The Story Of Sarelle: The Immortal Years »

Chapter 17

I laughed as I passed Edward; although I couldn't be sure that he hadn't deliberately slowed down to allow me to take the lead.

I glanced a look behind me and sure enough his face was lit with a smile so blinding that it could rival the rising sun behind him.

Black Lake looked just the same as it always had and as I looked ahead of me I could see that the same could be said for the Jackson house which nestled on the lake's edge.

I found a new level of energy as I spied that old, vast house and soon I found myself standing on the wide wraparound porch staring at the large oak door and regal brass knocker. Neither seemed tarnished by time, in fact they looked better for it. I wondered if the same could be said for me and Edward.

Edward performed an inhuman task and retrieved the hidden key from where it had been stored below the porch for however many years. I watched as with a swift turn of the large round handled the door opened wide for us.

He ushered me forward with the soft placement of his hand on the base of my back, and with that simplest of touches I entered the home I had been unable to visit for so long.

"It's never changed." I gasped as the same awe overtook me as it had when I first visited when I was human. The grand hallway still captured my attention, the way the room stretched the whole height of the house.

"Esme pays for it to be maintained, just in case." Edward said with a voice that showed I wasn't the only one who felt something by being here.

"Do you keep all your houses?"

"Not all of them, but some are harder to let go of." He cast his gaze over me and we shared a smile.

After that we seemed to rush through the rooms like each one held something we needed. It was like there was a desperation to remember, to try and go back in time to relive the moments each room held. To re-feel each emotion. Whether I was supposed to notice or not, I saw how Edward's reaction differed from mine. For me this house was full of happy moments, but I was almost certain the same couldn't be said for him.

Our whirlwind tour finally ended at the highest point of the house, the room where Edward's piano used to sit and look out over the lake.

I stood in the bay window, gazing out over the near 360 degree view. The town had sprawled out from its centre point, creeping into the forest like roots from a tree. Still it did nothing to detract from the view, or the most prominent memory I had of this place.

The sun had cast a rosy glow across the land now and I smiled because now I could. That red didn't mean anything to me anymore. I was in control. I could stay here forever if I wanted.

I felt Edward's presence move from behind me, coming to stand beside me with a look of thought on his glimmering face.

"Why here, Edward?" I hadn't yet asked why he would choose this place out of all the options available to us.

"I don't know. I just ran." He glanced down at me and I tried to decipher the emotion caught in his eyes but as with most things about Edward, it was a mystery to me.

"I haven't been here in so long, I only realised where we were when I saw the city."

"You never visited?" he asked with something that sounded like hurt in his voice.

I looked over to the forest just beyond the patch of grass out the back of the house.

"I jumped here, maybe once or twice when I was still quite young. I couldn't help it. I stood behind that tree and listened to you playing," I murmured as I half-heartedly pointed to the large western red cedar that grew on the edge of the clearing and dripped with green moss. I didn't tell him the words of love I'd whispered or the sadness that had tightened my throat and built tears that had refused to fall.