A hospital in Calgary lost its ER surgeon, and Carlisle applied for the job.
The night before we were to move, Edward played Chopin for four hours, and I sat there the whole time. Vampires don’t get tired, and we don’t need to change positions. So I could just sit, and listen.
I tried not to think about Edward’s mother, or the photo, or any of the things that the nocturnes usually made me think of.
At the end of one piece, Edward leaned back on the piano bench and pressed his hands backward against the wood so that it made his body rock back and forth a little.
I wondered what he was thinking.
He didn’t answer right away.
After a few minutes, I thought maybe what he wanted was privacy, maybe some space to play some more. I swung my legs around to the other side of the piano bench and was halfway to standing when Edward whispered, “I was supposed to have a sister.”
I stopped.
“I’m sorry?”
He shook his head, but in the “clearing out cobwebs” kind of way, not in the “don’t talk to me” kind of way. Then he went on speaking.
“I think,” he added. “I feel as though I remember my mother telling me that. But I don’t remember much…” His head tilted to one side and he thought for a moment.
“Her name was…Margaret? I think,” he said at last. “My mother was pregnant with her when I was very small.”
This was fascinating. Both what he remembered, and that he remembered it at all.
“What happened to her?”
He went silent again. His jaw locked, and his face went blank, and he stared at the keys, like black and white were going to swirl into some new medium and give him some information that he didn’t already have. He didn’t look up at me.
“She died,” he said at last.