Writings

First, many, many thanks to robsjenn, first for being willing to bid on me in Fandom Gives Back, and then, for waiting pretty much forever while I got my sea legs for Alice’s voice and threw out draft after draft after draft. So my undying thanks are due to her, both for her patience, and for asking me to write something that was such a fun stretch of my normal Twilight writings.

Thanks also to Openhome, my intrepid beta and critique partner. Everything she does keeps me on track, and saves me from wandering too far afield in the search for the perfect way to portray someone. She’s walked through a novel and a novella with me over almost three years, and I am deeply, deeply in her debt.

Thanks to sleepyvalentina for prereading, and to her, twitina, and einfach_mich for being excited every time I bounced a few lines off them. It kept me going, and I owe you all.

And of course, thank you to all of you for reading. The gift of getting to share these stories with others is not one I take for granted, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming on these little journeys with me.

“Edward misses his parents.”

Carlisle looked up from the book he was reading, some unbelievably thick tome that must have been about brains or muscles or something—it had color pictures of things that resembled parts of the body but looked grotesque. Red and blue and yellow where there should have been just smooth skin and figure.

He placed a bookmark and snapped the book closed. Carlisle is the best at that; teaching himself to do things that humans do, like putting a bookmark in a big book so that he won’t lose his place.

As though he’s going to forget which was the last page he read.

He looked up at me very calmly.

“Of course he misses his parents,” he answered evenly. “I can’t do much about that, Alice.”

I caught the look of pain that slid across his face then. He blames himself for what happened to Edward, even if Edward doesn’t blame him. “Played God,” is how Carlisle puts it. And when Edward is being a real shit, he throws that back.

“No, I mean—” I stopped. “There’s something about Jasper and me. Having us here makes it worse. It was okay when it was just the five of you, but with the two of us, too…”

This time Carlisle leaned back in his chair, propping his chin between his thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He’s a very calm person, Carlisle, but do anything that even remotely resembles suggesting that Edward might leave again, and you throw him into this odd state. For the longest time, I didn’t know what it was, and then I asked Esme about it, and she explained about The Time. Which is how they all three talk about it, just The Time, and you can hear the capital letters in their voice. When I think about it, I remember seeing them during The Time, just the doctor and his wife, standing together by the window, lying by the fire.

Edward calls it his “rebellious period.”

Rebelling against Carlisle. Rebelling against everything his new family stood for.

But he came home from that. That, as far as I’m concerned, is the important part.

“He didn’t stay gone,” I said quietly.

Carlisle blinked. Then he stood up, put the giant book back on the shelf, and swung his long pea coat over his shoulders. But before he reached the door, he turned.

“I can’t do anything about Edward missing his family, Alice,” he said.

Then he closed the door behind him.

I haven’t heard more pain in his voice before or since.

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Back to Part I

Back to Part II

The thing about fate is that you choose it. It’s based on little decisions that happen, bit by bit. And if one decision sets off a cascade, another one can stop it. My visions aren’t always right because destiny is something you pick, every day that you live.

I saw Edward when I woke to this new life. And I knew that one day, he would be happy. And that I would be there to help him.

The way this story ends is that my brother became my best friend.

And my best friend married Isabella Swan.

And I, finally, have a whole family.

That’s the way this story ends.

But we all choose to begin it again, every single day.

~||fin||~

Acknowledgments

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Part I

Part II

I have never in my life sworn at Esme more about her choice of locale than the twelve minutes it took me to drive in Carlisle’s car from our house to Charlie Swan’s. I went seventy miles an hour, cursing and praying that at least, since I couldn’t save Bella, I could at least help Charlie.

There was only a little Volkswagon in the driveway when I pulled up.

Now, people don’t normally surprise me, but Bella did that day, when she barreled into me full-force.

“I saw you jump,” was all I could manage.

I was already attuned to her, I told her. I couldn’t help but see.

Except when I couldn’t.

Because the other boy, Jacob, had been with her.

It was lucky for all of us that Edward didn’t take a werewolf with him to Italy.

Forward

Rosalie laughed when I told her I was concerned about Edward.

“He’s just going to go on being a mope,” she said. “Everything he does; he just trudges from one day to the next.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “How Carlisle could think I could ever put up with someone like that…” she trailed off, and then gave me a wan smile.

“Well, he loves Esme. He just…had high hopes.”

She snorted. “Carlisle’s a tyrant. Just a really, really polite one.” She slid back under the frame of Emmett’s car. She had a little light in a cage that was on a giant cord that stretched all the way into the kitchen. The light hung underneath the engine and made it glow from where I could see through the open hood.

“Would you hold this up for me? I need about two more inches above the jack.”

I looked at my hands, which Rosalie didn’t miss.

“You won’t get that much grease on them,” she said, and I could tell she was rolling her eyes somewhere beneath all the engine parts and belts.

I slid a hand under the car and lifted it up a few more inches.

“Thanks,” she said.

“So, about Edward.”

The only sound from under the car was the ticking of the instrument Rose was using to adjust whatever it was. It zipped and unzipped, like the sound our grandfather clock made when you wind it.

Slowly, the zipping stopped.

Rosalie pushed herself out from under the car. There was a little streak of oil or grease or something of that nature across the bridge of her nose and down the side of her cheek. Somehow, on Rose, that sort of thing just makes her look even more gorgeous.

“Honestly?” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I would stop worrying, Alice. All the rest of us have.”

We stared at each other a moment.

Then she shrugged, and slid herself back under the car.

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