her head to the side.
I began the first line of the tune that had suggested itself to me in the car today,
pleased that it sounded even better than I'd imagined.
Edward is playing again,
Esme thought joyously, a smile breaking across her
face.  She got up from her desk, and flitted silently to the head of the stairs.
I added a harmonizing line, letting the central melody weave through it.
Esme sighed with contentment, sat down on the top step, and leaned her head
against the banister.
A new song.  It's been so long.  What a lovely tune.
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I let the melody lead in a new direction, following it with the bass line.
Edward is composing again?
Rosalie thought, and her teeth clenched together in
fierce resentment.
In that moment, she slipped, and I could read all her underlying outrage.  I saw
why she was in such a poor temper with me.  Why killing Isabella Swan had not bothered
her conscience at all.
With Rosalie, it was always about vanity.
The music came to an abrupt halt, and I laughed before I could help myself, a
sharp bark of amusement that broke off quickly as I threw my hand over my mouth.
Rosalie turned to glare at me, her eyes sparking with chagrined fury.
Emmett and Jasper turned to stare, too, and I heard Esme's confusion.  Esme was
downstairs in a flash, pausing to glance between Rosalie and me.
"Don't stop, Edward," Esme encouraged after a strained moment.
I started playing again, turning my back on Rosalie while trying very hard to
control the grin stretching across my face.  She got to her feet and stalked out of the
room, more angry than embarrassed.  But certainly quite embarrassed.
If you say anything I will hunt you like a dog.
I smothered another laugh.
"What's wrong, Rose?" Emmett called after her.  Rosalie didn't turn.  She
continued, back ramrod straight, to the garage and then squirmed under her car as if she
could bury herself there.
"What's that about?"  Emmett asked me.
"I don't have the faintest idea," I lied.
Emmett grumbled, frustrated.
"Keep playing," Esme urged.  My hands had paused again.
I did as she asked, and she came to stand behind me, putting her hands on my
shoulders.
The song was compelling, but incomplete.  I toyed with a bridge, but it didn't
seem right somehow.
"It's charming.  Does it have a name?"  Esme asked.
"Not yet."
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"Is there a story to it?" she asked, a smile in her voice.  This gave her very great
pleasure, and I felt guilty for having neglected my music for so long.  It had been selfish.
"It's...a lullaby, I suppose."  I got the bridge right then.  It led easily to the next
movement, taking on a life of its own.
"A lullaby," she repeated to herself.
There
was
a story to this melody, and once I saw that, the pieces fell into place
effortlessly.  The story was a sleeping girl in a narrow bed, dark hair thick and wild and
twisted like seaweed across the pillow...
Alice left Jasper to his own devices and came to sit next to me on the bench.  In
her trilling, wind chime voice, she sketched out a wordless descant two octaves above the
melody.
"I like it," I murmured.  "But how about this?"
I added her line to the harmony-my hands were flying across the keys now to
work all the pieces together-modifying it a bit, taking it in a new direction...
She caught the mood, and sung along.
"Yes.  Perfect," I said.
Esme squeezed my shoulder.
But I could see the end now, with Alice's voice rising above the tune and taking it
to another place.  I could see how the song must end, because the sleeping girl was
perfect just the way she was, and any change at all would be wrong, a sadness.  The song
drifted toward that realization, slower and lower now.  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.
"Thanks," I whispered, wishing I could believe it.
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.
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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."
"Nope."
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 mortification in the garage, and I 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 fox 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 if beauty
hadn't at all times been her strongest selling point?  Less egocentric?  More
compassionate?  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
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admiration above almost anything 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.  She was used to being wanted.
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 was buried.  That she was long passed it.
And she had been...until the day that I finally found someone whose beauty
touched me the way hers had not.
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 female 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 was
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 to visit next week!  They're going to be in the
neighborhood, isn't that nice?"
"What's wrong, Edward?" Esme asked, feeling the tension in my shoulders.
"Peter and Charlotte are coming to
Forks
?" I hissed at Alice
She rolled her eyes at me.  "Calm down, Edward.  It's not their first visit."
My teeth clenched together.  It
was
their first visit since Bella had arrived, and her
sweet blood didn't appeal just to me.
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Alice frowned at my expression.  "They never hunt here.  You know that."
But Jasper's brother of sorts and the little vampire he loved were not like us; they
hunted the usual way.  They could not be trusted around Bella.
"When?" I demanded.
She pursed her lips unhappily, but told me what I needed to know.
Monday
morning.  No one is going to hurt Bella.
"No," I agreed, and then turned away from her.  "You ready, Emmett?"
"I thought we were leaving in the morning?"
"We're coming back by midnight Sunday.  I guess it's up to you when you want
to leave."
"Okay, fine.  Let me say goodbye to Rose first."
"Sure."  With the mood Rosalie was in, it would be a short goodbye.
You really have lost it, Edward,
he thought as he headed toward the back door.
"I suppose I have."
"Play the new song for me, one more time," Esme asked.
"If you'd like that," I agreed, though I was a little hesitant to follow the tune to its
unavoidable end-the end that had set me aching in unfamiliar ways.  I thought for a
moment, and then pulled the bottle cap from my pocket and set it on the empty music
stand.  That helped a bit-my little memento of her
yes
.
I nodded to myself, and started playing.
Esme and Alice exchanged a glance, but neither one asked.
"Hasn't anyone ever told you not to 