Writings

There were thirteen bodies in all. Jasper offered to help us drag them back, but Edward literally barked at him, and so he stayed in the grove of trees, sitting with his back against a trunk and his knees huddled up to his chest.

He looked stunned. And scared.

“Button your fucking pants,” Edward snarled as we left.

The accident was such a mess, it was easy to hide the bodies and put them back in positions that made it look like they’d been thrown from the cars. Make people think that the bodies were mangled because they’d gotten caught between metal and concrete and not because they’d been carried off by two thirsty vampires.

Carlisle was still there, doing triage. When he saw us working, he just nodded solemnly, and turned back to his own patients.

When we were done, we returned to Jasper. He was fully clothed this time, but lying on his side in the snow, staring blankly. A pool of sticky red lay near him.

I looked at Edward, who stared down at Jasper.

“He couldn’t keep it all down,” he said, after peering into Jasper’s mind. Grabbing Jasper’s arm, he yanked my husband to his feet.

“You should feel that ashamed,” he said. “I’m glad you felt so awful that you hurled.”

Jasper just closed his eyes and clutched his stomach.

The three of us walked back to the house at human speed. It took two hours.

Edward walked between us, one hand on Jasper’s shoulder, like a warden, and one hand holding mine, like a friend.

Forward

Carlisle came home at four o’clock in the morning. It was already six on the east coast. He started calling real estate brokers at once. New York, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Hampshire…

At one point, he stopped talking. Several minutes passed before the sound of these odd, choking gasps floated down the stairs. At first, I was confused.

I’d never heard Carlisle sob before.

Forward

“I can’t stand it,” Edward whined. “I don’t know! I don’t know what she’s thinking.” He pummeled the lintel of the door so hard that it cracked.

“Careful. Esme put a lot of work into this house.”

His jaw flexed, but he put his hand back in his pocket. Then he sat down.

I dropped into the same posture and slung an arm over his shoulder. He slumped a little to make it easier. For a long time, he didn’t say anything, just sat there and shook.

We’d moved to Ithaca. Then back to Forks, with Edward making what was very nearly his final stop in Italy along the way. And still, he came home to find that the thing he’d always longed for wasn’t as simple as he wanted it to be.

He shoved his head into his hands and clawed at his hair, so that little tufts of it appeared between his fingers.

“She kissed him. Does she love him? Is that what that means?”

I shrugged. “Does Jasper love Maria?”

Often, Edward’s gift annoys people; they don’t like the invasion of privacy. It’s uncomfortable to them that he can see everything, even if they don’t mean for him to. But I find it useful, because you don’t have to explain. Show, don’t tell, like our English teachers say year after year, decade after decade, high school after college after high school.

So I showed him.

Me, picking the pine needles out of Jasper’s hair that night as he just sat there, shaking.

The three weeks of him not looking at me.

The way he would cover his eyes when he walked too near a mirror.

And of course, all that sadness and shame he projected onto the rest of us; the way even Carlisle and Esme snapped at each other for weeks. That we all knew it was Jasper, but no one would dare ask him to leave. We just put up with it.

The other four thought it was just because of the accident and the thirteen dead bodies.

We three are the gifted ones, Jasper, Edward, and I. You can’t keep a secret from any one of us.

But we can keep one for one another.

Edward pressed himself against the wall. When he spoke, it was the voice of a child, curious about something he doesn’t have the capacity yet to understand.

“How did you forgive him?”

I shrugged. “I love him, E. That’s how it works, loving someone. There’s give and take. And there are things which will break you a lot more than they’ll ever break him…or her.”

He grunted. “So you’re weak.”

I actually chuckled. It was a very Edward response. My brother sees things in black and white. Weakness and strength. He doesn’t see all the possible permutations, the way one thing folds into another, how fragile any one decision is.

“Forgiving Jasper is the hardest thing I hope I’ll ever have to do,” I told him. “It took everything I had.”

For a long time, he didn’t answer. “So…forgive and forget? ” he said at last. “Is that what you’re advising me?”

I laughed and ruffled his hair. He yanked himself away as fast as possible. Edward doesn’t like having his hair ruffled, and I know it, but I do it anyway sometimes.

A sister has to be annoying at least a little, as far as I’m concerned.

“Vampires don’t forget anything,” I said.

Forward

I listened to Edward play nocturnes for the better part of ten years.

Sometimes, I would just listen, thinking about us, or him, or our new family. Sometimes I would think about Jasper. Sometimes I would imagine his mother sitting next to him while she played, with him leaning into her side, with her ruffling his hair.

Those times, he’d get up and walk away.

Forward

“I promise, we’ll be gone only a little while.” Jasper pressed his forehead to mine so that his hair fell forward and tickled my cheek. “A few hours. I just need to say some things to her, get her to see that I’m never coming back. Shake her off Peter and Charlotte’s trail.”

It made sense. But my stomach was all knotted anyway.

At the time, I thought the stomach knot was about Maria.

Jasper pressed his lips to mine. Briefly, his mouth opened and he sucked my tongue inside it. Our tongues wrestled against each other, and he exhaled softly onto my cheek.

“I love you,” he said. “Only you.” He reached his hand to my face, stroking my cheek with his thumb. “She’ll be gone soon.”

And then the door opened and closed and he was gone.

~End of Part II~

Part III
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