Chapter 12
“Alice, you know I loved your brother, right?” I asked. Alice and I were sprawled the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by pillows and blankets and junk food scattered haphazardly on the carpet. I had my head on my sister’s flat stomach as she messed with my hair. The dulcet tones of Tom Hank and Meg Ryan played in the background.

“Why would you ask a thing like that, Bella?” Alice asked. “Of course I know you loved him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone love anything as much as you loved Edward, except maybe how much he loved you.”

“People are thinking I married him just for your guys’ money,” I said, my voice sorrowful. “Some are even thinking I – that I killed him.”

Alice sat up, propping herself up her elbows. Her abs tightened under my head and for a moment, despite all the emotional pain I was in, I allowed myself one moment to be a teenager, to be jealous of how perfect another girl was compared to me, who was gaining weight like none other. I guess it was the stress from the supposed death of my husband. Stress always made me gain weight.

“Bella, we know you had nothing to do with his death,” Alice snapped and I sat up, scooting away from her ever so slightly. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “His death was an accident and you can’t keep blaming yourself no matter what other people say. The old women in this town have major issues and murder is the only rumor they haven’t exhausted. I bet it was grandma Newton, right? And we wonder where Mike gets his…shall we say charm. That old gasbag is responsible for half the divorces in this town.”

“Alice –”

“No, Bella. You should know better than anyone else how much the people in this town gossip. We really need to get a movie theater built so that people have something better to do. I’m sure you’re not the first person who couldn’t bear to go to her husband’s funeral and you won’t be the last.”

The lump that seemed forever implanted in my throat grew again and I turned towards the TV, watching the movie intently for a minute before I remembered that it was a romance movie. Romance movies were just way too hard to watch any more, knowing I was in a horror. I turned away from it, tears in my eyes.

“Talk about something else,” I told Alice.

“Er.…You know, Emmett proposed to Rose just last week, right before….well, yeah, now he doesn’t want to tell anyone.” Alice started out fumbling for what to stay and then she started babbling, unable to stop. “He doesn’t think that anyone will care. He barely even cares right now that Rose said yes. I guess it was kind of spur of the moment. He didn’t even know he was doing it until after he had asked her. Well, that’s Emmett, I guess. I’m the only one he’s told because he doesn’t want to make Esme feel worse or you feel more lonely than you already do. He thinks you’ll be mad about it even though I’ve told him over and over you won’t be. This family is going through such a hard spot right now. I still can’t believe he’s gone”

I clenched my eyes shut tightly. No matter what, all conversation seemed to go in circles since Edward had “died”. We tried to get things to go in any other direction but we always seemed to go back to the same thing: Edward and the fact that he wasn’t coming back. I scrambled for words, trying to get things moving away from him again.

“Emmett finally popped the question and he’s not telling any of us? A wedding is just what we need right now. Esme would love to plan it. It would get everyone’s minds of everything else for a couple minutes.”

“That’s what I told him, too.”

“Well, they better hurry up and get married. I’m sure Esme still wants those grandchildren. Especially now that I can’t have them,” I added as an afterthought.

“I still think you’re pregnant. You really should take that test.”

I kept quiet about the fact that I was holding a pregnancy test in my hands earlier that day, thinking the same exact thing. The idea of what kind of life my kid would have without a father made it too hard to even think about the possibility of my being pregnant. Sure, I was sure Edward was alive, but he was kind of still MIA and I wasn’t exactly sure how to find him and get him back, especially since no one would believe me if I told them Edward was alive. I was trying to accept the fact that I might be a widow forever even if my husband wasn’t dead.

“I’m not.” I scrambled again for a change of subjects. “So, when do you think Jasper’s going to ask you?”

“Soon,” Alice said, a wistful look on her face. It quickly became doubtful. “Maybe. I hope, at least.”

“Have you and Jasper – you know…done it?” I blushed at my vulgar question.

“Geez, Bella, for someone who lost her virginity a while ago and has had sex quite a few times, you’re still rather prude,” Alice laughed. “Of course we have. We’ve been dating for nearly three years.”

“You’re going to make a great mother someday,” I told her. “Just like you would have made a great aunt to whatever children I could have had.”

“There’s still a chance you’ll have kids, you know. You’re only eighteen. There are some people who get married after being widowed when they’re eighty. You still could have kids.”

“I’m never going to fall in love again.”

She laughed slightly but it was somewhat hard. “Isn’t that what they all say?”

“I mean it, Alice.” I didn’t want to fall in love again, couldn’t, not while I was unsure about whether or not Edward was still alive. “I don’t think I can fall in love again. Edward was my soul mate, no matter how corny that sounds.”

“I don’t believe in soul mates,” Alice huffed, sounding oddly bitter compared to the girl I knew who was always happy. I momentarily recalled hearing about how Alice had loved another guy before she met Jasper, a guy she had started dating in eighth grade and she had fallen in love with him. Most likely she had thought he was her soul mate. Though no one liked to talk about it, I knew that he had broken her heart a year later and that had been one of the family’s reasons for moving to Forks. Soul mates seemed like the last thing someone like Alice would be skeptical about but after something like that, I could understand it.

“Everyone has one,” I said, feeling like being profound. “There’s someone out there for everyone who’s perfect just for them. It’s just a matter of finding them. Some people won’t ever find theirs for some reason and will settle for someone almost as good, but I found mine. And I lost him. You can’t ever love again after losing your soul mate.”

“Bella, I understand that but you can’t be alone for the rest of your life just because the guy you loved died way too early,” Alice said, taking on the persona of Dr. Phil. “I mean, if Jazzy died, it would take me quite a few years to get over it and I’d never stop loving him or anything, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t fall in love again. I’d know he wouldn’t want me to be alone forever and he’d want me to be happy. And I know Edward would agree with me. He’d want the same for you.”

“Just because I won’t fall in love with again doesn’t mean I can’t be happy. And I won’t be alone.” I paused for a moment. “I mean, I have you.”

“Not what I meant, Bella. I mean more along the lines of someone who will sleep with you.” Alice wrinkled her tiny nose. “And, no offense, I wouldn’t even ever make out with you.”

“Yeah, I got that. I was just kidding. But I don’t want anyone else.”

“You won’t be saying that in a few years when you find someone else. But I can understand for now not wanting to even think about loving anyone else.”

I wrinkled my nose. Maybe now was as good of time as ever to tell her. I couldn’t keep this to myself any longer without exploding. If I didn’t tell someone soon, I was sure that I was going to be running through the streets shouting that my husband was alive at the top of my lungs just so that I wouldn’t have to keep it to myself for another minute. And all that wouldn’t accomplish anything except getting me locked in a padded room.

“Alice, can I be totally honest with you?”

“Of course, Bella. Always.”

“And you promise not to think I’m completely insane?”

“No more than usual.”

“Edward’s alive, Alice.”

As soon as I said the words I had been so desperate to say, I wanted to stuff them back into my mouth and keep myself from ever saying them again. The silence that echoed between us was deafening and both of us wanted to break it but knew we couldn’t because then the air around us would splinter into a million different pieces.

Eventually, Alice managed to find a way to say the words she was choking on. “Bella…do you know how crazy you sound? He’s dead and none of us like that fact at all but we have to accept it. We have to learn how to live without him.”

“I was trying, I swear to god I was, but, Alice, in the coffin on the day of his funeral – the body in the coffin wasn’t his,” I said. “I saw it and it wasn’t his.”

Alice looked confused, like she wanted to believe me but also thought she needed to go get Carlisle to put me in a straightjacket. “Ok, so even if the body in the casket wasn’t his, which I’m not saying it wasn’t, how does that mean he’s alive?”

“When I went to identify the body, he woke up. He was alive. And that morning before the funeral, he was in my room, Alice! He was in my room and was talking to me! He was there! Edward’s still alive.”

“This is absolutely insane, Bella,” Alice sputtered. “I get that you don’t want him to be dead. None of us do! Do you have any clue how much this is hurting me as well? Do you get what’s it like to wake up and realize that the brother who tormented me at breakfast for eighteen years isn’t going to be there to torment me? That he’s never going to get to torment me again because he’s dead? You at least know how to live without him. You’ve done it before. I’ve never lived without having two brothers and I have no idea how the hell I’m going to figure out how to live with only one. And, Bella, goddammit, you’re not making this any easier by claiming he’s still alive.”

I shrank even further away from Alice, feeling the rift between us widening even more. I had never seen the girl I had grown to love as my sister this angry. I’d never really seen her angry at all. So the fact that she had just exploded at me like that shocked me. After this, I didn’t think that there was any possibility to fix the hole that was between us now. I knew it as she stood up and grabbed her blanket off the floor of my room.

“God, Bella, maybe Gasbag Newton was right about something,” she hissed. “You’re being quite a black widow. You’re sucking off this family’s grief and not helping us heal at all. You’re just making it worse. You’re the most frickin’ selfish person. Edward’s dead, Bella. Accept it and grow up. Stop acting like a middle school, pubescent girl who can’t get over a broken heart. Stop denying it and let us all find a way to move on with our lives.” Alice hurried to get out of the room, tripping over blankets and pillows. “Shit, shit, shit.” She whirled on me again, fire burning in her eyes. “And from any of us know about what happened that night, this is your fault, Bella. You’re the reasons he’s dead.”

Then she left and left me to do the only thing I seemed to be good at doing anymore. She was right and I had known it all along but hearing someone I knew and trusted like a sister say it really dug it home. If Edward was dead, which I wasn’t even sure of anymore, it was my fault because I had stupidly run into the forest at night, which ended with him getting attacked. And if he wasn’t, we were still in whatever this whole sticky situation was because of me.

And so I just sat there and cried while the girl from my imagination reappeared for the first time since Edward had died. She sat there on my bed with her baby and just laughed while I sobbed.