Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,183

mystery. Alice doesn’t remember her human life at all.”

I’d seen that first memory. Bright morning sunlight, a light mist hanging in the air. Tangled grass surrounding her, broad oak trees shading the hollow where she woke. Besides that, a blankness, no sense of identity or purpose. She’d looked at her pale skin, shimmering in the sun, and not known who or what she was. And then the first vision had taken her.

A man’s face, fierce but also broken, scarred but beautiful. Deep red eyes and a mane of golden hair. With this face came a profound conviction of belonging. And then she saw him speaking a name.

Alice.

Her name, she realized.

The visions told her who she was, or shaped her into who she would become. These were the only help she would get.

“And she doesn’t know who created her,” I told Bella. “She awoke alone. Whoever made her walked away, and none of us understand why, or how, he could. If she hadn’t had that other sense, if she hadn’t seen Jasper and Carlisle and known that she would someday become one of us, she probably would have turned into a total savage.”

Bella pondered this in silence. I was sure it was difficult for her to comprehend. It had taken my family a while to adjust, as well. I wondered what her next question would be.

And then her stomach gurgled, and I realized that we’d been together all day and she’d eaten nothing in that time. Ah, I needed to keep better focused on her human needs!

“I’m sorry, I’m keeping you from dinner.”

“I’m fine, really,” she said too quickly.

“I’ve never spent much time around anyone who eats food,” I apologized. “I forget.” It was a poor excuse.

Her expression was totally open as she responded, vulnerable. “I want to stay with you.”

Again, the word stay seemed to carry so much more weight than it usually did.

“Can’t I come in?” I asked gently.

She blinked twice, clearly thrown by the idea. “Would you like to?”

“Yes, if it’s all right.”

I wondered if she thought I had to have an explicit invitation in order to come inside. The thought made me smile, and then frown as I felt a spasm of guilt. I would need to come clean with her. Again. But how to broach such a shameful admission?

I stewed on that while I got out and opened the passenger door for her.

“Very human,” she commended.

“It’s definitely resurfacing.”

We walked together at human speed across her shadowed, silent yard as if this were a normal thing. She flickered glances at me as we walked, smiling to herself. I reached up and pulled the house key from its hiding place as we passed, then opened the door for her. She hesitated, looking down the dark hallway.

“The door was unlocked?” she asked.

“No, I used the key from under the eave.”

I replaced the key in question while she moved to turn on the porch lamp. When she turned back, yellow light made harsh shadows across her face as she raised both eyebrows at me. I could see she meant the look to be stern, but the corners of her lips were puckered as though she was fighting a smile.

“I was curious about you,” I confessed.

“You spied on me?”

It didn’t seem to be a joking matter, but she sounded as if she were about to laugh.

I should have confessed all then, but I went along with her teasing tone. “What else is there to do at night?”

It was the wrong choice, a cowardly choice. She heard only a joke, not an admission. Strange again to realize how, even with the huge potential nightmares resolved, there continued to be much to fear. Of course, this issue was nothing but my own fault, my own extremely poor behavior.

She shook her head slightly, then gestured for me to enter. I moved past her down the hall, switching on lights as I went so she wouldn’t have to stumble in the dark. I took a seat at her small kitchen table and looked around, examining the angles that were invisible from outside the window. The room was tidy and warm, bright with gaudy yellow paint that was somehow endearing in its failed attempt to mimic sunshine. Everything smelled like Bella, which should have been quite painful, but I found that I enjoyed it in a strange way. Masochistic, indeed.

She stared at me with a hard to read expression. A little confusion, I guessed, a little bit of wonder. As though she wasn’t sure I was