Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,210

CARLISLE’S OFFICE. I PAUSED AT the door, waiting for his invitation.

“Come in,” Carlisle said.

I led her inside and watched her animatedly examine this new room. It was darker than the rest of the house; the deep mahogany wood reminded him of his earliest home. Her eyes ran across the rows and rows of books. I knew her well enough to see that the sight of so many books in one room was something of a dream to her.

Carlisle marked the page in the one he was reading and then stood to welcome us.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Of course, he’d heard all our conversation in the hall, and he knew we were here for the next installment. He wasn’t bothered by my sharing his story; he didn’t seem surprised that I would tell her everything.

“I wanted to show Bella some of our history. Well, your history, actually.”

“We didn’t mean to disturb you,” Bella said quietly.

“Not at all,” Carlisle assured her. “Where are you going to start?”

“The Waggoner,” I said.

I put one hand on her shoulder and turned her gently to face the wall behind us. I heard her heartbeat react to my touch, and then Carlisle’s almost silent laugh at her reaction.

Interesting, he thought.

I watched Bella’s eyes widen as she took in the gallery wall of Carlisle’s office. I could imagine the way it might disorient a person seeing it for the first time. There were seventy-three works, in all sizes, mediums, and colors, crammed together like a wall-sized puzzle with only rectangular pieces. Her gaze couldn’t find anywhere to settle.

I took her hand and led her to the beginning. Carlisle followed. As on the page of a book, the story began at the far left. It was not a showy piece, monochromatic and maplike. In fact, it was part of a map, hand-painted by an amateur cartographer, one of the very few originals that had survived the centuries.

Her brows furrowed.

“London in the sixteen fifties,” I explained.

“The London of my youth,” Carlisle added from a few feet behind us. Bella flinched, surprised by his closeness. Of course she wouldn’t have heard his movements. I squeezed her hand, trying to reassure her. This house was a strange place for her to be, but nothing here would hurt her.

“Will you tell the story?” I asked him, and Bella turned to see what he would say.

I’m sorry, I wish I could.

He smiled at Bella and spoke aloud to her. “I would, but I’m actually running a bit late. The hospital called this morning—Dr. Snow is taking a sick day. Besides”—he looked to me—“you know the stories as well as I do.”

Carlisle smiled warmly at Bella as he exited. Once he had gone, she turned back to examine the small painting again.

“What happened then?” she asked after a moment. “When he realized what had happened to him?”

Automatically, I looked to a larger painting, one column over and one row down. It wasn’t a cheerful image: a gloomy, deserted landscape, a sky thick with oppressive clouds, colors that seemed to suggest the sun would never return. Carlisle had seen this piece through the window of a minor castle in Scotland. It so perfectly reminded him of his life at its darkest point that he’d wanted to keep it, though the old memory was painful. To him, the existence of this devastated landscape meant that someone else had once understood.

“When he knew what he had become, he rebelled against it. He tried to destroy himself. But that’s not easily done.”

“How?” she gasped.

I kept my eyes on the evocative emptiness of the painting as I described Carlisle’s suicide attempts.

“He jumped from great heights. He tried to drown himself in the ocean… but he was young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that he was able to resist… feeding”—I glanced quickly at her but she was staring at the painting—“while he was still so new. The instinct is more powerful then, it takes over everything. But he was so repelled by himself that he had the strength to try to kill himself with starvation.”

“Is that possible?” she whispered.

“No, there are very few ways we can be killed.”

She opened her mouth to ask the most obvious follow-up, but I spoke quickly to distract her.

“So he grew very hungry, and eventually weak. He strayed as far as he could from the human populace, recognizing that his willpower was weakening, too. For months he wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing himself.…”

I described the