Writings

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

Vampires are fast in the snow. Even in feet of snow, like there was that night. We can race so quickly that we almost skim on top of it, our feet leaving little shimmering drags of tracks rather than giant footprints.

We were almost a mile away when we both caught the scent and stopped so abruptly that snow went spraying everywhere.

Blood.

A lot of it.

Edward gave me a pointed look.

I wondered if he could handle it.

He nodded quickly. “Can you?”

“We can hold our breath.”

And instinctively, I reached for his hand. He took mine, squeezed it, and together, we ran.

The accident scene was an eerie nightmare. Blood spattered across the road. The odd yellow lights of the tow trucks; the snow pulsing odd shades of blue and red from the police cruisers. People screamed.

Near the edge of the scene, a woman stood, sobbing.

“He was right here,” she screamed. “He was right here!”

Edward and I exchanged glances.

Vampires move too quickly for anyone except other vampires to see. But the scent near the woman was undeniable.

It was the scent I loved to bathe in at night.

“Oh, Jas,” I heard myself say and found my hand was squeezed tightly.

Edward still hadn’t let go of it.

“We can still find him,” he said.

We had to run at human speed through the wreckage, jogging at a pace that felt glacial. As we did, we ran into Carlisle coming the other way. I’d never seen him looking so disheveled—his shirt and pants were covered in blood, one of his sleeves was torn halfway off, his hair was drenched with snow and matted with some other substance. His skin pulsed an odd shade of purple in the glow from the emergency vehicles.

For someone with perpetually maintained energy, he looked exhausted.

“What—” he started to ask.

“Jasper,” Edward answered at once. “And Maria. They were out having a conversation. They weren’t far from here.”

Carlisle closed his eyes, tilted his head upward, and muttered a word I’d never heard him say before.

When he opened them again, he laid a hand on Edward’s shoulder. “Can you find them, son?”

Edward nodded.

“Then do. Please. Make that your priority. I’ll handle whatever needs to be handled here. Just—keep them contained.”

Then he turned to me. “Alice, do you see anything?”

I shook my head. “I saw the accident. And Jasper. But I think there’s nothing new coming.”

“Good. That’s…that’s good.” He squeezed Edward’s shoulder. “Go, son. You and Alice need to find them. And fast.”

Edward nodded and sprinted off in the direction of Jasper’s scent.

I was still holding his hand.

Forward

For the first day Maria was at the house, things actually went okay. I almost liked her; the way she talked in this odd mix of English and rapid-fire Spanish that kept me on my toes. I liked that she teased Jasper almost as much as I do. He took it like a gentleman.

The first day Maria was at the house, we actually relaxed.

Which was probably where we misstepped.

Forward

It rains a great deal in New Hampshire. It was pouring down evening when Carlisle was at work. Esme and Rosalie were working on some sewing project I wasn’t interested in, and Jasper and Emmett were battling it out at some new Parker Brothers game.

Muffled music from the second floor told me Edward was in his room.

As soon as I decided I should go find him, a framed photo went flying at my head and the glass shattered.

“Get out!” he screamed.

And then the world swung. Edward ran after me, laughing. He was in a field somewhere, with the mist of what might have been a pretty girl. We were sitting so close our knees touched.

He whispered.

I whispered back.

We both laughed.

So, I got up from my chair, and I went to find him.

He was sitting in the middle of his bedroom, reading from a little black book. I didn’t know what it was.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

He leapt to his feet—had I surprised him somehow?—slammed the little book closed, and wrapped his hand around the nearest item he could find, which happened to be a framed photograph of a couple and their baby. I wanted to catch it, but I couldn’t—it had to smash.

The smashing lead to the whispering. And the laughing.

“Get out!” he screamed.

I nodded. I picked up the photo and handed it back to him.

The woman in the photo had Edward’s eyes.

Forward