Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,144

wondering if she’d seen that I would sit the next round out and was being polite.

“I’m going out tomorrow with Jasper,” she told me.

“Didn’t he just—”

“I’ve recently decided that more preparations are necessary,” she said, smiling. A new possibility.

In her mind, I saw our home. Carlisle and Esme waiting expectantly in the front room. The door opening, myself walking through, and next to me, holding my hand…

Alice laughed, and I tried to bring my face back under my control.

“How?” I asked. “When?”

“Soon.” Possibly Sunday…

“This Sunday?”

Yes, the one that comes after tomorrow.

Bella was perfect in the vision—human and healthy, smiling at my parents. She wore the blue blouse that made her skin glow.

As for how, I’m not entirely sure. This is just an outlying chance, but I wanted Jasper prepared.

Jasper at the foot of the stairs now, nodding politely to Bella, his eyes light gold.

“This is… through the knot?”

One of the threads.

It spun out again in her mind, the long ropes of possibilities. So many converging on tomorrow… not enough emerging on the other side.

“Where am I at?”

She pursed her lips. Seventy-five-twenty-five? She thought it like a question, and I could see she was being generous.

C’mon, she thought as she saw me hunch in on myself. You’d take that bet. I did.

Automatically, my lips pulled back over my teeth.

“Please!” she said. “Like I was going to pass up such an opportunity. This isn’t just about Bella. I’m relatively confident that she’ll be fine. This is about teaching Rosalie and Jasper some respect.”

“You’re not omniscient.”

“I’m close enough.”

I could not match her joking mood. “If you were omniscient, you’d be able to tell me what to do.”

You’ll figure it out, Edward. I know you will.

If only I could know that, too.

No one but my mother and father were home when we returned. Emmett had no doubt warned the others to make themselves scarce. It didn’t matter to me one way or another. I didn’t have the energy to care about their stupid game. Alice, too, ran off in search of Jasper. I was grateful for the thinning of the mental conversations. It helped me a little as I tried to concentrate.

Carlisle was waiting by the foot of the stairs, and his thoughts were hard to block, filled with all the same questions to which I’d just begged Alice for answers. I didn’t want to admit to him all the weaknesses that kept me from running away before any more damage was done. I didn’t want Carlisle to know the horror that would have come to pass if I hadn’t come back to Forks when I did, the depths to which my monster would have sunk.

I gave him one tight nod in acknowledgment as I passed him. He knew what it meant—that I was aware of all his fears, and that I had no good answer. With a sigh, he nodded back. He followed up the stairs more slowly, and I heard him join Esme in her study. They didn’t speak. I tried to ignore what she thought as she analyzed his expression: her alarm, her pain.

Carlisle, of all the others, even Alice, understood best how it was for me, the never-ending chatter and babble and commotion that was the inside of my head; he’d lived with me longest. So, without a word, he now led Esme to the large window we often used as an exit. Within seconds, they were far enough away that I could hear nothing. Silence at last. The only commotion in my head now was of my own making.

At first I moved slowly, at barely more than human speed, as I showered, cleaning the residue of the forest from my skin and hair. As before, in the car, I felt damaged, impaired, as if my strength had been drained away. All in my head, of course. It would be nothing but a miracle, a gift, if I could somehow truly lose my strength. If I could be weak, harmless, a danger to no one.

I’d almost forgotten my earlier fear—such a conceited fear—that Bella would find me repulsive when I revealed my true self in the sunlight. I was disgusted at myself for wasting even a moment over that selfish concern. But as I looked for fresh clothes, I had to think of it again. Not because it mattered whether she was sickened by me, but because I had a promise to keep.

I rarely gave what I wore a first thought, let alone a second. Alice stocked my closet with