Writings

Six months after Jasper and I arrived in Indiana, Carlisle turned thirty-seven. He was actually three hundred and six.

He and Esme both sighed about needing to move.

“It takes a long time to find our home,” Esme said, when I asked why she was so upset.

I shrugged. “There’s a cabin outside Portland, Oregon for the five of us. Edward will have a whole floor to himself. About four miles away there’s a little three bedroom home that Rosalie and Emmett will enjoy. The properties are on a stream right next to the Cascades. And the hospital is going to lose one of their general surgeons to Hopkins two days from now.”

Esme looked stunned.

I told her the house would look beautiful when she was done with it.

Forward

Jasper and I hiked down from the Cascades to the Oregon coast at dusk. A lot of wildlife lives in the Cascades—mountain lions and deer and bears.

It’s still hard for Jasper. Animals don’t give you the strength that humans do, and he misses being strong. But he does it for me. And he does it because it makes him feel like he’s a better person than he was before.

We sat on the beach, our bodies making indentations in the sand. I curled into his side, and he took off his shirt. Jasper has a lot of body hair compared to men these days. He has the second least of the men in our family, though—Emmett is the hairiest, followed by Carlisle, though Carlisle is blond and you don’t really see it on him.

Edward didn’t quite finish puberty, and he looks it. Jasper says he looks effeminate. Well, the word Jasper uses is “Aunt Nancy.”

He wrapped his arm over my shoulder as we sat and listened to the waves as they whooshed in and out. It was low tide, and little tide pools shimmered in what was left of the sunlight.

I mentioned that I was thinking about Edward.

“That boy is melancholy on two legs,” Jasper answered. “Not much you can do about it.” He pulled me closer to him and kissed the top of my head. “I like it that you worry.”

Melancholy on two legs. Not a terrible description. Edward spent a lot of time brooding. Sitting at his piano playing songs in minor keys. Pretending he didn’t hear any of us when we walked up to him, even if it was Carlisle or Esme.

I leaned against Jasper some more. “Do you think we’re bad for him?”

He laughed. “I think that boy is still too young to realize that if he’s going to live forever, he better get used to change.” He kissed my head again. “You’re change. A whole lotta change, in a teeny tiny package.”

I giggled. “Change on two legs?”

“Change on two legs.”

Jasper smiled. I couldn’t see it—we were both still looking out at the ocean—but I could feel it.

We stayed until the nighttime tide came in.

Forward

In 1990, I found out that the girl’s name was Isabella. There was something involving a high school classroom. Science. Chemistry, maybe, or Biology, I wasn’t sure. She had long, brown hair. That was really all I had.

But it could have been any high school classroom, anywhere.

And decisions can change.

Forward

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.

Forward

When Edward came home from his hunting trip, it took him all of thirty seconds to start throwing things: smashed his boxes of records; howling obscenities at Carlisle and Esme and anyone else who would dare stand within earshot. He called me a harlot. A freak. A circus act.

He did, until I explained what was going on, anyway.

That was what I told the Cullens, about how Edward would respond. But the decision I couldn’t see was Esme’s, who even after a few hours already seemed as though she would gladly accept a new daughter and son. In my visions, I saw she enjoyed their home; that she took pride in its appearance and loved keeping it looking nice. I did not understand that she was a carpenter, and that the house was her work of art. And after I explained to all of them that I could See, they understood that Edward moving into the garage was the best idea.

So it was Esme’s decision which thwarted the storm, because inside ten hours, before Edward came home, she built him a new room—turning a large storage space in the garage into a getaway for a confused vampire in a house full of couples. A bed, with a headboard with plenty of room for books; a whole wall of shelving perfectly sized for LPs. She even painted it; a pale shade of almond that glowed against all the color of Edward’s music. That room, more than any she’s built him since, was soaked with a mother’s love. And when he came home, Edward screamed only a little.

And he didn’t call me a harlot.

“Freak,” though…that one stuck.

Forward