Writings

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

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

When I first saw Jasper, I saw him with the pale gold eyes of one of our kind. He was running through the woods, as lithe as he always has been, barefoot, and with only a pair of pants rolled up to the knee.

He sprang at a moose, and as his teeth made contact, he snapped the animal’s neck.

In the vision, I cheered.

Jasper has the power to keep from attacking humans; he always has had it. I thought it was a matter of making a choice.

But that night in Calgary, it was a matter of too great a temptation.

Forward