Writings

Me in a white dress, Jasper in something vaguely resembling a suit. Lilacs in bloom; a weeping willow in the back yard.

That vision was always out of place, when I saw it, floating with no anchor to time—just place.

So when we arrived at the Vermont house, I laid eyes on the willow tree in the backyard and popped the question.

Jasper grumbled about my proposal “not being proper.”

He felt better when I let him get me a ring.

On the first day of spring that year, which happened to be nicely overcast, Carlisle found us a minister who made house calls. We stood under the tree and I promised Jasper that I’d be his forever.

Except for the vows, Jasper held his breath, just to be safe.

The only other people there were the rest of the family. Carlisle and Esme held hands so that their entire forearms touched, and while we were saying our vows, Esme put her head on Carlisle’s shoulder and he ran his fingers through her hair. Rosalie stood in Emmett’s arms.

And Edward stood alone, his arms wrapped around himself like he had some sort of need to stay warm.

When we’d wished the minister goodbye and thanked him (and paid him, but Carlisle did that and to this day I don’t know how much he gave), I went looking for Edward.

His door was closed. Through it, I could hear him blasting Buddy Holly.

I knocked.

“Go away,” he called. Then he paused and added, “Congratulations. But go away.”

“I just wanted to thank you for being there,” I called back.

There wasn’t an answer. I listened to Buddy sing for the better part of twenty minutes, to no avail.

Forward

I cornered Carlisle a month after my wedding. Every now and then he holes himself up in his study with his books, almost exactly the way Edward does in his room with his music. Jasper calls them a match made in Heaven.

That’s when punch Jasper in the shoulder.

Carlisle was reading some medical journal, turning pages so eagerly you’d think he was reading a thriller. When I entered, he flipped it over and sat back in his chair, his palms flat on his desk and his arms open.

Carlisle has this way of letting you know it’s okay to talk to him.

I slid onto the desk, one hip almost knocking over his pencil cup. It barely teetered; he caught it so fast I didn’t even have time to warn him.

“It’s funny how we sit,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “How we sit?”

“Not how we sit, I guess. That we sit.” I gestured to my lap. “I don’t need to sit here alone with you. You know I don’t need to sit.”

Carlisle chuckled. “You’re very good at the charade.”

For a long time, neither of us said anything.

“You didn’t come in here to talk to me about sitting, Alice,” he said gently at last.

“No.”

Carlisle just sat there, his eyebrows raised.

“What does the M stand for?” I asked at last.

“The M?”

“Edward. He has a lighter, up in his room, on his special shelf. E. A. M.”

“Oh.” A smile spread across Carlisle’s face. “Masen. Edward Anthony Masen.”

Edward Masen.

Just like Jasper had once been Jasper Whitlock, Edward was Edward Masen.

What had the Masens been like, I wondered. Did Mr. Masen look like Edward? Gangly and tall, with red-brown hair that looked like it was on fire in the sun? Did Mrs. Masen bake him cookies? They had both died, I knew that much. We all knew the story of how the Cullens started; Carlisle, alone in a hospital in Chicago, presented with the wild idea to create a companion and the orphaned boy who would be the perfect experiment. But what had the family been like before then? Who had they been?

Carlisle doesn’t push conversations, which is one of the nicer things about talking to him. If he sees you’re thinking, he just sits back and waits for you to ask a question or say more.

“What were they like?”

“They?”

“Edward’s parents.”

For a moment, Carlisle’s eyes glazed over, the way they do when he’s thinking about something that happened a long time ago. Or something that means a lot to him. In this case, I guessed, it was both.

“I didn’t meet his father,” he said carefully. “Not in any substantive way. He was delirious with fever by the time he was admitted, and he died within a few days. A lot of people did, then. It was such an awful disease.” He rubbed his temple, as though it was somehow possible for him to have a headache.

“His mother, though…” A little laugh escaped his lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever treated a more difficult patient. I could not get her to do anything that was even remotely in her best interest if it in any way ran counter to what she felt she needed to do for Edward. He was so much worse off than her-he was the one they brought in first. She got sick later, after she refused to leave the hospital and spent day after day exposed to the influenza.”

“She wouldn’t leave him.”

“She wouldn’t even entertain the idea.” Carlisle’s eyes glazed over again. “She loved him a great, great deal.”

“And you don’t?”

Carlisle chuckled. “Touché.” He hopped off the desk. “Why the sudden interest? Something isn’t about to happen to him, is it?”

He did a remarkably good job at keeping the panic out of his voice when he asked that.

“No,” I answered. “I just wanted to know. Thank you.”

Carlisle nodded. “Anytime.”

I started to make my way out of the room, but Carlisle called after me.

“Alice?”

I turned.

“He doesn’t really think you’re a freak.”

Then he leaned back in his chair and went back to reading his journal.

Forward

As predicted, Isabella turned up in a Biology classroom in Washington.

I’d thought it was Jasper at first, when I saw the classroom massacre that day in January. Twenty students slaughtered, blood spattering the walls like some kind of bad contemporary painting.

But Jasper was in my section of U.S. History , and I could see he wasn’t going anywhere.

Edward held it in check, and the vision disappeared.

I cornered him in the hallway after class.

“Go talk to Carlisle,” I urged him. “Now.”

Edward is a runner. By which I mean not that he enjoys running, although he does. But I mean he runs when things don’t go right.

But he’s also stubborn, and so he waited until after school.

Forward

Edward plays melancholy music when he’s upset. Sometimes, it’s the only way any of the rest of us have to even figure it out.

So I was expecting the minor chords and the slow dirges when they started up. He sat there, his hair falling over his forehead as he leaned in toward the keyboard with each press; his brow wrinkling like it was taking a lot of effort. Which was completely silly; it doesn’t take us effort to do anything.

Edward disappears like that, sometimes. It can be hours; he’ll sit at the keyboard pedaling and playing, and the whole house will ring with some sad song. I didn’t know music before the Cullens, but I know it know—Rachmaninoff is mad, and Liszt is sad, and Bach is content.

Joplin is for Esme.

But Edward rarely plays that.

I went in to sit next to him on the bench. The moment my bottom hit the wood, however, the piano closed with a thud, and Edward was gone.

Forward

Maria showed up in Calgary with almost no warning. I can see others of our kind, when they arrive; they move differently in my visions than humans do. They’re crisper, just like they are in real life—superhuman. Brighter colors. Easily detectable movement.

I always see them coming.

Except for that one time.

~End of Part I~

Part II

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