Our Infinite Sadness

Balancing

Edythe had felt ashamed of herself, alone in her car a mile away, for the entire hour that she had eavesdropped on the old men in Ben's living room. She detested the necessity, but this was her one job: to reconnoiter and alert her family to possible disruptions to routine. The men had exchanged gossip, what little they had to share, and old Billy had even brought up Edythe's presence in the driveway upon their arrival, innocuous in and of itself and even welcomed, to her mind. Whether the news had even registered with Charlie was questionable. The men were intoxicated, incoherent and snoring soundly for twenty minutes before Edythe finally reassured herself that Billy would keep his deepest anxieties to himself. The boy, Jacob, had unwittingly violated the Treaty last weekend, and he could certainly be forgiven for that, given he didn't believe a word of it. The father, however, understood the binding terms and their significance as well as anyone alive. Edythe had a role in the life of Jacob's best friend, by invitation. Billy didn't like it, but he didn't have to.

She drove home and reflected on her struggles to avoid extending her voyeurism to Ben himself. Even with his mind closed to her, she couldn't help her ingrained attendance to him, and her inability to grant him privacy plagued her head, a constant torment. All the same, she also reflected giddily on Ben's sincere efforts to match Jacob Black up with Zoey. No matter how many times he had insisted that Zoey was not a rival, Edythe couldn't bring herself to believe it, but she was gradually coming around to being convinced.

Edythe's house appeared calm and silent from the outside as she drove past the porch and headed for the garage. But she could hear the turmoil— both spoken aloud and silently thought— inside. She threw one wistful glance at her favorite car, her pretty alabaster Aston Martin, and she wished she could just drive and let all of her cares drop away in the rear view. If only she could leave him, preserve his purity, his mortality, his humanity; if only she could deny Fate the two intolerable paths that lay at the junction before her feet, she could run, right over the horizon and off the edge of the world, never to return. But that hour was past, and there could be no going back to the ever so brief time when she could have left him. With a sigh, she headed out to face the ogre under the bridge. She couldn't even make the short walk from the garage to the house without being accosted.

Rex shot out of the front door as soon as her footsteps became audible from within. He planted himself at the base of the stairs, his lips pulled back over his teeth.

She stopped twenty yards away and defiantly said, "You're wrong about everything. You're as wrong as Alice is."

Rex ignored her and demanded, "How could you tell him? For the love of God, Edythe! Why did you do it? Just because he asked?"

The words themselves weren't so harsh —it was his mental tone that was edged with needle-sharp points, the unspoken corollary that she was hopelessly besotted by the boy, non compos mentis, his certitude that she would get the boy killed. And yet it was more than just the obliteration of any possibility that Ben could now find his way back to the sweetheart in Arizona. Ben had now become a danger to them. An inviolable rule had been broken. Ben knew too much.

"Why?" he demanded again, furious at her stubborn silence and her superior smirk, "Why did you tell him?"

"I didn't. Not that it even matters."

Rex scowled at her and saw red. By this time the entire family stood on the porch.

Edythe muttered, "Ben happens to be a lifelong friend of a direct great-grandson of Ephraim Black. This grandson doesn't believe a word of it."

Rex threw up his hands, "You know what? Stop, Edythe. Just stop. You're right. It doesn't matter. Do you expect any of us to believe that they just happened to be talking about vampires for idle conversation? Just coincidence? No. They were having that conversation because you injected it into the discourse with your presence. And then, what? Some Quileute dog spills the 'v' word around a campfire, and that gives you carte blanche to tell lovey-boy our life stories in that Band room today?"