Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,212

putting in the effort to become more like him. This crash course in restraint that Bella was teaching me might have been less fraught if I’d worked harder to improve in the last seven decades.

Bella was staring at me now. I tapped the relevant scene in front of us to refocus her attention on the story.

“He was studying in Italy when he discovered the others there. They were much more civilized and educated than the wraiths of the London sewers.”

She concentrated on the tableau I indicated, and then laughed suddenly, a little shocked. She’d recognized Carlisle despite the robe-like costume he was painted in.

“Solimena was greatly inspired by Carlisle’s friends. He often painted them as gods. Aro, Marcus, Caius.” I gestured to each as I said their names. “Nighttime patrons of the arts.”

Her finger hesitated just above the canvas. “What happened to them?”

“They’re still there. As they have been for who knows how many millennia. Carlisle stayed with them only for a short time, just a few decades. He greatly admired their civility, their refinement, but they persisted in trying to cure his aversion to ‘his natural food source,’ as they called it. They tried to persuade him, and he tried to persuade them, to no avail. At that point, Carlisle decided to try the New World. He dreamed of finding others like himself. He was very lonely, you see.”

I touched only lightly on the following decades, as Carlisle struggled with his isolation and finally began to consider a course of action. The story turned more personal, and also more repetitive. She’d heard some of this before: Carlisle finding me on my deathbed and making the decision that had changed my destiny. And now, that decision was affecting Bella’s destiny, too.

“And so we’ve come full circle,” I concluded.

“Have you always stayed with Carlisle, then?” she asked.

With unerring instinct, she’d found the one question I least wanted to answer.

“Almost always,” I answered.

I placed my hand on her waist to guide her out of Carlisle’s office, wishing I could also guide her away from this train of thought. But I knew she was not going to let that stand. Sure enough…

“Almost?”

I sighed, unwilling. But honesty must take precedence over shame. “Well,” I confessed, “I had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence—about ten years after I was born, created, whatever you want to call it. I wasn’t sold on his life of abstinence, and I resented him for curbing my appetite. So I went off on my own for a time.”

“Really?” Her intonation was not what I expected. Rather than being disgusted, she sounded eager to hear more. This didn’t match her reaction in the meadow, when she’d seemed so surprised that I was guilty of murder, as though that truth had never occurred to her. Perhaps she’d grown used to the idea.

We started up the stairs. Now she seemed indifferent to her surroundings; she only watched me.

“That doesn’t repulse you?” I asked.

She considered that for half a second. “No.”

I found her answer upsetting. “Why not?” I nearly demanded.

“I guess… it sounds reasonable?” Her explanation ended on a higher pitch, like a question.

Reasonable. I laughed, the sound too harsh.

But instead of telling her all the ways it was neither reasonable nor forgivable, I found myself giving a defense.

“From the time of my new birth, I had the advantage of knowing what everyone around me was thinking, both human and nonhuman alike. That’s why it took me ten years to defy Carlisle. I could read his perfect sincerity, understand exactly why he lived the way he did.”

I wondered if I would ever have gone astray if I had not met Siobhan and others like her. If I hadn’t been aware that every other creature like myself—we’d not yet stumbled across Tanya and her sisters—thought the way Carlisle lived was ludicrous. If I had only known Carlisle, and never discovered another code of conduct, I think I would have stayed. It made me ashamed that I’d let myself be influenced by others who were never Carlisle’s equals. But I’d envied their freedom. And I’d thought I would be able to live above the moral abyss they all sank to. Because I was special. I shook my head at the arrogance.

“It took me only a few years to return to Carlisle and recommit to his vision. I thought I would be exempt from the depression that accompanies a conscience. Because I knew the thoughts of my prey, I could pass over the innocent and pursue only