She shook her head. “He didn’t approve of my interfering. We promised….” she trailed off, and then her tone changed. “And you think Charlie won’t mind my being here?” she asked, sounding worried.

“Charlie thinks you’re wonderful, Alice.”

“Well, we’re about to find out.”

Sure enough, a few seconds later I heard the cruiser pull into the driveway. I jumped up and hurried to open the door.

Charlie trudged slowly up the walk, his eyes on the ground and his shoulders slumped. I walked forward to meet him; he didn’t even see me until I hugged him around the waist. He embraced me back fiercely.

“I’m so sorry about Harry, Dad.”

“I’m really going to miss him,” Charlie mumbled.

“How’s Sue doing?”

“She seems dazed, like she hasn’t grasped it yet. Sam’s staying with her….” The volume of his voice faded in and out. “Those poor kids. Leah’s just a year older than you, and Seth is only fourteen….” He shook his head.

He kept his arms tight around me as he started toward the door again.

“Um, Dad?” I figured I’d better warn him. “You’ll never guess who’s here.”

He looked at me blankly. His head swiveled around, and he spied the Mercedes across the street, the porch light reflecting off the glossy black paint. Before he could react, Alice was in the doorway.

“Hi, Charlie,” she said in a subdued voice. “I’m sorry I came at such a bad time.”

“Alice Cullen?” he peered at the slight figure in front of him as if he doubted what his eyes were telling him. “Alice, is that you?”

“It’s me,” she confirmed. “I was in the neighborhood.”

“Is Carlisle . . .?”

“No, I’m alone.”

Both Alice and I knew he wasn’t really asking about Carlisle. His arm tightened over my shoulder.

“She can stay here, can’t she?” I pleaded. “I already asked her.”

“Of course,” Charlie said mechanically. “We’d love to have you, Alice.”

“Thank you, Charlie. I know it’s horrid timing.”

“No, it’s fine, really. I’m going to be really busy doing what I can for Harry’s family; it will be nice for Bella to have some company.”

“There’s dinner for you on the table, Dad,” I told him.

“Thanks, Bell.” He gave me one more squeeze before he shuffled toward the kitchen.

Alice went back to the couch, and I followed her. This time, she was the one to pull me against her shoulder.

“You look tired.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, and shrugged. “Near-death experiences do that to me….So, what does Carlisle think of you being here?”

“He doesn’t know. He and Esme were on a hunting trip. I’ll hear from him in a few days, when he gets back.”

“You won’t tell him, though…when he checks in again?” I asked. She knew I didn’t mean Carlisle now.

“No. He’d bite my head off,” Alice said grimly.

I laughed once, and then sighed.

I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to stay up all night talking to Alice. And it didn’t make sense for me to be tired, what with crashing on Jacob’s couch all day. But drowning really had taken a lot out of me, and my eyes wouldn’t stay open. I rested my head on her stone shoulder, and drifted into a more peaceful oblivion than I had any hope of.

I woke early, from a deep and dreamless sleep, feeling well-rested, but stiff. I was on the couch tucked under the blankets I’d laid out for Alice, and I could hear her and Charlie talking in the kitchen. It sounded like Charlie was fixing her breakfast.

“How bad was it, Charlie?” Alice asked softly, and at first I thought they were talking about the Clearwaters.

Charlie sighed. “Real bad.”

“Tell me about it. I want to know exactly what happened when we left.”

There was a pause while a cupboard door was closed and a dial on the stove was clicked off. I waited, cringing.

“I’ve never felt so helpless,” Charlie began slowly. “I didn’t know what to do. That first week—I thought I was going to have to hospitalize her. She wouldn’t eat or drink, she wouldn’t move. Dr. Gerandy was throwing around words like ‘catatonic,’ but I didn’t let him up to see her. I was afraid it would scare her.”

“She snapped out of it though?”

“I had Renée come to take her to Florida. I just didn’t want to be the one…if she had to go to a hospital or something. I hoped being with her mother would help. But when we started packing her clothes, she woke up with a vengeance. I’ve never seen Bella throw a fit like that. She was never one for the tantrums, but, boy, did she fly into a fury. She threw her clothes everywhere and screamed that we couldn’t make her leave—and then she finally started crying. I thought that would be the turning point. I didn’t argue when she insisted on staying here…and she did seem to get better at first….”

Charlie trailed off. It was hard listening to this, knowing how much pain I’d caused him.

“But?” Alice prompted.

“She went back to school and work, she ate and slept and did her homework. She answered when someone asked her a direct question. But she was…empty. Her eyes were blank. There were lots of little things—she wouldn’t listen to music anymore; I found a bunch of CDs broken in the trash. She didn’t read; she wouldn’t be in the same room when the TV was on, not that she watched it so much before. I finally figured it out—she was avoiding everything that might remind her of…him.

“We could hardly talk; I was so worried about saying something that would upset her—the littlest things would make her flinch—and she never volunteered anything. She would just answer if I asked her something.

“She was alone all the time. She didn’t call her friends back, and after a while, they stopped calling.

“It was night of the living dead around here. I still hear her screaming in her sleep….”

I could almost see him shuddering. I shuddered, too, remembering. And then I sighed. I hadn’t fooled him at all, not for one second.

“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” Alice said, voice glum.

“It’s not your fault.” The way he said it made it perfectly clear that he was holding someone responsible. “You were always a good friend to her.”

“She seems better now, though.”

“Yeah. Ever since she started hanging out with Jacob Black, I’ve noticed a real improvement. She has some color in her cheeks when she comes home, some light in her eyes. She’s happier.” He paused, and his voice was different when he spoke again. “He’s a year or so younger than her, and I know she used to think of him as a friend, but I think maybe it’s something more now, or headed that direction, anyway.” Charlie said this in a tone that was almost belligerent. It was a warning, not for Alice, but for her to pass along. “Jake’s old for his years,” he continued, still sounding defensive. “He’s taken care of his father physically the way Bella took care of her mother emotionally. It matured him. He’s a good-looking kid, too—takes after his mom’s side. He’s good for Bella, you know,” Charlie insisted.

“Then it’s good she has him,” Alice agreed.

Charlie sighed out a big gust of air, folding quickly to the lack of opposition. “Okay, so I guess that’s overstating things. I don’t know…even with Jacob, now and then I see something in her eyes, and I wonder if I’ve ever grasped how much pain she’s really in. It’s not normal, Alice, and it…it frightens me. Not normal at all. Not like someone…left her, but like someone died.” His voice cracked.

It was like someone had died—like I had died. Because it had been more than just losing the truest of true loves, as if that were not enough to kill anyone. It was also losing a whole future, a whole family—the whole life that I’d chosen….

Charlie went on in a hopeless tone. “I don’t know if she’s going to get over it—I’m not sure if it’s in her nature to heal from something like this. She’s always been such a constant little thing. She doesn’t get past things, change her mind.”

“She’s one of a kind,” Alice agreed in a dry voice.

“And Alice . . .” Charlie hesitated. “Now, you know how fond I am of you, and I can tell that she’s happy to see you, but…I’m a little worried about what your visit will do to her.”

“So am I, Charlie, so am I. I wouldn’t have come if I’d had any idea. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, honey. Who knows? Maybe it will be good for her.”

“I hope you’re right.”

There was a long break while forks scraped plates and Charlie chewed. I wondered where Alice was hiding the food.

“Alice, I have to ask you something,” Charlie said awkwardly.

Alice was calm. “Go ahead.”

“He’s not coming back to visit, too, is he?” I could hear the suppressed anger in Charlie’s voice.

Alice answered in a soft, reassuring tone. “He doesn’t even know I’m here. The last time I spoke with him, he was in South America.”

I stiffened as I heard this new information, and listened harder.

“That’s something, at least.” Charlie snorted. “Well, I hope he’s enjoying himself.”

For the first time, Alice’s voice had a bit of steel in it. “I wouldn’t make assumptions, Charlie.” I knew how her eyes would flash when she used that tone.

A chair scooted from the table, scraping loudly across the floor. I pictured Charlie getting up; there was no way Alice would make that kind of noise. The faucet ran, splashing against a dish.

It didn’t sound like they were going to say anything more about Edward, so I decided it was time to wake up.

I turned over, bouncing against the springs to make them squeak. Then I yawned loudly.

All was quiet in the kitchen.

I stretched and groaned.

“Alice?” I asked innocently; the soreness rasping in my throat added nicely to the charade.

“I’m in the kitchen, Bella,” Alice called, no hint in her voice that she suspected my eavesdropping. But she was good at hiding things like that.

Charlie had to leave then—he was helping Sue Clearwater with the funeral arrangements. It would have been a very long day without Alice. She never spoke about leaving, and I didn’t ask her. I knew it was inevitable, but I put it out of my mind.

Instead, we talked about her family—all but one.

Carlisle was working nights in Ithaca and teaching part time at Cornell. Esme was restoring a seventeenth century house, a historical monument, in the forest north of the city. Emmett and Rosalie had gone to Europe for a few months on another honeymoon, but they were back now. Jasper was at Cornell, too, studying philosophy this time. And Alice had been doing some personal research, concerning the information I’d accidentally uncovered for her last spring. She’d successfully tracked down the asylum where she’d spent the last years of her human life. The life she had no memory of.

“My name was Mary Alice Brandon,” she told me quietly. “I had a little sister named Cynthia. Her daughter—my niece—is still alive in Biloxi.”

“Did you find out why they put you in…that place?” What would drive parents to that extreme? Even if their daughter saw visions of the future….

She just shook her head, her topaz eyes thoughtful. “I couldn’t find much about them. I went through all the old newspapers on microfiche. My family wasn’t mentioned often; they weren’t part of the social circle that made the papers. My parents’ engagement was there, and Cynthia’s.” The name fell uncertainly from her tongue. “My birth was announced…and my death. I found my grave. I also filched my admissions sheet from the old asylum archives. The date on the admission and the date on my tombstone are the same.”

I didn’t know what to say, and, after a short pause, Alice moved on to lighter topics.

The Cullens were reassembled now, with the one exception, spending Cornell’s spring break in Denali with Tanya and her family. I listened too eagerly to even the most trivial news. She never mentioned the one I was most interested in, and for that I was grateful. It was enough to listen to the stories of the family I’d once dreamed of belonging to.

Charlie didn’t get back until after dark, and he looked more worn than he had the night before. He would be headed back to the reservation first thing in the morning for Harry’s funeral, so he turned in early. I stayed on the couch with Alice again.

Charlie was almost a stranger when he came down the stairs before the sun was up, wearing an old suit I’d never seen him in before. The jacket hung open; I guessed it was too tight to fasten the buttons. His tie was a bit wide for the current style. He tiptoed to the door, trying not to wake us up. I let him go, pretending to sleep, as Alice did on the recliner.

As soon as he was out the door, Alice sat up. Under the quilt, she was fully dressed.

“So, what are we doing today?” she asked.

“I don’t know—do you see anything interesting happening?”

She smiled and shook her head. “But it’s still early.”

All the time I’d been spending in La Push meant a pile of things I’d been neglecting at home, and I decided to catch up on my chores. I wanted to do something, anything that might make life easier for Charlie—maybe it would make him feel just a little better to come home to a clean, organized house. I started with the bathroom—it showed the most signs of neglect.

While I worked, Alice leaned against the doorjamb and asked nonchalant questions about my, well, our high school friends and what they been up to since she’d left. Her face stayed casual and emotionless, but I sensed her disapproval when she realized how little I could tell her. Or maybe I just had a guilty conscience after eavesdropping on her conversation with Charlie yesterday morning.

I was literally up to my elbows in Comet, scrubbing the floor of the bathtub, when the doorbell rang.

I looked to Alice at once, and her expression was perplexed, almost worried, which was strange; Alice was never taken by surprise.

“Hold on!” I shouted in the general direction of the front door, getting up and hurrying to the sink to rinse my arms off.

“Bella,” Alice said with a trace of frustration in her voice, “I have a fairly good guess who that might be, and I think I’d better step out.”

“Guess?” I echoed. Since when did Alice have to guess anything?

“If this is a repeat of my egregious lapse in foresight yesterday, then it’s most likely Jacob Black or one of his…friends.”

I stared at her, putting it together. “You can’t see werewolves?”

She grimaced. “So it would seem.” She was obviously annoyed by this fact—very annoyed.

The doorbell rang again—buzzing twice quickly and impatiently.

“You don’t have go anywhere, Alice. You were here first.”

She laughed her silvery little laugh—it had a dark edge. “Trust me—it wouldn’t be a good idea to have me and Jacob Black in a room together.”

She kissed my cheek swiftly before she vanished through Charlie’s door—and out his back window, no doubt.

The doorbell rang again.