Jasper's POV

I stared frustrated into my wife's dark eyes. I hated to see her like this, to feel her like this. She had disrupted my attempts to cheer her up, telling me she needed to feel this. I did share part of her emotion; I too, had lost a brother. However Alice had lost a sister as well. Next to Edward, she loved Bella more than the rest of us. Not that we did not care for her (with the exception of Rosalie), but Alice had shared a connection with the girl that none of us felt. It hurt me to know that I could do nothing to help Alice deal with the pain of losing both of them. The bodies in the room suddenly stiffened with the wave of pain I had felt in my last thought. I glanced around apologetically as Alice squeezed my hand.

I struggled to pull myself into a sense of impassiveness as I continued to dwell on the reason for Alice's current feelings. Edward had been beside himself in grief when he decided to disappear to some clandestine location in South America. I internally shuddered as I remembered his constant feelings of self-loathing when he left.

Rosalie shot me a look of disgust from across the room. I smiled in spite of myself. Apparently hatred of self was not an emotion she was accustomed too.

Emmett's blank stare into space was disrupted as he felt Rose stir. He gave me a warning glance from his seat against the wall.

Sometimes it did not seem fair that I was not able think without the consequence of affecting those around me. I had been able think clearly about Edward when he was here; his constant mood had been felt by the others without my extra help. However, now that he was gone I had to be very careful not to dwell too long on Edward's feelings. They were too strong for me to be able to keep inside and I often flung them to whoever happened to be unlucky enough to be next to me at the time.

I opted instead to observe my present. Rosalie and Emmett had returned home from their "honeymoon," even if only temporarily. Emmett was sitting against the far wall of the room; his face again lost in concentration. This was rare for Emmett, he was rarely too far away from the present. Rosalie noticed this as well and seemed annoyed by it. She was draped across the leather couch, her blonde hair dancing in waves around her face. Rosalie was the only person currently unaffected by the current situation, and she seemed unable to wrap her supposedly brilliant vampire mind around the reason why the rest of us were so taken down by it. I saw her glance idly at the clock. Carlisle and Esme would be home soon, and Rose was most likely hoping that these two might force the rest of us to liven up. That was doubtful. Carlisle had thrown himself into his work, teaching classes at Cornell. Esme had taken upon restoring a tattered house located somewhere in downtown Ithaca.

I saved my observation of Alice for last. She was still looking as if she would never be happy again, however this time worry seemed to be the most dominant feature. I frowned. Worry was more evident in her face when she was thinking of Bella. None of us knew what Edward had said to her or how the girl was now taking it; and Alice was forbidden by Edward to look into her future and see how she was fairing. I normally used moments such as these to attempt to soothe Alice, even with her request to let her feel for herself. However, in this instance I felt myself severely curious as to how Bella really was doing. Was she taking the separation as any other teenage girl would? I doubted that. Bella was unnervingly unique. So if not that, then how was she feeling? I shuddered to think that her emotions might be closer in line with Edward's. If that was the case, it was possibly the girl would burst from the pain. Then, it must be somewhere in the middle of the two. Much more than the typical teenage breakup, but I agreed with Edward; she was human, she would soon move on.

A gruff voice suddenly cleared his throat. I looked up to find the three face around plastered with confused expressions. Rose seemed to be fighting it. I realized with a sudden jolt of humor that I had let my sudden intense curiosity get the best of me and I had spread it around the room. Emmett and Alice looked amused by my sudden lapse, Rosalie just looked annoyed.

"So what is it that I have the sudden dying urge to figure out?" Emmett wondered, amused.

"It's nothing," I responded, "I just lost control for a second."

Alice stirred beside me. "That was not nothing Jazz."

"Yeah," Emmett agreed, "I'm curious, and without your help this time, as to why I had a sudden prompting to pull out a Nancy Drew book and a flashlight and begin sleuthing."

I looked around, and grudgingly admitted what I had been thinking about.

"I was just wondering about Bella."

Rosalie scoffed and instantly left the room. We heard her walking with unnecessary force up the wooden staircase.

I rolled my eyes and continued. "I am just very curious as to how she is dealing with this. It can't be easy on her, I mean; she lost a boyfriend…and a best friend." Alice cringed at this statement. "Which is not your fault," I told her severely. "Plus, I'm pretty sure that Edward was not just a boyfriend to her. We all saw, and continue to see, how much she means to him, and I'm just…well curious."

Alice and Emmett stared at me.

I cringed. "I know it's sort of morbid to wonder about how much pain someone is in," I glanced apologetically at Alice, "But that is how I tend to judge a situation."

Emmett suddenly looked thoughtful. "I'm just curious to see how she's doing; Edward is off doing God knows what trying to distract himself. Bella can't really do anything. She's stuck in Forks. She's probably fine though; she has her father, her friends."

"Edward has us," I responded. "And he's not really doing that great."

"True, but I'll bet she's angry that he left her for her own good over anything. She's definitely not a person to appreciate others being self-sacrificing."

A long silence filled the room. Emmett remained thoughtful and Alice was staring at her feet with a concerned look on her face.

"So…road trip?" Emmett offered tentatively.

Alice looked up with a tortured expression on her face. "We promised we wouldn't interfere. We promised him. He wants her to…start over, to forget him."

"But you want to know too," I said, noting the conflict in her face. "And we don't have to let her know we are there, just a short trip. We find her; just see how she's doing, and then leave, no matter what."

"I don't know if I could do that," Alice admitted. "I miss her."

"I know, but like you said, we have to respect Edward's wishes and not interfere. I'll make sure you keep to that prom—."

A baseball bat suddenly came whirling towards my head. I gently stepped to the side as Rosalie flew down the stairs in its wake.

"You all have GOT to be joking," she snarled. "We are NOT going BACK there. Things are JUST starting to get normal. She is an irrelevant, tiny, weak human. And since when did you start to show this much of an interest in her?"

She did have a point there. Why did I have this much interest in her? However, Rosalie was too absorbed in herself to realize that things were not even close to being back to normal.

"Edward. Is. My. Brother." I spat at her. "This means by extension, Bella is my sister and yours too. I just want to make sure that she is handling this different than Edward, which I'm sure she is; so there is nothing to get so dramatic about. We want to go, look, and leave. And it's decided," I said, noting the rising fervor in Alice's face. "You can come or you can stay, it makes no difference to me."

"Please, Rosalie." Emmett asked gently. She looked furiously at him, but did not respond. Emmett rarely asked Rosalie for anything.

"Fine," she spat.

"It's settled then," Alice said. "We leave at twilight."

I sank into the couch as I let the medley of emotions in the room sink over me. Worry. Anger. Excitement. Fear. Annoyance. Curiosity. And oddly, hope.