Writings

I found myself alone in the Portsmouth house, which was rare. Rosalie and Emmett were off in Newfoundland, and Jasper was off hunting with Carlisle. Esme was drawing plans for a new house on the back porch.

Edward came home from the library early, sat down. Opened the piano and started to play.

Chopin Nocturnes.

I hadn’t heard them in months.

Taking the invitation, I tiptoed across the living room. Sat down on the bench.

He didn’t get up.

I listened to him play for the better part of two hours. Edward gets lost in his music. He closes his eyes, and he rocks back and forth as he plays, like his whole body is involved in the playing. Like pushing the pedal requires every muscle, and not just his right ankle.

As I listened, I found myself thinking of the photo that got thrown at me. The way the glass shattered and fell out of the frame. The way the woman looked-with her light eyes the same shape as Edward’s. The man, with his strong build and his wild hair.

Their little baby.

The music stopped. Edward pushed himself back on the bench and reached for the keyboard cover.

“Don’t,” I whispered. “It’s good that you remember them.”

The keyboard cover closed with a soft thud and Edward disappeared.

Forward

I listened to Edward play nocturnes for the better part of ten years.

Sometimes, I would just listen, thinking about us, or him, or our new family. Sometimes I would think about Jasper. Sometimes I would imagine his mother sitting next to him while she played, with him leaning into her side, with her ruffling his hair.

Those times, he’d get up and walk away.

Forward

“I promise, we’ll be gone only a little while.” Jasper pressed his forehead to mine so that his hair fell forward and tickled my cheek. “A few hours. I just need to say some things to her, get her to see that I’m never coming back. Shake her off Peter and Charlotte’s trail.”

It made sense. But my stomach was all knotted anyway.

At the time, I thought the stomach knot was about Maria.

Jasper pressed his lips to mine. Briefly, his mouth opened and he sucked my tongue inside it. Our tongues wrestled against each other, and he exhaled softly onto my cheek.

“I love you,” he said. “Only you.” He reached his hand to my face, stroking my cheek with his thumb. “She’ll be gone soon.”

And then the door opened and closed and he was gone.

~End of Part II~

Part III
Back to beginning

Edward returned to Forks after only two days. He ignored Isabella for a month.

Then he stopped a speeding car in the high school parking lot. He said it was because if her blood spilled, we’d all be in trouble.

I knew better.

Rosalie drove us to the hospital, which looks less like a hospital and more like a long shed. Inside it still smelled the same though—iodine and antiseptic, and if you focus on those smells, you can get through the blood part.

Edward was just coming out of Carlisle’s office when we got there.

“I don’t want to hear about it, Freak,” was all he said.

Jasper voted to kill her to keep our secret. When I explained who Bella was to Edward, he recanted, but it didn’t make me less upset.

Carlisle voted that she’d stay alive. So she did.

None of us understood the mess we’d gotten ourselves into.

Edward, least of all.

Forward

Snow doesn’t bother vampires. That’s why Jasper and I were all buried in it, in the Montana mountains. Sometimes, he and I take off for a few days. It’s good for him. Recharges him. Jasper is an introvert; he gets his energy from being apart from people. I’m the other way entirely—I get mine from being in the thick of things.

But Jasper is mine, and he needs to go away sometimes to recharge, and that’s okay with me. It gives us reason to go together. Which was how we ended up in the mountains, lying in a snowdrift.

I leaned my head against Jasper’s chest and tried to imagine what it had sounded like, when he’d once had a heartbeat. What his body would sound like if it were full of whooshing blood instead of venom.

“What are you thinking?” he asked after a while.

“Nothing,” I muttered.

He laughed. “I’ll buy that one when you don’t come back with some important thing that’s on your mind.” He smiled at me and tucked my hair behind my ear, stroking down my neck as he did so. It made me shiver a little.

I leaned into him a little more, and thought about our family. This group I brought us to, because I saw us all one day, standing together and laughing.

I told Jasper that, back in Philadelphia, when we first met. He was important; he was a crucial piece. He was my piece. Without him, there was no laughing family. There was no future for me.

For him, there was a future, too. One of running after Emmett, taking out grizzly bears, playing guitar next to the fireplace while I leaned against his legs.

There was laughter in his future, too.

So once we had our pieces, we had to find this other piece, this bigger piece—the doctor and his wife, and the two sons and the beautiful daughter.

But we hadn’t lived my vision. Not yet.

Jasper let out a little sigh, which I know is his way of telling me he knows I’m feeling something I’m not letting on.

“You’re thinking about something,” he said.

“I’m a vampire. I’m always thinking about something.” I leaned up to him and kissed him on the nose. Then I scooped up snow and smashed it into his face, and took off running down the mountain with my husband on my heels.

Forward