exactly how paralyzed she was by heights until she was already strapped to a parachute and a dive instructor. I felt a little frustrated with Phil, her husband of almost two years, for allowing that one. I would have taken better care of her. I knew her so much better.
You have to let them go their own way eventually, I reminded myself. You have to let them have their own life. . . .
I’d spent most of my life taking care of Renée, patiently guiding her away from her craziest plans, good-naturedly enduring the ones I couldn’t talk her out of. I’d always been indulgent with my mom, amused by her, even a little condescending to her. I saw her cornucopia of mistakes and laughed privately to myself. Scatterbrained Renée.
I was a very different person from my mother. Someone thoughtful and cautious. The responsible one, the grown-up. That’s how I saw myself. That was the person I knew.
With the blood still pounding in my head from Edward’s kiss, I couldn’t help but think of my mother’s most life-altering mistake. Silly and romantic, getting married fresh out of high school to a man she barely knew, then producing me a year later. She’d always promised me that she had no regrets, that I was the best gift her life had ever given her. And yet she’d drilled it into me over and over — smart people took marriage seriously. Mature people went to college and started careers before they got deeply involved in a relationship. She knew I would never be as thoughtless and goofy and small-town as she’d been. . . .
I gritted my teeth and tried to concentrate as I answered her letter.
Then I hit her parting line and remembered why I’d neglected to write sooner.
You haven’t said anything about Jacob in a long time, she’d written. What’s he up to these days?
Charlie was prompting her, I was sure.
I sighed and typed quickly, tucking the answer to her question between two less sensitive paragraphs.
Jacob is fine, I guess. I don’t see him much; he spends most of his time with a pack of his friends down at La Push these days.
Smiling wryly to myself, I added Edward’s greeting and hit “send.”
I didn’t realize that Edward was standing silently behind me again until after I’d turned off the computer and shoved away from the desk. I was about to scold him for reading over my shoulder when I realized that he wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was examining a flat black box with wires curling crookedly away from the main square in a way that didn’t look healthy for whatever it was. After a second, I recognized the car stereo Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper had given me for my last birthday. I’d forgotten about the birthday presents hiding under a growing pile of dust on the floor of my closet.
“What did you do to this?” he asked in a horrorstruck voice.
“It didn’t want to come out of the dashboard.”
“So you felt the need to torture it?”
“You know how I am with tools. No pain was inflicted intentionally.”
He shook his head, his face a mask of faux tragedy. “You killed it.”
I shrugged. “Oh, well.”
“It would hurt their feelings if they saw this,” he said. “I guess it’s a good thing that you’ve been on house arrest. I’ll have to get another one in place before they notice.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need a fancy stereo.”
“It’s not for your sake that I’m going to replace it.”
I sighed.
“You didn’t get much good out of your birthday presents last year,” he said in a disgruntled voice. Suddenly, he was fanning himself with a stiff rectangle of paper.
I didn’t answer, for fear my voice would shake. My disastrous eighteenth birthday — with all its far-reaching consequences — wasn’t something I cared to remember, and I was surprised that he would bring it up. He was even more sensitive about it than I was.
“Do you realize these are about to expire?” he asked, holding the paper out to me. It was another present — the voucher for airplane tickets that Esme and Carlisle had given me so that I could visit Renée in Florida.
I took a deep breath and answered in a flat voice. “No. I’d forgotten all about them, actually.”
His expression was carefully bright and positive; there was no trace of any deep emotion as he continued. “Well, we still have a little time. You’ve been liberated . . . and we have no plans this weekend, as you refuse to go to the prom with me.” He grinned. “Why not celebrate your freedom this way?”
I gasped. “By going to Florida?”
“You did say something about the continental U.S. being allowable.”
I glared at him, suspicious, trying to understand where this had come from.
“Well?” he demanded. “Are we going to see Renée or not?”
“Charlie will never allow it.”
“Charlie can’t keep you from visiting your mother. She still has primary custody.”
“Nobody has custody of me. I’m an adult.”
He flashed a brilliant smile. “Exactly.”
I thought it over for a short minute before deciding that it wasn’t worth the fight. Charlie would be furious — not that I was going to see Renée, but that Edward was going with me. Charlie wouldn’t speak to me for months, and I’d probably end up grounded again. It was definitely smarter not to even bring it up. Maybe in a few weeks, as a graduation favor or something.
But the idea of seeing my mother now, not weeks from now, was hard to resist. It had been so long since I’d seen Renée. And even longer since I’d seen her under pleasant circumstances. The last time I’d been with her in Phoenix, I’d spent the whole time in a hospital bed. The last time she’d come here, I’d been more or less catatonic. Not exactly the best memories to leave her with.
And maybe, if she saw how happy I was with Edward, she would tell Charlie to ease up.
Edward scrutinized my face while I deliberated.
I sighed. “Not this weekend.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to fight with Charlie. Not so soon after he’s forgiven me.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “I think this weekend is perfect,” he muttered.
I shook my head. “Another time.”
“You aren’t the only one who’s been trapped in this house, you know.” He frowned at me.
Suspicion returned. This kind of behavior was unlike him. He was always so impossibly selfless; I knew it was making me spoiled.
“You can go anywhere you want,” I pointed out.
“The outside world holds no interest for me without you.”
I rolled my eyes at the hyperbole.
“I’m serious,” he said.
“Let’s take the outside world slowly, all right? For example, we could start with a movie in Port Angeles. . . .”
He groaned. “Never mind. We’ll talk about it later.”
“There’s nothing left to talk about.”
He shrugged.
“Okay, then, new subject,” I said. I’d almost forgotten my worries about this afternoon — had that been his intention? “What did Alice see today at lunch?”
My eyes were fixed on his face as I spoke, measuring his reaction.
His expression was composed; there was only the slightest hardening of his topaz eyes. “She’s been seeing Jasper in a strange place, somewhere in the southwest, she thinks, near his former . . . family. But he has no conscious intentions to go back.” He sighed. “It’s got her worried.”
“Oh.” That was nothing close to what I’d been expecting. But of course it made sense that Alice would be watching out for Jasper’s future. He was her soul mate, her true other half, though they weren’t as flamboyant about their relationship as Rosalie and Emmett were. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I didn’t realize you’d noticed,” he said. “It’s probably nothing important, in any case.”
