What's Forever

Chapter 3

I haven't been back to see the family since I left four years ago and decided to go to school. Esme would never let me live it down but the distance was on purpose. I needed physical space and mental space from all of the couples that includes a brother who plays with emotions as easily as he plays his chess games, a sister who insists on telling us how to live because she can see it and the only other single guy who can read my thoughts.

They mean well, I know that they do, but when you want peace and the space to think to yourself that doesn't happen around them. I am curious about the new house though, Rose says that this is one of her favorites, if not the favorite. They're in Forks, Washington now, a town with little sun and lots of cloudy, rainy days. They've been for Forks before but I wasn't with them.

Sounds like I'm going back home to the family and as soon as I decided that I got two text messages. No doubt about who they're from but Carlisle is still on the line so I'll check them when I hang up.

"Jared is doing good, no slips in six months." Carlisle replied.

"He's doing better than I did, is he going to school?"

"He'll start in September with the kids. Are you coming here?"

"Probably after I finish, I miss Esme." I told him.

"That'll be nice, she really misses you too. You'll like this house."

"Rosie sent me pictures, she really likes this one."

"Because we can be free here. It's far enough out of town and deep enough in between the trees that we can all be ourselves without worrying about wandering eyes."

I could hear the peace in my dad's tone of voice and that's important to me. It's important to him to find homes where all of his "children" and apparently this is one of the best. While I did want my space from the suffocating romances in the house, I do miss my family. I miss being with my own kind too, but I really do miss my created siblings.

"Sounds like I have to come to visit, for sure."

"The girls would really love that."

"How's the hospital?"

Carlisle's willpower is something absolutely enviable. He's against unnecessary violence and takes full advantage of that willpower, that ability to completely resist human blood, to work at hospitals, and save human lives. He's an influence that we all aspire to be like but we're all aware that none of us will ever reach that level of restraint. The man has never had an ounce of human blood and all of us have slipped at least once.

"It's smaller than others I've worked at but small is good, fewer eyes on us. After half a year here, I pretty much run the place. We're a little understaffed, which is a surprise considering how small this place is, but we have put ads out."

"Understaffed? You're that busy at the small town hospital? I chuckled.

"It rains a lot and the snowfall is heavy so there are a lot of car accidents. Forks community hospital is also the closest hospital to the highway so any highway accidents get sent here, more so since I started working here and the numbers have gotten better. Other than that, it's a lot of sick kids. We basically live off of car accidents." I could hear the smile in his voice.

"And you love it all."

"I absolutely do."

"You're happy in Forks, but isn't that close to the shifters? Edward told me about it before, how you met the shifters the first time you went there. Before I came along."

Edward told me about their first trip to Forks decades ago. It was Carlisle, Esme, Edward, and Rosalie, who Carlisle had wished would love Edward, and they were caught by the shifters. According to Edward, the leader of the pack was surprised when he heard Carlisle speak so eloquently because their legends spoke of rabid like vampires who couldn't speak clearly. Also, their ancestor's previous encounters with those of our kind had always ended in bloodshed.