about putting her in an institution.
It was shortly after lunch, and she was alone in her room, when Dr. Cullen returned. She felt entirely too glad to see him again, considering he was practically a stranger still. "How are you feeling today, Esme?"
"Alright," Esme said. "Little change from yesterday. Dr. LeRoy said I am close to recovering fully, that most of the injuries are superficial now."
"Excellent. I see." He was quiet for a long moment, then stood up and paced across the floor.
She frowned, somewhat painfully pulling herself to a more seated position, unnerved by his pacing. He was nervous, she realized. Why was he so nervous?
"I had hoped you had some relatives somewhere who could take you in. I would have paid for your passage myself. I would not be able to face myself knowing I allowed you to suffer at the Evensons' hands." He was rambling, almost. "Perhaps it would be better to let you stay at the hospital until you've recovered fully, but—I'm afraid I will have very little influence here after Monday, to allow that. And then I will be unable to help you at all."
"Monday?" That was two days from now. She had wondered at his words the day before, that he had little time, but had assumed he meant the length of her hospital stay and the determination of the Evensons.
"Yes. I am leaving town on Monday, and I won't be returning. My father has just died. Other than myself, he leaves behind three minor children by three different women, and I am now their only relative in common. None of their mothers' relatives will take two more children who aren't related to them, especially not…" he shook his head. "They all need care, some more than others. And I don't want to see them scattered across the country by people who care little for them."
"I'm so sorry about your father," Esme breathed. She had poured out her soul to this man about her troubles, and he had listened attentively and made her feel understood, all the while something terrible had befallen him. She wished the roles were reversed and she had listened to him, even if she didn't know what words of comfort she could have offered.
He shook his head slightly. "There's no need to be. My siblings have never had an abundance of the things that matter—love, care, family—but they each have a vast personal fortune, though they won't receive it until they reach their majority at twenty one. The eldest is only seventeen, so they have some years to go. The relatives who now step forward to claim them are motivated by greed, not by family bonds, but greed is a powerful motivator."
"So you'll take them in instead? By yourself?"
He walked to her window and then back again, hands folded behind his back. "I am already aware of at least one threat to contest my wardship of them. I am twenty nine, and I am a lifelong bachelor—this is what will be used against me, to call me unfit to bring the children into my home. I can do nothing about my age, but I do not have to be a bachelor. I am going to return home and marry as soon as possible."
He looked away from her as he spoke these last words. Esme said nothing, waiting for him to continue. Her heart felt odd, beating too strong against her rib cage.
"Our circumstances make me think we could be of some use to each other." He frowned at his own words. "That is…I need a wife. And not just some nineteen year old from a bride agency, but a respectable woman who can make the children feel cared for. Loved. You need a place of your own, and money, and—safety. The protection of a husband." He looked her in the eye. "Come with me when I leave. As my wife. Mary Alice—my youngest sister—it will be six years until she turns twenty one. If after that you decide you would prefer to go West, marry again, anything—I would not stand in your way. If you would like to continue the arrangement and remain as the lady of the house at the Cullen estate, I would welcome that as well. I planned never to marry, so you needn't worry about my falling in love with some woman and regretting our bargain. Obviously the marriage would be…in name only. You don't have to worry about that, either. But as my wife you would of course have access to the household funds, be in charge of the servants, and such."
Esme opened her mouth and found that she had no idea what to say.
What Dr. Cullen was proposing…
She believed him when he said he had not entered with this plan in mind. He seemed too genuinely distressed at the prospect of her returning to the Evensons, and besides, a woman who had admitted to him her intention to end her own life was unlikely to be an ideal wife, even if the intent had been fleeting.
Something in her trusted him. Maybe it was because she was right, despite her awkwardness—he was the nicest to her that anyone had ever been. That was dangerous, she knew. The world and the people in it were very often unkind, as she had learnt painfully time and time again throughout her life. She shouldn't fall for the first kindness someone showed her just because it was so different from how people were normally—that didn't mean Dr. Cullen was a good person.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that she was safe with him. She had never really felt safe with Charles, and she liked to think that years of danger had made her more aware of who she could trust, and who she couldn't.
And he was right. Having a new husband would break any lingering claim the Evenson family had on her, even as it bound her to Dr. Cullen instead. She would be able to travel in safety—and have a destination in mind instead of a vague hope that there was a boarding house somewhere willing to take unmarried women, which was not always the case.
"I hope I have not frightened you. Or that you will feel pressured to agree out of any obligation to me." He said into her silence. "I only...I don't know how else to ensure your—"
"Tell me about the children," she said. "Seventeen years old?" Not little children, to be sure, but nearly a decade younger than she was at twenty six. At seventeen she had thought of herself as an adult—now she knew that she had still been so very young. And to be orphaned at that age too…
Dr. Cullen looked surprised. "My contact with my father was infrequent, and he spoke little of his children—most of what I know is what I have learned in the last few days. Edward is seventeen, and he was born to my father's second wife. She died when he was eight or so of fever, after I had already left home. Rosalie is sixteen, and her mother was a mistress of my father's. She is in Europe, I believe, and no one has seen her in several years. And Mary Alice is...ill. She has been in a sanitarium for much of her life. I plan to change that." He sighed. "I am not trying to deceive you. My father and I were not close. My own upbringing was—unpleasant. I left home quite young. Edward and I lived together with our father and his mother, but I left home when he was eight years old, and I only met Rosalie a few times before then when I visited Seattle with my father in business. I know nothing about Mary Alice except what I have told you—my father refused to tell me the names of her afflictions. It is possible he was uninterested in learning what ailed her himself. We spoke very little and it always ended badly, and he had no interest in my knowing my younger siblings. He did not have much interest in knowing them himself."
Esme nodded. Her heart was already breaking for the children, and she had never even laid eyes on them.
I still have so much love to give. Her thought just before the world went black. Her reason to keep living in a world where her baby was gone. She could love these children who surely thought they were grown and beyond the need for family and care, who had probably gone through far more than Dr. Cullen even knew. She knew she could. She wanted to.
But there was so much she didn't know. To agree to marry a man she had only met once before yesterday, even if that meeting seemed indelibly printed on her brain? To move with him, to—
"Where are you going?" She didn't even know.
"The family estate is in Washington."
She nodded. "It's rainy there, isn't it?"
"The sunny days are far outnumbered by the overcast ones. The forests are peaceful, though. The house is in the woods, although there's a small town nearby."
She didn't have many winter clothes. She didn't have any, actually, when she considered that she would be unlikely to get her things from the Evenson house. The place would probably need a lot of wood in the winter.
She wondered if the Cullen children did chores. It didn't sound like it, if they were wealthy boarding school students.
Esme blinked, astounded by how she was considering all of this. As though it was normal. As though it made any sense at all.
And yet, the more she thought about it, the more she felt calm and…hopeful. She didn't think she would ever feel hopeful again.
"I'll leave you to think about it now," he said softly. "And whatever you decide, I will do what I can to ensure you don't go back to the Evensons—anything in my power."
"Thank you, Dr. Cullen." He made as though to leave, and she wondered how long she would sit here, contemplating.
He paused at the door, though, and turned. "I meant to say this yesterday. I almost forgot." He crossed the room again, this time going to the nightstand beside the bed. He opened the drawer and pulled out—
"Oh." She breathed, holding out her hands even before he had turned around. "Oh, this is…I knitted this for Joseph. I had it when…"
He placed it in her hands and she couldn't stop tears springing to her eyes again to feel it in her hands. Just knowing that she was holding something that he had touched made her feel a bit better. "You were holding it when you were brought in. Your mother-in-law wanted it thrown out, but I told the nurse to keep it in the drawer until you could decide what to do with it. It seemed important."
She turned it over in her hands. The delicate pink and white yarn was marred now by a spatter of brown in the corner, and she frowned. "My blood."
"I wonder if this prevented your skull from hitting the rocks head-on," he said. "I don't know for certain, of course. But it's a possibility."
"Yes," she said softly, and Dr. Cullen turned to leave. "Yes," she said, louder. He turned. "My answer is yes. I'll go with you to Washington. As your wife."
He actually smiled when she said that, then looked unsure. "You've thought about it?"
"Yes." As much as one could in ten minutes. Her eyes met his. "Women at bride agencies know even less of their husbands and they still marry them. You must know, if you've seen my medical records, that I can never have another child—and I wouldn't want to, really. But all I have ever wanted is a household where I am safe and a family I can love." She pressed her lips together, remembering clearly Dr. Cullen's words, that he never planned on marrying. There would be nothing romantic there. That was fine—better than fine. She had stopped dreaming of romance long ago, when she realized her husband didn't care if she lived or died. "Love the children, I mean."
"Yes, of course." He nodded. "Then—thank you, Esme. That doesn't seem like a strong enough response—but then, I don't know what would be for a situation like this. I think…I hope this will be beneficial for the both of us."
"I hope so, too," she said, and she realized she was smiling. She wouldn't be a burden to him after he had saved her like this. She wouldn't let herself.
She fell asleep that night holding Joseph's blanket in her arms, frightened by the enormity of the choice she had just made—but also exhilarated.
Maybe this was the start of something better. Things couldn't get much worse, anyway. She had nothing left to lose.
A/N: wahoo first twilight fic time. i started writing this two summers ago, got 40K words in, and then the summer ended and i got busy again. but im such a fan of this story and i cannot wait to share it so hopefully you like! :) the recent past setting is kind of foreign for me—usually i don't do past AUs of modern work and the times i have its been a lot more historical past—but came really naturally for this story. when i was pretty far into it i considered doing a rewrite to put it in modern times because i thought that might be more normal but none of the circumstances and plot would hit the same. a lot of the fics ive enjoyed the most have been set in the 1920s (because Carlisle and Esme are my favorites can you tell?) and i liked them so hopefully its the same here.
this story is going to focus on esme + carlisle as the only ship, and edward/rosalie/alice will have familial relationships. i have plans for all of their ships but i'm not sure if its going to be an epilogue or a short sequel or what but bella/emmett/jasper wont be part of the main story even though i've already written stuff for all of them lmao. just fyi.
me: they barely know each other. is it too ridiculous that they'd get married in the spur of the moment, despite the circumstances demanding it?
carlisle cullen, canonically: met esme once ten years before; immediately on seeing her again makes her a vampire and takes her home with him to hang out for eternity