Writings

In 1987 I got a vision of Edward getting married.

I didn’t tell him about it. Too many steps between here and there.

Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake not warning him.

Forward

The first time I saw Edward, he was running, which I didn’t realize at the time would turn out to be one of the only things he loved. He ran with his mouth wide open and his head thrown back, his hair flying behind him like a banner and the sun turning it bright red in parts so that it looked like it was on fire. And out of nowhere, a streak of gold cut across his path and tackled him, and they fell to the ground and laughed so hard the grass shook.

Fifty years later I talked to Carlisle about that. Asked him if it happened. He searched his mind for a while. Edward says that Carlisle’s mind is very organized, that dipping into it is like wandering into a doctor’s office, with rows and rows of neat files all labeled with colored stickers. When he needs something, he goes to his big filing system and spends a moment hunting, then pulls out the right file and tells you what he thinks the contents tell him.

“I do remember that,” he said after a moment, a smile spreading across his face. “He thought I was running behind him, but I was actually in the trees. I dropped forty feet out of a pin oak and tackled him from the side.” He chuckled. “One of the few times I’ve ever surprised him. He learned to expect that maneuver and listen for the rustling of the leaves after that.”

Carlisle smiles a lot when he talks about Edward. Edward is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. I can’t see the past, and the way it would have forked, but I can see the future, and as it turned out, the running day was in the future when I awoke.

To this day, I think it’s interesting that my first vision of them was to know for certain that Carlisle would be happy. That I saw him tackling Edward, and the two of them laughing.

Jasper wasn’t laughing when I saw him first. He was sitting on an upended bucket in the dark corner of a barn with his head in his hands. In fact, I couldn’t tell if he was crying—well, at the time. Now that I remember it, I know he wasn’t, because Jasper has cried a total of three times in the last seventy years. And one of those was on our wedding day.

But I knew that I was in love with him.

You know how they talk about someone causing you heartache? Jasper caused me heartache. Right from the very beginning. It’s a thing you can feel, a weird twinge in the area of your gut that seems to be radiating from where your heart is, even if you’re like us, and your heart doesn’t move. I’ve never asked, but I’m sure Carlisle would have some explanation for that, some discussion of the xiphoid process or the diaphragm or some something; the way your brain interacts with all those weird muscles that otherwise do things like keep your food down or allow you to breathe. He’s a scientist, and that means he’s always looking for the exact explanations of things.

Thing is, though, exact explanations can sometimes ruin what is otherwise a really good heartache.

So I knew from that heartache I was going to have to find the man on the bucket.

But I also knew I was going to have to find the laughing boy.

And I guess that’s as good a beginning as any.

Forward

Our house in Calgary was about five miles from the highway.

Five miles takes us maybe two minutes to run.

That was probably the only thing we got lucky about that night.

Forward

“Does Edward talk to you?”

The rumble under my stomach felt almost like my own laughter rather than Jasper’s. It’s like that, sometimes. On the whole, I find the Bible sort of silly, but there is that one line that gets quoted in weddings, “The two shall be one flesh”? That’s what it is with Jasper. We become one flesh. When he laughs, it’s like I’m laughing.

Carlisle and Esme and Edward were gone, out to the mountains to hunt. That left Jasper and me alone, and we took advantage. He kissed my neck, right where my collarbone hits, and then stuck the tiniest bit of the blade of his tongue into the little indentation there, which tickled.

I smacked him lightly on the cheek as he laughed.

“It’s not funny.”

Jasper’s eyebrows raised, and he gave me this grin of his, where he cocks half his smile and looks up from under his eyelashes. Jasper has ridiculous eyelashes for a man.

His tongue darted out again, and I giggled.

“You thinking that there’s any way in hell that Edward talks to me?” He laughed. “No, that’s hysterical.”

Another long pause.

“So he doesn’t?”

“Edward doesn’t talk to anyone.”

Jasper burrowed down into the covers, disappeared from the foot of the bed and then, just when I thought he was going to leave the room, pounced.

His eyes flashed with mischievous delight. “Go again?”

I nodded. Vampires don’t get tired.

But as Jasper burrowed under the blankets and covered my body with his once more, I kept thinking about what he’d said.

Forward

I helped Esme put together our trunks for Vermont. There was a big house there, big enough for all of us, and it would be a good next stop after Oregon.

On the second to last afternoon in our soon-to-be old house, I sat in the middle of the living room, listening to Jasper play the guitar and watching Carlisle read when I saw a Coke bottle spinning through the air, its glass reflecting the light from the kitchen chandelier in a mottled pattern across the walls. Then it fell to the ground and smashed.

“You are a complete asshole!” a high voice cried. Then the back door opened and slammed closed with such force it fell off its hinges.

A rustle accompanied Carlisle’s utterly unhurried page turn.

I blinked, then got to my feet. The strumming stopped.

“You saw something?” Jasper asked.

I nodded. “Something small.”

Carlisle stopped turning pages when I headed for the stairs.

Edward’s room was at the top of the stairs, on the right. He keeps a lot of things; little mementos of the ways he’s lived his life. I don’t know what all of them mean, but I do know that they all mean something.

I had seen it dozens of times before, but had never actually bothered to inventory it. No matter. The virtue of being a vampire is that my new memory is perfect.

Even if my old memory is nonexistent.

Rummaging through my brain, I went down the list of things that were on this shelf. A baseball card, one of Carlisle’s. A sand fulgurite that had something to do with Emmett. A Coke bottle. The Coke bottle, from what I’d seen. A bookmark from the New York City Public Library. A lighter…

That was the part that was missing. A little silver box, no bigger than a pack of cards.

My visions aren’t always perfect. They don’t always give every detail, and though I knew Edward winged the Coke bottle at Emmett in the kitchen, I wasn’t exactly sure why.

Now I knew.

Rosalie and Emmett were out in the backyard with Esme, burning some of the debris from the remodel of the house. Emmett would’ve remembered the lighter, and he couldn’t see what would happen.

Outside it was just beginning to get cold. For a brief moment, I could see my breath when I stepped out into the cool air, because I was warm from the temperature in the house. But it equalized after a minute, like it always does.

“Em,” I said gently, and he turned, grinning.

Emmett is probably the most at home with what we are. The way he sees it, he got the best deal; he didn’t die, and he ended up with Rose, who is the absolute center of his universe. He likes being stronger than any human and really, all of us. He liked having one brother; he likes having two even more. He teases me, but it’s a sweet teasing.

When Edward called me “Freak,” there was always the slightest tinge of truth.

He turned away from the bonfire, and it snapped and crackled behind him, making his hair look orange in the glow. Smoke billowed up as though it was coming out of the crown of his head. I laughed.

“Are you laughing at me?”

I pointed. “Just the fire. The smoke looks like it’s coming out of your head.”

He whirled like something had bitten him.

I started to laugh, and the next thing I knew, my shoulders were pressed into the ground, with Emmett on top in a full-body tackle. He threw me over him into the grass, and red and orange leaves stuck in both our hair as we tumbled over each other, laughing.

“Hey, you two,” Esme called, but she was smiling. “Play nicely.”

“So, Crystal Ball,” Emmett said, still pinning my shoulders with his elbows. “You needed something?”

“What did you use to start the fire?” I asked.

Emmett frowned for a second, then produced the little silver lighter from his pocket. It glinted in the sunlight, and I saw the three initials engraved on it.

E. A. M.

“Who is EAM?” I wondered.

“It’s Edward’s,” Emmett replied.

I shoved him. “I know that much. But he’s E. C.” I stretched out my hand, beckoning for it.

Emmett shrugged, shoving the lighter into my hand.

“He wasn’t always.”

I blinked.

It was true. Jasper was Jasper Whitlock, Rosalie was still Rosalie Hale. Emmett was…so thoroughly a Cullen now that I’d never even bothered to ask.

Of course Edward had once not been Edward Cullen.

I was the only person who was just “Alice.”

Emmett waved a hand in front of my face, then snapped his fingers an inch from my nose. “You seeing something?”

“No,” I said, stepping back. “But I’m putting this back. In the future, don’t borrow it from him.”

Emmett rolled his eyes. “You saw some epic hissy fit over a lighter, I’ll bet.”

I shrugged. “Something like that.” I backed away toward the house, turning the lighter over in my hands.

E. A. M.

A weird twinge went through me.

I was halfway up the stairs before I recognized it as jealousy.

I laid the lighter next to the Coke bottle, which never got thrown.

Forward