Epilogue

She sat alone facing the ocean, listening to the rush and pull of the waves. Her hair wrapped around her neck and shoulders in the sea breeze. She dug her toes in the soft sand. She leaned her head back and smiled at the stars. She closed her eyes and leaned back further until her back rested on the beach behind her. She stretched her arms out and rubbed the pale grains of sand, letting it fall through her fingers.

I didn't need to ask to know what she was doing in this quiet moment, why she wanted to be alone, for I was doing the same as I watched her. She was saying goodbye to the world, goodbye to what she knew, praying to God that the step we were about to take would be right, that all that she had come to know and love about this life would not go horribly wrong and come to a crashing halt when everything changed.

This last night in Brazil, was it her last night as a human? I didn't know for sure, but I sensed the change. I sensed her moods, her thoughtfulness, and the intensity with which she touched me, the way she seemed to be approaching each new experience. It all spoke the questions, "Will I remember this? Will it be the same? Is this the last time?"

After returning to Vermont, she continued like this. We spent hours reading her favorite novels and poetry, making love and talking about the change, about beauty and boredom, thirst and sex. We talked about the past, about falling in love, about Jacob, and about her child. We talked about motherhood and God.

When the night we selected for her change came, I lay her down gently on a bed put in our family's house. Only Carlisle attended me, though the rest of the family waited close by. I kissed her cheek gently and brushed some of her hair aside. A slow tear ran down her face but her eyes met mine steadily.

"Are you afraid?" I asked quietly.

"How could I not be a little? But I trust you. I want this."

"Are you ready?"

I slid the IV in her arm and watched as the anesthesia flooded her body. Her muscles relaxed and her eyes closed.

"I'll see you soon, my love, and then I'll never say goodbye again."

~oOo~

We returned to live in Forks again, just the two of us this time, after her eyes had cooled and the thirst had lessened and she had gone a couple of years without any incident. Jacob was the first one we saw. After a short and stunned pause, Jacob smiled mischievously. "Somehow I thought you'd be hotter."

Bella returned the wicked grin and ran to meet him. She jumped into his arms, knocking him over. "Jeez, Bells."

"I can actually beat you up now!"

"Yeah right! I can so take you." He rolled his eyes, but then hugged her closer. "Oh God, I'm so glad you're okay. I mean, I knew you were, but now I really know it. Come on, there's someone I want you to meet." She let him pull her up even though she didn't need it, some human gestures just still felt natural, and followed Jacob into the house. I followed. Olivia sat on the couch, her eyes bright and happy. Beside her was a young girl with flaming red hair and glasses, obviously Marina, who looked up shyly at her parents' visitors. In Olivia's arms was a little infant girl with brown hair and skin the color of tea with milk, but with her mother's green eyes. Her eyes were open and alert.

"Jake!" You didn't tell me!"

"I know. It was the hardest thing in my life. Bella, I want you to meet Laura Isabella. We named her after you and Laurel." He took her hand tenderly.

"Jake!"

"Do you want to hold her?" asked Olivia.

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Yeah. We trust you. Come on."

Bella stooped and took the child in her arms, cooing softly, a wide grin on her face. "Hello, little one." She nuzzled her nose on the baby's and Laura hiccoughed a laugh, clearly delighted with her new friend.

~oOo~

Again, she sat by the sea, this time with stones of every color underneath her rather than sand. In her arms was a small baby, gripping her hands and singing to the ocean. Next to her sat a small girl, who used to be shy, chattering enthusiastically about the tree house her dad was building her while sorting pebbles into piles based on their colors.

She looked so beautiful and peaceful there, surrounded by children, comfortable in her skin. I briefly felt a pang that she would never be able to have her own children, but took comfort in knowing that she felt at peace here surrounded by Jacob's children and knowing that ever since she had changed, the grief that used to grip her was only a dim memory.

I heard Jacob's soft steps across the beach and then felt his hot palm on my shoulder, a gesture of friendship that touched me to the core and filled me with warmth. "She looks so happy," he said. "Knowing how it was a few years back, could you have believed it?"

"No, but I'm definitely glad it has turned out this way."

A Long Author's Note: I have to sincerely apologize for how long it took me to write this. Life has been filled with ups and downs and everything has distracted me. Not only that, but towards the end I stopped wanting to turn Bella into a vampire. Scandalous, I know. If you want to know my reasons why, feel free to PM me. I'd be glad to fill you in on my theories about existentialism and Edward.

However, I want to thank all of you who have kept reading and believing in my story and who have bolstered me up with reviews and emails and such. This story would never have been finished if it weren't for your contributions.

My hope was to do some writing from alternate points of view to submit after I was done with the story, but I have to admit to being ready to move on. But, thus said, I hope to get back to it eventually. I will keep this story as "unfinished" in hopes of getting back to it one day.

I hope you will read my next story I'm working on called Jacob's Ladder (see below for excerpt). It's basically the Twilight story from Jake's perspective from childhood to partway through Eclipse. It's a pretty big goal, but I hope that now I have finished graduate school (YAY!) I'll write more often. After that, I may move on to some fan fiction for another series I love, The Heather Wells series by Meg Cabot, which is hilarious. If you haven't read them, please do.

Okay, I am going to do some serious pimping for my next story here by providing an excerpt. Hopefully it will be a tasty enough piece that you'll want to take a bite.

Chapter One: First Sight

I don't remember the first time I saw Bella Swan. She was an integral part of those early summers I don't really remember. I do, however, remember the first time I became aware of her the way boys are aware of girls, when curiosity is peaked by the opposite sex, not in a sexual way, but in a "you're different from me" way, or a, "you're different from even my sisters" way. Okay, so maybe I don't strictly remember everything that happened, only some things, but my father has told me the story so many times it has pretty much become one of my own memories.

It's funny how some of your memories don't actually belong to you; they are the stories handed to you by others. All the colors and flavors of those memories are the result of the emotions that accompanied each retelling. The fact that these memories are not strictly your own does not lessen the power or significance they have for you. Maybe the reason this false memory about Bella has carried so much weight is because of how I have come to feel about her over time.

This first awareness came five years before Bella stopped coming to Forks for her summer vacations. I was seven years old and Bella was nine. Charlie was bringing her over to the house a few nights after she had arrived so that she could spend time with kids her age and I'm sure so that Charlie could have a few adult hours of drinking beer and watching sports with Billy and Harry Clearwater.

"Rachel, Rebecca, did you two pick up your room like I asked you?"

"Rachel just threw her stuff on my side of the room, dad."

My dad chuckled. "Rachel, you can't just throw your things onto Becca's side. Go put your things away where they belong."

"But I'm not allowed on her side," Rachel countered. I wondered how my father was going to get past this sacrosanct Black household rule.

"Well, today you are."

"Why do we have to clean today? It's not even Saturday! We only ever clean on Saturdays!"

"Charlie's bringing Bella over tonight. You don't want her to see your room is such a mess, do you?"

My sisters looked at each other, for once becoming a united team. "Bella's here already? Dad, she's Jacob's age."

"She's actually just older than Jacob. You're just as close in age to her as Jacob is."

"But dad, she plays Barbies," she spoke the word like it was something gross, like gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, never mind that only a month ago she yelled at me and twisted my left ear for chopping off one of Barbie's heads during my game of war with Quil and Embry between G.I. Joe, the Hulk, Wolverine, and the vampires (the dolls had been the vampires, of course).

"Well, even if she does, I'm sure you girls will find something to do. You shouldn't be so shy with her. She's shy too and she doesn't have any brothers or sisters to play with. You should be very nice to her."

"'Kay, dad."

"What about Jacob?" Rebecca asked.

"What about him?"

"Does he have to be nice to Bella?"

"Of course he does, right my little man? You'll be nice to pretty Bella, won't you? No pulling her hair or squirting her with your water gun, right?"

"Do I have to play Barbies with her?" I asked, horrified. Sometimes dad made me play Barbies nicely with Rachel and Rebecca when they still played with dolls.

Dad laughed. "Maybe. Why don't you just wait and see what Bella wants to do? Maybe if you play dolls with her, she'll play one of your games." I tried to picture this. Dad never made Rachel and Rebecca play one of my games. I didn't mind. They were never good at making the necessary explosion noises. Somehow I doubted Bella would be good at those either.

"How come Bella doesn't live with Charlie, dad?"

"Because she lives with her mom in Arizona where it's sunny all the time."

"But how come Charlie doesn't live with them?"

"Well, Charlie and Renee—that's Bella's mom—they don't live together anymore."

"Kind of like how we don't live with mom?"

"That's different. Your mom is in heaven with all the spirits of our ancestors and watching over us. Renee and Charlie just don't love each other anymore."

I puzzled over that. "Is it like with Embry and Sam's dads?"

"Yeah, kind of."

"Embry gets mad about his dad. Does Bella feel mad about not living with Charlie?"

"Maybe. I think she probably does. But Bella gets to come spend every summer with him. Embry doesn't get to see his dad."

"How come Embry doesn't get to see his dad?"

"You're full of questions today. Haven't you asked Embry?"

"Yeah, but he punched me when I asked about his dad."

Dad chuckled. "Well, I'm afraid that Embry's dad wasn't as nice as Charlie. He was really mean to Embry's mom, so she told him he had to go. She didn't want him hurting Embry when he grew up, you see. Now, you need to take a bath, my man. You're filthy. Bella probably won't like that."

Dad always made me take a bath before Bella came and even wash behind my ears and under my nails. I thought I understood now why Rachel and Rebecca seemed so mad that Bella was coming over. From everything dad had said, Bella seemed like she was one of those girls that wouldn't be your friend because you are from the Reservation or because you once picked your nose when you thought no one was looking while at school. I wasn't sure I'd like her if she was like that and I wasn't sure whether I'd let her play with me and definitely that I wouldn't play nicely with her stupid dolls, even if she was like Embry and Sam and didn't get to live with her dad. When dad made me comb out my hair, which was tangled and unruly, and so painful to comb out, I decided I most likely wouldn't like this Bella girl.

At that age, Bella was taller than other kids. She was all skinny legs, long braids, and freckled knees and nose. I remember that when she came in the door, I got a whiff of what smelled like green grass, chlorine, peppermint gum, and something sweet. Strawberries? I thought she smelled like summer. Apparently I was impressed with Bella when she first came in. My dad says I looked like a fish out of water, all wide-mouthed and staring eyes. He says it was because even then I had an eye for what was beautiful in the world, but I think that it was more likely due to the fact that she was wearing an X-Men t-shirt and yet looked so girly. I remember how her pigtail braids ended with a ribbon and a fake flower on the end. It seemed almost blasphemous to have Jean Grey and Professor Xavier emblazoned on your chest while at the same time wearing flowers in your hair.

When my dad and Charlie saw my reaction, they laughed. Dad leaned towards me and whispered conspiratorially that Bella means "beautiful." Rachel just elbowed me in the ribs, for which I responded to by pinching her arm.

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