Writings

The thing about fate is that you choose it. It’s based on little decisions that happen, bit by bit. And if one decision sets off a cascade, another one can stop it. My visions aren’t always right because destiny is something you pick, every day that you live.

I saw Edward when I woke to this new life. And I knew that one day, he would be happy. And that I would be there to help him.

The way this story ends is that my brother became my best friend.

And my best friend married Isabella Swan.

And I, finally, have a whole family.

That’s the way this story ends.

But we all choose to begin it again, every single day.

~||fin||~

Acknowledgments

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Part I

Part II

I have never in my life sworn at Esme more about her choice of locale than the twelve minutes it took me to drive in Carlisle’s car from our house to Charlie Swan’s. I went seventy miles an hour, cursing and praying that at least, since I couldn’t save Bella, I could at least help Charlie.

There was only a little Volkswagon in the driveway when I pulled up.

Now, people don’t normally surprise me, but Bella did that day, when she barreled into me full-force.

“I saw you jump,” was all I could manage.

I was already attuned to her, I told her. I couldn’t help but see.

Except when I couldn’t.

Because the other boy, Jacob, had been with her.

It was lucky for all of us that Edward didn’t take a werewolf with him to Italy.

Forward

Rosalie laughed when I told her I was concerned about Edward.

“He’s just going to go on being a mope,” she said. “Everything he does; he just trudges from one day to the next.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “How Carlisle could think I could ever put up with someone like that…” she trailed off, and then gave me a wan smile.

“Well, he loves Esme. He just…had high hopes.”

She snorted. “Carlisle’s a tyrant. Just a really, really polite one.” She slid back under the frame of Emmett’s car. She had a little light in a cage that was on a giant cord that stretched all the way into the kitchen. The light hung underneath the engine and made it glow from where I could see through the open hood.

“Would you hold this up for me? I need about two more inches above the jack.”

I looked at my hands, which Rosalie didn’t miss.

“You won’t get that much grease on them,” she said, and I could tell she was rolling her eyes somewhere beneath all the engine parts and belts.

I slid a hand under the car and lifted it up a few more inches.

“Thanks,” she said.

“So, about Edward.”

The only sound from under the car was the ticking of the instrument Rose was using to adjust whatever it was. It zipped and unzipped, like the sound our grandfather clock made when you wind it.

Slowly, the zipping stopped.

Rosalie pushed herself out from under the car. There was a little streak of oil or grease or something of that nature across the bridge of her nose and down the side of her cheek. Somehow, on Rose, that sort of thing just makes her look even more gorgeous.

“Honestly?” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I would stop worrying, Alice. All the rest of us have.”

We stared at each other a moment.

Then she shrugged, and slid herself back under the car.

Forward

Edward is the most dangerous of all of us. Because he’s young, Carlisle told me once. When he thinks something, he just acts on it. The way the brain works when you’re a seventeen-year-old boy means that certain things just happen.

He chuckled and added, “I’d like to figure out what the vampire equivalent of adrenaline is.”

Adrenaline or whatever you’d like to call it, it’s what happens to Edward. Why one second I was sitting next to him at the piano, and the next, my bottom was on the floor, with the bench exploding into pieces as it slammed into the wall.

Usually, Edward’s M.O. was just to get up, close the piano, and leave. He liked me listening to him, I thought, at least until I thought the wrong thing; until I started imagining him with his mother as a boy. But this time, he lost it.

The next sweep of his arm took with it all the music—it hadn’t been nocturnes today, it was some concerto that he was trying to teach himself and so for the first time in a long time, he’d been using music. Calm, serene, playing something new.

At least, calm and serene until I sat down next to him and started imagining his mother again.

Edward threw me with enough force that it hurt, and I sat there, stunned, staring at him as he panted.

Esme started crying.

Jasper punched Edward so hard that his face literally began to shatter. Which of course got Carlisle upset, and then he was in the middle of it, too, pushing on Jasper’s chest and Edward’s so that they separated, snarling.

I sat on the floor, wondering what I’d done.

“Don’t think about that!” Edward answered, and he spat. “Just stop, Freak.”

“Stop what?” I asked.

“Just…stop!” Then he stalked off to his room again.

The door didn’t slam.

Jasper knelt down and pulled me into his arms, running his hands through my hair, such as it is. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” When I shook my head, he turned to Carlisle. “You need to learn to control him.”

Carlisle took a deep breath and exhaled, like humans do. He has habits like that.

“It isn’t my intention to control him, Jasper,” he said.

Jasper frowned, but Carlisle simply crossed the distance between us and patted me on the shoulder.

“You’re all right?” he asked.

I nodded.

He turned toward the stairs, sighing. “I should go figure out what happened.”

“Leave me alone,” Edward called, and Carlisle looked despondent, but turned away.

I never did figure out what it was exactly that set Edward off so badly in my vision.

But when I saw him get out the sheet music that day, I did decide not to bother sitting down.

Forward

Maria showed up innocently enough, on a Saturday afternoon when the wind was blowing through town. Emmett said that means there will be a change in the weather. As a human, he was the son of a tobacco farmer. He knows those sorts of things.

When Jasper told me about Maria, I had pictured a statuesque woman, with long, dark hair. Maybe as tall as Jasper, and certainly every bit as strong.

Instead, she was a woman of my height, and almost my build; slight, wiry. Bossy.

It made me self-conscious at once.

Jasper said he was surprised to see her so far north.

Carlisle welcomed her in, but then left for work. He looked a little concerned, but when Esme whispered to him asking if it was a good idea that she visit, he reminded her that his friend Garrett, who doesn’t share our ways, visits all the time. And why shouldn’t Jasper have friends?

“It might do him good,” he said.

Carlisle is so rarely wrong about people; it caught all of us by surprise.

Forward