Hello, dears!
Before anything else, I just want to say how much I appreciate you. The wait for this chapter has been longer than I intended, and I truly can't thank you enough for your patience. Life has kept me on my toes these past few months, but through all of it, your support, your messages, and your reviews have meant the world to me.
No matter how chaotic things get, this story refuses to loosen its grip on me—it is actively living in my mind, demanding to be told. And knowing that it has found a place in your hearts too makes it all the more special. So, from the bottom of my heart—thank you!
And special thanks to my dear CoppertopJ and her beta magic, as always, she is just incredible!
The last chapter ended with Edward and Bella getting ready to pay Esme a late-night visit, so let's see how that goes :).
Happy reading!
It was way past midnight when I pulled up into the driveway. The air was heavy with humidity, even if there were no storm clouds in sight—so much so that I could almost taste the balmy sweetness staining the atmosphere.
The house breathed and lived right in front of us. It was alive with Esme's thoughts and every crease exuded a strong smell that reminded me of almonds.
It didn't take me long to understand what was happening. As expected, my mother knew. Whether she had figured it out on her own or with a little help from Alice, I couldn't figure out; right now, her thoughts were all over the place, as she prepared for what appeared to be an anticipated visit.
"They're here. They're here. The cookies are still too hot. They'll cool down. Is the bed the right size? It should be."
My mother had certainly been busy in my absence.
I opened the door for Bella right after she managed to unbuckle her seatbelt. She blinked fast, clearly confused when she realized I was outside. That was the only clue that she would eventually need to get some sleep tonight, because usually there were few—if any—supernatural behaviours that actually startled her.
"How are you feeling?" I asked, helping her get outside from the confines of the truck.
"Excited. Nervous."
"Why nervous?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen Esme in so long and… these are unusual circumstances, to say the least."
I smiled. "If it helps, just know that she adores you. She always has."
I took her small hand in mine, encouraging her to follow my lead and step forward. She did, but her accelerated heart rate gave away how skittish she still was. I, on the other hand, felt a restored sense of strength deep inside me as we walked towards the house hand in hand. I knew that whatever agonizing memories resided behind its walls, their power over me could no longer make me a prisoner—not when Bella held the key that could set me free.
"Did my dress get too wrinkly?" she muttered conspicuously.
"Yes," I grinned, remembering with delectable clarity how not that long ago I kept grabbing fistfuls of her dress while I fucked her in the car, making the material crinkle in wild patterns. "But it doesn't matter."
"Oh, God!" Bella hid her face behind her left palm, slowing down her pace. "What will she think?"
I peeled her hand away with patience. "There is no need to be embarrassed. Being judgemental is not Esme's specialty. It never has been."
She nodded but still tried to smooth out the wrinkled fabric—all in vain.
By the time we reached the steps of the house, Bella's heart was fluttering so wildly that I was convinced it wanted to escape from her chest. I heard Esme's steps approaching the door from the other side—slow, calculated steps, as she tried her best to mimic a human's rhythm.
Her thoughts revealed that she was nervous too. She had seen me suffer extensively as a result of my dalliance with the human world, so she was apprehensive of the possibility of seeing me go down a dark path of my own making again. But more than that, she also didn't want to see me crush Bella's spirit again; even if the time they spent together had been limited, it was easy for Esme to feel a motherly type of love for my mate. It was no wonder that she couldn't bear the idea of history repeating itself.
These maternal worries interfered with the joy of knowing that her son was, at long last, happily in love.
It was my mission tonight to prove to her that she never had to dwell on that again.
I tightened my grip on Bella's hand when the door handle clicked, hoping to get her heart to calm down a little.
"You're all right," I whispered reassuringly, leaning down to place a small kiss on the top of her head. "We're all right."
Before she could absorb my words, the door opened.
When my eyes—now a shameless red with stripes of gold scattered throughout, no longer hidden by contact lenses—met Esme's, a new kind of understanding dawned on her.
Not wearing anything to mask the colour of my eyes had been a choice born out of necessity. When I took off with Bella on Saturday, I didn't even think to bring an additional pair of contact lenses with me. By the time I finished feeding on her, I no longer cared about the scarlet pigment of my irises, I was already in heaven. Once the decision to visit Esme was made, I knew that there were no options for me other than to quit trying to mask reality. There was no place where I could get quality contacts so late at night, so I accepted the fact that my mother would find out about the kind of limit I had crossed.
Coming to terms with such a thing was a strange experience. On one hand, I was not ashamed of what I had done. The act itself had not been born out of malignant intentions and it only happened because Bella consented to it. The fact that she allowed me to drink from her had been the ultimate show of trust on her part. As for me, the fact that I stopped was definitive proof that the force of my love far surpassed any other animalistic pursuit. My feeding ended up weaving a new thread of intimacy between us, now that the same essence of life circulated through our veins.
She was mine in a way that transcended the limits of time and space. And I was hers too—no other soul had come close to bringing me to my knees like that.
On the other hand, what I had done also went against one of the most cherished values shared by my family.
Do not consume human blood.
I knew how tasting it once could make you crave more and seek more lives to drain—I had been there myself so many decades ago. But this time it was different. I didn't want anyone else's blood. In fact, if someone were to offer me the choice between satiating my appetite with as many humans as needed with no repercussions and getting to taste just a single drop of Bella once more, the answer was so simple I wouldn't even have to consider it. This wasn't the kind of mindless addiction created by a cycle of foolish feedings. No, this addiction was a different creature—stronger, more meaningful, and intrinsically better.
After all, the dogma of not drinking human blood had its roots in a much simpler belief—that of not hurting other people. Could my actions be qualified as wrong, even though Bella was perfectly safe and content in their wake?
At the end of the day, the barrier between right and wrong was so feeble. I didn't want to disappoint Esme, but I also didn't want to keep lying to her—so instead of moving my gaze away, I faced her head-on, letting my eyes tell the truth for me.
Her confusion wasn't long-lived. After the first second of surprise passed, her thoughts floated in a new direction: "He wouldn't have done it if it wasn't the right thing for them. He is too good to do something that would endanger her life."
She smiled, the joy floating to fill her eyes, and she was the first to speak. "Welcome home, kids!"
My mother opened her arms and Bella gladly accepted the offer, letting go of my hand so that she could hug Esme too. I watched their embrace in silent contemplation, comprehending with awe that the two most important women in my life were officially reunited. In my haste to break up with Bella the first time around, I had not taken into consideration that the black hole of our pain wasn't the only fatality. There was also a galaxy of various levels of emotional lesions—all collateral damage, of course—that I inadvertently created.
Such as the bond between my beloved and my mother.
Their personalities clicked from the moment they first met. And then, with each new occasion in which they got to interact, their connection grew deeper. The wonder only lasted for a short while; too soon, its life was cut off abruptly by none other than me.
Esme never got to say goodbye, and neither did Bella. And up until this particular point in time, I never pondered too much about how that affected either of them. Witnessing their reunion—my mother's arms wrapping Bella with love, the scent of tears fresh in the air—I understood what I had taken from them
"I missed you so much, beautiful girl," Esme crooned.
"I missed you more."
Their embrace lasted for a long, wholesome minute. In a strange, unexpected way, the mere sight of it seemed to heal something within me—perhaps the part of my subconscious that never really stopped feeling guilty for forcing so many people to accept my decisions regardless if they agreed with them or not.
Eventually, we stepped inside the house and I closed the door behind us. Esme still had one arm wrapped around Bella's waist, keeping her close.
"I forgot how warm she is. Like there's a small sun hidden inside her."
I smiled at the imagery evoked by my mother's thoughts, fully agreeing with it. There was a sun hidden inside Bella, and it burned so brightly that it illuminated the entire dark firmament of my life, making it a million times more scintillating than a summer's day azure sky.
"If I didn't know any better, I would have thought that Edward got lost after he left home yesterday," Esme snickered.
"Not really. He's just mind-blowingly stubborn. But then again, so am I."
"And thank God you are, dear. This moment right here has been a long time coming."
"You two are aware that I am here, right?" I intervened, faking my indignation.
They giggled and started walking forward, so I followed them. Looking around, I could see that the living room was decidedly different now. For instance, the wooden table in front of the couch no longer had a vase of flowers on it, but several plates of freshly-baked cookies. Then, on the wall that connected this area to Esme's painting corner, I could see several racks filled with books.
But more importantly, in the middle of all this, there was something far more imposing: a grand piano that looked like it had lived a long life, resting on top of a sand-coloured rug.
I didn't say anything, but as soon as my mother eyed the piano she was instantly reminded of the fact that she owed me an explanation.
"I got it this morning from a music outlet in Port Angeles. It's missing a black key, but your sister saw you playing it anyway."
Once she said that, I could see more fragments of what Esme had been doing throughout the day, as a direct result of Alice's visions. It seemed that she had been terribly busy visiting stores and making last-minute arrangements to get everything she needed: from fresh sets of clothes and various toiletries for Bella to a king-size bed and an electric oven for the kitchen.
All of these were fleeting images in her mind, but they were enough to make me realize that what I thought would be an impromptu visit was actually a highly expected event.
Touched by all the care that went into this, I motioned Bella to sit down on the couch. We made ourselves comfortable, while my mother chose the armchair on the right.
"These smell amazing, but you didn't have to," Bella said, quickly leaning down to grab a large cookie and bite into it. "And they taste amazing too, wow!"
"Well, Alice predicted you would be pretty hungry, so I figured that a midnight snack might be in order."
"Thank you so much."
In other circumstances, I might have been content just holding Bella's hand, knowing that we were not alone, but right now that was not enough. So, I wrapped one arm around her shoulder and brought her as close to me as possible. She leaned into the closeness, resting her head on my chest while she ate her cookie.
As I held her like this and looked around the room, it was pleasant to realize that being here with Bella again, despite the loaded history of this place, did not affect me. I knew things now—things that would have changed everything a couple of years ago, had I known them then too.
Her perfume was swimming freely in my lungs, creating a cloud of pained desire within me, and for once I was not hopelessly tortured by it. Oh, no, quite the contrary—I was high on it. I felt a sublime sense of euphoria—one that was not infected by the fear that I might kill her. Killing was a choice. And as long as her life was in my hands, the choice to keep it protected would always come before any vicious instincts.
Besides, I had started taming those instincts.
"This place looks different," she noticed.
"Oh, you should have seen it a few weeks ago. It was completely empty. Our dear Edward was more than content with keeping it that way."
I shrugged. "I was never here for the house. I was here for Bella."
As if to prove a point, I held her just a little bit tighter, allowing my fingers to dig into her flesh.
"And the piano?" she went on. "I don't think I recognize it."
"It's not exactly mine," I explained.
"Really? Then how—"
"I figured it wouldn't hurt to have it," Esme intervened. "Alice's vision was clear enough," she added in her mind.
"But is anyone playing it? I mean"—she raised her head to look up at me—are you playing it?"
I shook my head. "No, I haven't done that in a long while."
"But why?"
"I lost the will to do it somewhere along the way."
Even if I didn't say it out loud, I was confident that Bella could see the soft underbelly of my motives—namely the fact that the reason I stopped playing was the cruel separation from her. In her absence, the things that I once loved had stopped bringing me a sense of joy and purpose. And because it had only been a day since we allowed the natural course of our destiny to run freely, I hadn't had enough time to discover what changed.
My inspiration to enjoy life had certainly been directed in entirely different directions. Much, much better directions, considering all the different ways I discovered I could make Bella come.
"Well," she murmured, "I would love to hear you play again. It's been forever."
At that moment, I understood why my sister's vision of the piano had been so clear that it got my mother to invest in the last-minute contraption reigning in our living room. It wasn't because I had been missing the art of playing the piano, nor because I had somehow miraculously found the desire to do it again—far from it. In fact, the clarity boiled down to one simple certainty: what Bella wanted, Bella got.
"Now how can you possibly refuse her? I know I couldn't."
I half-smiled at how well my mother knew me.
"I might be a little rusty," I warned.
"And I'm pretty certain you could still fill stadiums if you wanted to, even at your rustiest."
Her faith in me both humbled and excited me. I wanted to make her happy in every way that I knew how—and more, if possible. It didn't matter that I had not played the piano in so long, not when she wanted to hear me.
"All right," I said, "you asked for it."
I got off the couch—not before kissing the top of her head in passing—and made my way to the strange-looking piano, assessing it.
The keys were covered in a sheen of ivorine that was past its prime—I could tell that it wasn't real ivory from the complete lack of a grainy appearance. It wasn't ideal, as I took delight in the smooth, glacial feeling of the real deal, but it also could have been plastic or acrylic, which were arguably worse options. The one missing black key was a D flat—not the worst sin, since I much preferred to use a good old C sharp major instead.
I traced my fingers over the keys, feeling the slow vibration humming from within, as the soundboard anticipated my next move. I thought about all the songs I knew that Bella loved, wondering how much her preferences had changed in this regard. She had always loved my renditions of Chopin and Debussy, but she also had a soft spot for composers that were still alive—Danny Elfman used to be her favourite, but I wasn't sure if he still was.
Quietly, I sat down on the bench in front of the piano, swallowed by the feeling that this was the first time I was doing this. The instrument wasn't imposing—not by itself. But the meaning behind playing it—the knowledge that the music would set free a part of me that had already resigned itself to a lifetime of hiding in a cage of my own making—was quite remarkable.
I had not thought much about it until this very moment, but I actually missed my music.
With a new sense of tranquility overtaking me, I started playing Chopin's Spring Waltz.
"There you go. You have no idea how much I missed listening to you, son. That's beautiful. She always knew how to bring the best of you to the surface."
I smiled, because my mother was completely right. Even though I could not see her from where I was sitting, I could guess that she was smiling too.
There was silence for a while, as the sound of the piano filled the room. The notes twirled in the air, forming patterns that I was highly familiar with. They came naturally to me, as my mind and fingers remembered every detail that my soul had forgotten. Slowly and surely, I was learning that my love for music was still there; it had been hibernating up until this point, waiting for a signal to open its fragile eyes again, but hibernation wasn't death.
When I heard Bella's words of adoration in the background—barely a whisper, as if she was afraid to overtake the sound of the piano—my decision was made: I wasn't stopping. I would play for her—and for my mother, and for myself—for as long as it felt right to do so. I was taking back what had always been mine, making peace with my inner world.
Around the time I started playing a fourth song—Schubert's Serenade—Esme joined Bella on the couch and they started to talk again, allowing the music to accompany their words.
"It's a good thing you returned, Esme. For so long, I thought I would never come back here, let alone see you again. In a way, this almost feels like a dream."
"I am still getting used to it myself, dear. It's strange to not have all of my children in one place. But I have to admit that having you and Edward here, under the same roof, makes this house feel like home." Her mind took her back to the one summer that Bella and I shared—how I used to bring her here, how complete the family felt then. Things never felt quite right after that. "And I haven't seen you in so long, but you're as beautiful as ever! How has life been treating you?"
Bella didn't answer right away. She hesitated in front of this question and, even if I couldn't read her mind, I could imagine the wheels in her brain spinning, as she tried to come up with an answer that wouldn't alert my mother too much.
"Life has had plenty of ups and downs, I guess. But that's neither here, nor there, since everyone's life follows a similar path."
"Your path was quite different though, was it not?"
"It wasn't exactly the easiest," she admitted. "But I cannot complain, knowing that it led me back to Edward in the end."
The sweet relief of hearing her say that was shaken by the reminder of what I had put her through. So much unnecessary pain… so much anguish in the name of what I used to think was right.
I shuddered. Never again.
"That it did, my dear. Although that should not negate whatever experiences you faced before you two reunited."
"Perhaps, but it feels like… like none of those experiences even matter."
It was still frustrating that Bella was so content with keeping Jacob's misconducts in a safe chamber inside her mind, refusing to let them escape. To me, there was no erasing them. Not even now, when I was actively aware of the fact that she wanted me. She chose me. That choice made no difference when I thought about each time he had made a wrong move with her.
Why couldn't she see the obvious?
"Do they not matter? Or do you simply want to forget them?"
"Maybe… maybe a little bit of both. It's hard to explain."
"I am a patient listener, as you may remember."
"Well… how much do you already know?"
Before responding, my mother silently went through the small pieces of information she had managed to gather from me and Alice—how Bella lost her parents, how her friendship with Jacob turned into something more—but also through the conclusions she had reached on her own—specifically how she feared that Bella's meek responses could mean something else.
Something that reminded Esme of an awful lot of things that had happened to her in her past life.
"I know the surface level of things," she answered. "Edward hasn't shared too much."
Bella sighed and, with a voice that was suddenly softer, started talking. At first, there were only fragments of stories—like the day when Jacob tried to make her day better by attempting and failing to bake a cake for her or the night when they stayed up late to watch old episodes of The Simpsons.
But then, the fragments grew and took on lives of their own, as my beloved recalled them, and the cracks started to show. Some of the stories I already knew. But others managed to surprise me.
"I don't think he was always temperamental. Maybe a little bit—the normal amount that resides in all of us, you know—but nothing unusual. I think losing his mother so tragically is what rewired his brain. Not that I blame him. Such a loss changes who you are in ways you don't even anticipate. I probably realized he was no longer the same Jacob the night when he got upset with me over carrot cake."
I frowned, my confusion doubled by my mother's stupefaction.
"Carrot cake?"
"Yes, carrot cake. I got one from the bakery shop but I forgot to place it in the fridge when I got home. However, I'd made the mistake of telling Jacob about it as soon as I got it, which… in hindsight, was not the best thing to do. He got excited, as he had been out of town for three days and he was eager to return home. So when he returned, we both realized that the cake had gone bad and he got upset."
"Upset how?"
"He was… a bit mean. Saying some things that he shouldn't… raising his voice, then refusing to talk to me when I told him I would get a new cake the day after, since I still had so many chores to do that day, and… actually, no, I think it sounds worse than it was. I don't know… looking back, it was just one of those days when one insignificant disappointment just adds to the pile and tips it over. I've had those too."
There she went again, trying to make Jacob's impulsive behaviour seem normal. The frustration this evoked in me was unmatched. I had to make a conscious effort to be delicate with the piano keys, lest I risked breaking them.
Esme chose her next words carefully, a part of her afraid of the possibility that basic common sense might get Bella to build an even stronger wall of denial. "We all have them, but it's how we choose to act in the midst of those raging outbursts that defines us. At least if you ask me."
"No, I agree. I guess what I'm trying to say is he's not a bad person. He's just had a rough couple of years."
"You've had them too. And yet I see the same kind of kindness in you that I observed the day we met." Her mind took her back to that day—how deliriously happy she felt to watch me fall deeper in love every passing second. How she wanted it to last. "And sure, pain is always a great explanation for why someone might cause someone else to hurt, but it is never an excuse. That is a lesson I never learned back in my human days."
A moment of quiet settled over them after that, as those last words sank in. My hands were tense now, as they went over the keyboard. The resounding notes had a sharp bite to them—somewhere along the way, I had managed to turn Schubert's Serenade into a melody that had stopped resembling the original. The new tunes were no longer a reverberation of melancholia, but rather a queer vibration of anxiety.
"He has his faults, I can admit that," Bella muttered after a while. "And yes, being with him hasn't exactly been a walk in the park, but… but there is so much worse out there. You have to know what I mean."
Esme knew, even if the remaining particles of her memory were too indistinct. She wordlessly went through them, knowing precisely what happened to her, but no longer having the visual remembrance to torment her.
I, too, remembered. Perhaps more than she did.
Almost ninety years ago, in the throes of her transformation, my mother's life flashed before her eyes in several excruciating ways. Although I didn't know then what she would grow to mean to me, getting to witness the horrors of her human life got me to feel something I had never felt until then—protectiveness. I still remembered how urgent that feeling had been—how I wanted to make her pain disappear forever without wasting any more time. How I wanted to punish the man who had inflicted it on her with such malevolency. How Carlisle found a temporary way to keep the wrath inside me from exploding.
"She is safe now," he told me then, as I watched powerlessly. "By God's grace, he will get his comeuppance."
Ironically, he did find his comeuppance, but not by God's grace. No, by my grace.
I shook the memory away, focusing on the instrument again. The song sounded awfully repetitive now, picking up momentum with each note only to lose it immediately after. I didn't know where I was going with it, but I didn't stop.
"There are many types of bad in the world, sweetie," Esme replied after a while. "That doesn't make the lesser evil acceptable. Besides, with certain people, it is a crescendo. They take something away from you today—something small, so small that you're even happy to give it to them… because you love them and no request seems too extraordinary. But tomorrow comes and, sure enough, they want something else. Then some more the day after tomorrow—not too much, just enough to not make you think twice about whether you should. Before long, they have more of you than you have of yourself. And the worst thing about it? They already made you believe that you gave them everything on your own terms, so you don't even think you have the right to complain."
Bella didn't contradict her, but she didn't express her agreement either.
What in the world is she thinking now?
I was dying to reach into her mind and bury myself deep beneath the intricate webs of neurons, where I could live surrounded by her thoughts. The idea of being able to do that was demented and exciting in equal amounts. It sent new jolts of movement to my fingers, getting them to better understand where the melody was heading.
"I still have myself," Bella offered eventually. "Nobody's taking that away from me."
"Then nobody should take away your right to be angry either. It is yours alone, especially if you've been wronged—and you have. The fact that there is worse out there does not change that. Do you understand?"
The moment of hesitation was long enough to get my uneasiness to hurt. But when it ended, so did my ache. "I… I think I do."
I didn't have to turn around to understand what the sudden sound of bodies shifting and the couch croaking meant. They were hugging—an embrace that didn't stop for many minutes. I listened to the remaining sounds, trying to make sense of how it was possible for my mother to make a more compelling argument regarding Jacob's poisonous ways than I ever could. Perhaps it was the way their afflictions were, at the end of the day, pieces of the same sad puzzle, which made it easier for Bella to see the obvious truth that she had been missing. Or maybe it was the fact that Bella had been missing her parents for so long that having a maternal figure actively care for her got her to be more malleable. More willing to accept that there were still things she had not learned yet.
One thing was certain: I was grateful to my mother in a way I wished I had predicted earlier.
A few conversations later, Bella ended up falling asleep on the couch, in Esme's loving arms. I was still stuck on the same song, playing it on repeat, refining it with each soft inhale of my love and making it better with each sweet exhale, until it finally sounded exactly how I wanted. It was different from the lullaby I once composed for her—looking back, that one was a single leaf in an old tree.
The melody that had been born in the past two hours held novel meanings, as what began as repetitive anxious tunes that drowned each other out morphed into an ode to the very meaning of my life: my love for Bella—unending and stronger than the forces that held the universe together—but also her love for me—just as powerful, despite her mortal form. Each jingle made complete sense, rendering my feelings with such accuracy that it felt as if my thoughts had become perfectly readable.
"Is this a new lullaby for her?" Esme didn't allow the question to escape out loud, not wanting to risk waking Bella up.
I thought about it for a second, not stopping. And then, I decided. "No, it's for her and me. Our lullaby, I suppose."
"It is the most beautiful song I have ever heard, son. Listening to it feels right. Being here feels right. I was so scared you'd get both of your hearts broken all over again when you came here, but I was wrong. You're saving each other. I know the circumstances are not ideal, with Bella still being engaged, but you will figure it out. I trust that you will make the best decision for both of you."
I smiled to myself, before telling my mother something I had not told her in years—something that not only she needed to hear, but was also true. "You are right."
And even though I had not admitted it out loud to anyone else but Bella, Esme knew that my decision to let my mate join me in immortality had already been made.
The thought of that—of having another daughter, of seeing her troubled son at peace—made her hold Bella just a little tighter, as the realization that this was the happiest she had been since she left Forks settled over her mind and erased all traces of past worries.
All traces, with one exception.
Sooo, is anyone curious about how the lullaby that Edward composed sounds :)?
Because I certainly was back when I was writing this chapter! If you're in my Facebook group (Twilight Fanfics: NightBloomingPeony & Friends Corner), keep an eye out—I'll be posting the lullaby in a couple of weeks! And if you're not in the group yet, you're more than welcome to join us!
Until then, I would love to know your thoughts on this chapter!
The next chapter will be out on the first Sunday of April. In the meantime, stay safe and happy!