Writings

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

Three months after we got married, Jasper and I sat beneath the willow tree and talked. We were barefoot, and Jasper kept walking his toes up my calves, which tickles and makes me giggle.

“Stop,” I said, but he just laughed.

“I like to hear you giggle,” he said. But he stopped, and instead we just sat there, listening to the wind whistle its way through the willow branches and made them sway in front of us like little strings.

The next time Jasper’s feet worked their way up my legs, it wasn’t to tickle. He flipped me onto my back, and our lips met. Jasper’s a good kisser—a perfect kisser, and I know that without having to try anyone else. But he’s also an empath, and that works against me sometimes.

He laid his head next to mine and stroked my hair. “Your head isn’t here,” he said.

“My head is right here.”

I gestured to it.

Kissing my forehead, he laughed. “Yes, I understand. And I like this head.” He propped himself up on one elbow and ran his fingers through my hair.

He kissed me again.

“Nope,” he said. “Not here. Where is your head?”

I was thinking about our wedding, in fact. Standing there, under the willow, with the breeze rustling through Jasper’s hair, causing it to wisp around his face. Kissing him after I said I wanted to be his wife forever.

And Edward, standing off to the side, with his arms wrapped around himself as though the breeze was a bitter winter wind—like we were affected by a bitter winter wind.

His hair, blowing behind him as he stalked off into the house.

Buddy Holly, blasting from his bedroom.

“Alice?”

I sighed, and rolled over onto my side, propping my head up on one hand and staring at Jasper. He looks better with golden eyes, though I don’t actually mind the red. The red bothers Carlisle and the others; the times that he’s slipped. I think it reminds them that we’re not all perfect. That’s the real problem with Jasper slipping—it reminds them all that all of us could slip; it reminds them all that we’re all that way. But me, I never mind the red, even though I think the gold is better.

The gold eyes bore down on me, looking confused and concerned and delighted all at once. Edward hears thoughts, which is obnoxious, but Jasper feels feelings. So I knew he knew that I was feeling sad, and happy, and lustful, and all the things that could get tangled up at once with lying in the grass under the willow tree where we were married, thinking about the boy who had become my brother.

Hmm.

It was the first time I’d thought that.

“Alice?”

“Do you think Edward thinks of himself as my brother?”

Jasper snorted. “I think Edward thinks too highly of himself to think of himself as anyone’s anything.”

I punched him in the shoulder, and he faked a flinch. Then he rolled back over onto his back and stared up into the tree branches.

He didn’t say anything for a long while.

“Do you think of him as your brother?” he asked at last.

I shrugged. “Maybe. He was sad at our wedding.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jasper nodding. Of course, he would’ve felt that, too. Known Edward was feeling sad.

Jasper closed his eyes, and I knew he was seeing what I was, the way Edward had stood there, with his arms wrapped around himself like he needed some kind of coat.

“He’s lonely,” Jasper said after a long pause.

“Lonely? There are seven of us.” Seven people who were totally different, crammed into one house so firmly it felt entirely claustrophobic most of the time. Seven people vying for time alone in a bedroom. Seven people competing for a quiet corner to read.

“Seven of us and six of us are mated.”

And six of us are mated.

I hadn’t thought about that.

Edward listened to love songs, most of the time. The upbeat ones. The ones where you sang about how the girl was your girl; how you had fun with your girl.

It was like I’d never heard them before.

That was when I decided to start paying more attention.

Forward

Back to Part I

Edward’s summer was blissful. Jasper could hardly leave him alone.

I probably should’ve guessed that it couldn’t last.

That Bella Swan could get attacked by someone in our family was a possible outcome every time she came to our door. Even Carlisle showed up in one vision, although that was only once, and it disappeared pretty quick.

You learn to expect it not to happen, even though you’re expecting it to happen, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, that’s why I didn’t have time to warn Edward before my husband lunged.

Emmett is strong, Edward is fast, and Carlisle is superhuman, and that’s the only explanation I have for how that birthday party turned out okay.

But Edward is a runner.

So the next day we all ran.

Forward

After Vermont, we moved to Montana. The open prairie suited Jasper. It was different than Texas, he said, but it was far enough north that it was overcast all the time, and that delighted him. He could wander around when he wanted. Chase wild mustangs.

Esme painted the mountains every day, and she sang while she painted.

I learned that singing meant she was happy.

Edward’s piano wound up in the entryway, where light beamed across it in the middle of the afternoon. Esme installed a window hanging, but that only served to get the light to go across in stripes instead of one wide band, so that Edward’s hands shimmered as he played.

I liked the shimmering.

One afternoon, I sat down next to him, and for once, he just kept going. It was a long piece, and when he got to the end of it, he just slowed and stopped and put his hands in his lap and looked at me.

“That was nice,” I said. “It was like a lullaby.”

He stared at his hands for a long time.

“I think…I think my mother used to play those for me. Or with me. I’m not sure.” He turned so that his legs swung to either side of the bench, and he put his hands out flat and sideways.

Edward has large hands, and long fingers, with knuckles that curled over the edges of the bench as he gripped it. It seems like he was built to play the piano.

“I’m not,” he muttered.

“Not what?”

“Not built to play the piano.” He gestured to the keys. “I mangled them, when I was first turned. Carlisle brought me one, and I broke it into little pieces trying to learn to play.” He frowned. “He thought it was funny.”

Carlisle often thinks things are funny that really aren’t.

Edward nodded. Then he didn’t say anything for a long time.

“What is it called?” I asked.

“What is what called?”

“That. The music.”

His lips pursed. “Nocturnes,” he answered. “Chopin.”

I had heard of him.

“That’s why they sound like a lullaby,” he muttered. “That’s what they are.”

And I could imagine that. Imagine a woman, who looked like a cross between Esme and Edward, sitting at the piano. Her fingers would be long, like Edward’s, but her hair would stretch down her back. Carefully manicured nails would appear reflected in the shiny surface of the piano as they swept over the keyboard, and she would pedal softly, with a little, bronze-haired boy leaning sleepily into her side…

Edward vanished so abruptly the keyboard cover closed itself from the sheer force with which he flung himself from the piano.

Forward

“Do you remember your family?” I asked Jasper.

He nuzzled himself into my shoulder, before he sighed.

“Alice…these conversations end badly.”

I shrugged. “I want to know.”

“You don’t remember yours.”

“I know I don’t. That’s not the point.”

He rolled over in bed, flinging one arm over his head and staring up at the ceiling. I took advantage of the hole and snuggled up to him, resting my head against his chest under his arm.

It took him a long time to answer.

“I had two brothers,” he said quietly. “I don’t really remember their names. Tad, maybe. I think that’s what we called one of them.”

“Older?”

“Younger.” He closed his eyes. “I went off to war because I had to protect them.”

“And your parents?”

“Mama was a washerwoman. Daddy ranched, until the Indians came. That was before the government made the treaty with them.” He grimaced.

“Don’t you think that’s fair?”

Jasper rolled over, propping his head up on one hand.

We see well in the dark, much better than humans—or so I’m told. So I could see every bit of Jasper’s body as he lay on top of the covers, the way his eyebrow wrinkled a little bit as he frowned at me.

“Life isn’t fair, Alice,” he said.

He got up and walked to the window without taking a blanket. The moonlight bounced off his naked skin, making him look an odd shade of blue.

“Nothing about any of this is fair to a one of us.”

Forward