Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,68

The song drifted toward that realization, slower and lower. Alice’s voice lowered, too, and became solemn, a tone that belonged under the echoing arches of a candlelit cathedral.

I played the last note, and then bowed my head over the keys.

Esme stroked my hair. It’s going to be fine, Edward. This is going to work out for the best. You deserve happiness, my son. Fate owes you that.

“Thank you,” I whispered, wishing I could believe it. And that my happiness was the one that mattered.

Love doesn’t always come in convenient packages.

I laughed once without humor.

You, out of everyone on this planet, are perhaps best equipped to deal with such a difficult quandary. You are the best and the brightest of us all.

I sighed. Every mother thought the same of her son.

Esme was still full of joy that my heart had finally been touched after all this time, no matter the potential for tragedy. She’d thought I would always be alone.

She’ll have to love you back, she thought suddenly, catching me by surprise with the direction of her thoughts. If she’s a bright girl. She smiled. But I can’t imagine anyone being so slow they wouldn’t see the catch you are.

“Stop it, Mom, you’re making me blush,” I teased. Her words, though improbable, did cheer me.

Alice laughed and picked out the top hand of “Heart and Soul.” I grinned and completed the simple harmony with her. Then I favored her with a performance of “Chopsticks.”

She giggled, then sighed. “So I wish you’d tell me what you were laughing at Rose about,” Alice said. “But I can see that you won’t.”

“No.”

She flicked my ear with her finger.

“Be nice, Alice,” Esme chided. “Edward is being a gentleman.”

“But I want to know.”

I laughed at the whining tone she put on. Then I said, “Here, Esme,” and began playing her favorite song, an unnamed tribute to the love I’d watched between her and Carlisle for so many years.

“Thank you, dear.” She squeezed my shoulder again.

I didn’t have to concentrate to play the familiar piece. Instead I thought of Rosalie, still figuratively writhing in humiliation in the garage, and grinned to myself.

Having just discovered the potency of jealousy for myself, I had a small amount of pity for her. It was a wretched way to feel. Of course, her jealously was a thousand times more petty than mine. Quite the dog in the manger scenario.

I wondered how Rosalie’s life and personality would have been different if she had not always been the most beautiful. Would she have been a happier person—less egocentric? More compassionate?—if beauty hadn’t at all times been her strongest selling point? Well, I supposed it was useless to wonder, because the past was done, and she always had been the most beautiful. Even when human, she had ever lived in the spotlight of her own loveliness. Not that she’d minded. The opposite—she’d loved admiration above all else. That hadn’t changed with the loss of her mortality.

It was no surprise, then, taking this need as a given, that she’d been offended when I had not, from the beginning, worshiped her beauty the way she expected all males to worship. Not that she’d wanted me in any way—far from it. But it had aggravated her that I did not want her, despite that.

It was different with Jasper and Carlisle—they were already both in love. I was completely unattached, and yet still remained obstinately unmoved.

I’d thought that old resentment buried, that she was long past it. And she had been… until the day I finally found someone whose beauty touched me the way hers had not. Of course. I should have realized how that would annoy her. I probably would have, had I not been so preoccupied.

Rosalie had relied on the belief that if I did not find her beauty worth worshiping, then certainly there was no beauty on earth that would reach me. She’d been furious since the moment I’d saved Bella’s life, guessing, with her shrewd, competitive intuition, the interest that I was all but unconscious of myself.

Rosalie was mortally offended that I found some insignificant human girl more appealing than her.

I suppressed the urge to laugh again.

It bothered me some, though, the way she saw Bella. Rosalie actually thought the girl plain. How could she believe that? It seemed incomprehensible to me. A product of the jealousy, no doubt.

“Oh!” Alice said abruptly. “Jasper, guess what?”

I saw what she’d just seen, and my hands froze on the keys.

“What, Alice?” Jasper asked.

“Peter and Charlotte are coming