When Edward wrecked his piano, the debris took up the entire living room. The piano lay splintered on the middle of the floor. I hadn’t realized until then that piano strings aren’t stringy at all; they’re big long straight wires that, if you break the rest of the thing, stick up at all sorts of angles. And Melancholy on Two Legs sat in the middle of them like a bird in a nest, with little white keys scattered around him like some freakish game of dominoes.
I knew why. Carlisle had made the announcement just a half-hour earlier, then disappeared to get his affairs in order at the hospital. We’d go back to the east coast; as far away from Oregon as we could get. That way no one would follow us.
Rosalie screamed that it was unfair and stalked out the back door, making Emmett chase her back to their house.
Esme started looking through her books of house designs.
And Edward…well, Edward destroyed his piano.
I went to sit down next to him. Maybe, I thought, I could convince him to pretend the keys actually were dominoes, and we could laugh.
But as soon as my bottom hit the floor, he leapt up, snarling.
“Edward,” I said, but he cut me off.
“You never should have come here, Freak.” His eyes flashed dark. “You and your husband. All you do is fuck things up for the rest of us.”
I didn’t realize he was gone until the sound of his bedroom door slamming echoed through the house, fading off into the sounds of Edward, playing piano…
At once, I saw the young man, brushing past my husband on the street. Too close. Too quickly. I saw the way Jasper turned, the way his teeth glinted in the lamplight…
I jumped to my feet.
“Let’s go hunt,” I told my husband. He looked at me like I had two heads, but then shrugged and followed me.
No one died.
We didn’t leave Oregon.
And Edward’s piano stayed intact.
But that was when I figured out that Jasper was right.
Edward is not a fan of change.