Writings

In my vision, I could see exactly where Jasper was, except that I couldn’t see exactly where he was. I saw landmarks: a fir tree with an odd shape in the trunk, a little stand of trees where the branches were so thick that the snow cover was little more than a dusting and you could see the pine needles littering the forest floor.

“All you’ve got are pine trees?”

But just as he said it, the scent of human blood hit us like a wall, fragrant, and lovely and almost irresistible…except we would resist.

“I guess we don’t need the pine trees,” I muttered.

“Shut up,” Edward said. Then, as though realizing he’d been abrupt, he added, “You should hold your breath.”

I nodded, and we rushed toward the scent.

The scene was a lot worse than I’d imagined. At least ten corpses lay scattered in the clearing, some of them with grotesque injuries—bones sticking out of skin, severed limbs. I had already started to weep for the savagery my husband had committed when Edward muttered, “Those are accident injuries. All that blood from the wound was what drew them in the first place.”

We picked our way through the bodies, trying to hold our breath enough to tamp the desire to run back to the accident site ourselves. But we both needed to breathe just enough to keep Maria and Jasper in our sights.

Feeding causes a frenzy in our kind; it’s one of the few ways we aren’t like humans. We don’t get lethargic after we eat. Exactly the opposite, in fact. I’ve seen it with all of them, the way Rosalie and Emmett come back from a hunting trip together and even though Emmett is bragging about the bear and has blood running down his shirt, Rosalie is giggling and leaning into him. Carlisle and Esme disappear for a few hours and come back just serenely holding hands, but when you look more closely, you see that Esme has a stray leaf stuck somewhere in her hair and Carlisle has missed a belt loop or two.

It happens to me and Jasper, too.

Which was why I wasn’t that surprised when we found the two of them, even though pain sliced through me with such force I fell to my knees and couldn’t move. It had always been there, one of the possible outcomes of Maria’s arrival. But you aren’t tied to your destiny. The future doesn’t work like that.

My husband had the ability to make choices.

Now, Emmett always says Edward hits like a girl; that he never learned properly as a human and that he couldn’t hurt someone if his life depended on it. He always nudges Jasper to back him up, to tease Edward about how weak he is, and Jasper never does.

Because there, in the snow, with his pants unfastened and Maria with her head someplace it really should not have been, Jasper wound up on the service end of Edward’s fist.

As it turns out, Edward hits like a vampire.

Jasper tried to stand up, but he stumbled; tripping over his own pants and falling, face first, into the thin cover of snow. Pine needles stuck in his hair, poking out this way and that and making him look ridiculous.

I wanted to move toward him, but I found I couldn’t.

Edward socked him again.

Jasper is taller than Edward, but only by an inch; and an inch doesn’t matter when the shorter person is pissed off. Edward grabbed Jasper by the collar and slammed him against a tree with such force the top of the tree broke off with a sickening crack and fell to the ground, spraying all of us with freshly-fallen snow.

Maria started screaming.

“Go,” Jasper yelled. “Go, Maria, and don’t come back.”

She took two steps and paused.

“And don’t run toward the accident, either.”

A pained look crossed her face. “Querido,” she said softly, which is the Spanish word for lover. It’s one of the better words in any language for describing that—it literally translates as “my wanted one.”

Jasper spat in her direction, a slick, pinkish concoction of blood and venom.

“Get out of here,” he snarled. It was slightly choked off, because Edward’s hand was still around Jasper’s throat, pinning him to the tree. Edward turned to Maria, too.

“Don’t you dare come back,” he said. “Ever. Don’t you ever find my family again. Don’t you ever humiliate my sister like this again.”

Even with the wind howling, and the sirens wailing in the distance, I heard Maria gulp.

Then she nodded, and disappeared.

Forward

The night before the accident, I was sitting next to Edward when he suddenly stopped playing. He closed the piano, and put his hands to either side of him, pushing himself up off the bench about an inch and hanging there, like some sort of musical yogi.

“Edward?” I asked, when he was suspended there for over two minutes.

“Do you think I’m going to stay alone forever?” he mumbled.

I squeezed his arm and shook my head.

He didn’t answer for a long time.

“But you don’t see anyone.”

I shook my head again.

“I will,” I answered in a whisper. “I will see someone, Edward. Someday. I’m certain of it.”

He lowered himself back onto the bench, opened the piano, and started the slow, mournful strains of “Für Elise.”

Forward

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

He only let me listen to the Nocturnes. If it was Rachmaninoff, with the loud pounding chords, everyone was supposed to stay away. Joplin, Esme was allowed to come and stand behind him with her hands on his shoulders, and run her fingers through his hair like he was a little boy. Mozart and Hayden (who I didn’t know before I knew Edward, but who I learned), those were okay for everyone to hear, as long as we kept our distance.

But the Nocturnes, I knew, I was allowed to sit on the bench and watch. The way his fingers moved over the keys, the way his head rocked toward the keyboard and then away from it, like it required his entire body to play.

It’s a good thing that vampire minds can go so many directions at once, because it’s necessary. When I get a vision, I don’t get a choice about whether or not I see it; it’s always there.

Carlisle decides to come downstairs and announces he’s going to build a fire. Rosalie decides to thumb through the automotive catalog. That makes Esme think of something she wanted from Sears. She moves the flowers aside on the kitchen table to make room for the catalog.

I see all of it, like a ticker tape machine, and I sit there, waiting for my stock to turn up. Waiting for the part that involves me, or the part that I need to change.

Esme closes the catalog.

“It’s quiet in here,” she says, and she looks pointedly at Edward.

And Edward takes the hint, and stands up, and wanders toward the piano.

He starts to play Chopin.

In my mind, I quietly cheered.

Across the room, Edward looked up.

And then Carlisle came down the stairs.

“I think I’m going to build a fire,” he said.

Forward

Even though it would be one of the biggest accidents ever on the Trans-Canada highway, the Calgary accident started with one car. One car that hit one patch of ice at the wrong angle, or going a tiny bit too fast. It spun, and hit a car going in the other direction, which made that car spin, and that car wound up under a semi, which buckled in the middle, which slammed into another car.

It’s always a possible outcome, any time anyone gets in any car. There’s always one outcome of deciding to get behind the wheel that is a terrible crash. I’ve learned not to even worry about it.

That’s the thing about seeing the future. When you do, you know that every single day ends in death. And every single day ends in happiness. It’s just a matter of which choices get made by whom along the way that decide which outcome you get today.

That day, the driver of that one car got the death outcome.

So did a lot of other people.

And that last part? That was my fault.

Forward