Writings

Because Carlisle was an emergency surgeon, we had our own telephone line. And that meant that any time our phone rang, you knew.

By the time Carlisle hung up, I had seen the whole thing. The accident, which would go on for a half hour because of the fog. The highway, slick with blood and gasoline and oil, and littered with car parts. Carlisle, running between cars, grabbing bodies and carrying them to safety. In surgery all night, returning to us in the morning looking almost as tired as he might have if he were a human.

And, because they were running in the woods too near the crash, Maria…and Jasper.

Forward

Getting Edward’s photo re-framed cost five dollars.

I hung it up in his room with a note that simply said, “More Chopin.”

That night, he played for three and a half hours without stopping.

Forward

Edward saw my vision at the same time I did. He was just moving to sit down at the piano, but instead of the peace-filled expression I usually saw when he was ready to sit down to play, I saw his face twist in horror.

“Can we stop them?” he asked.

I shook my head.

But Edward is the fastest of all of us, and he’s also the most stubborn.

We left the front door open.

Forward

Edward didn’t ask me about the photo, nor did he thank me for it. But he played almost every night, and most nights, I sat with him, listening, watching. Trying not to think of his mother and how it must have been, her sitting there with Edward leaning into her side.

Sometimes, my mind would drift though, and then I would hear his fingers falter as my imagining of his mother appeared in my mind.

Listening to him trip over the notes, I squeezed his arm.

“I’m here,” I whispered.

He kept playing.

Forward

Charlie forbade Edward from visiting more than two hours at a time after I brought him and Bella back from Italy. So he was forced to spend more time at home.

One afternoon, I found him sitting in the backyard breaking twigs. They started out feet long, and then snapped in half, and in half, and in half, and in half. Methodically, rhythmically, like another piano concerto, just one played on wood.

When he finally got them small enough, he crushed them between his forefinger and thumb.

I sat down beside him in the grass. He didn’t say anything, just kept breaking the twigs. When he ran out of them, he disappeared into the woods, came back with more, and kept going.

Two hours later, he finished pulverizing one and murmured, “It’s different now.”

“Because of Jacob?” I asked.

He shrugged and snapped a few more.

“What would have happened, Alice?” he whispered at last. “If we’d stayed?”

I shook my head.

“I know you saw it. When I was deciding what to do.”

And he was right, because of course I was watching over him that night. The way he raced to the top of Mt. Olympus, and screamed against the howling wind. The pain that was coming if we left. The joy that would come if we stayed.

But there was joy now, too. There was joy coming. It was just going to be much harder won.

I put my arm over his shoulder.

“Now is what matters, Edward.”

His shoulders trembled a little, but then he coughed and sat up straighter.

“Now isn’t certain.”

I squeezed him, and for once, he didn’t run.

“Now is never certain,” was all I said.

Forward