The Girl Who Was Taken (Renesme Cullens Twin Sister)

Fifty-Two

The service took place at a funeral parlor. To make it simple, Alice had decided to have all the funerals together, so we were in the largest room, with three closed caskets side by side in the front. The bodies weren't really in them. They would be burned soon, at our smaller family funeral. We'd scattered them at sea. It would probably be tonight because Edward didn't want to waste time to put them out of their misery. He said he could still hear what was left of Emmet's and Rosalie's minds, barely there, but still existing.

According to Renesme, Alice had outdone herself with the preparations and decorations. And it seemed that maybe she was using it as a distraction to keep herself occupied. There were a million flowers all around the caskets, and elegant painted portraits of Bella, Rosalie, and Emmet. The whole room was full of people. More people came to pay respects, just passing through, many vampires for Rosalie and Emmet who had lived quite a long life and had many friends. Most of the Quileute's showed up too, to pay their respect to Bella. I heard Edward mutter something about the whole town of Forks coming through to find out if it was really true that all three of them died in a terrible car crash when they were on holiday in Italy. That's what we were telling people.

I got a lot of weird looks, standing next to Renesme up front at the coffins. I stayed slightly behind her shoulder with my head down. I wasn't allowed to tell people I was her daughter, which was strange, and I wasn't allowed to eat any of them either, which was stranger yet. We had to wear eye contacts to cover the red of our iris's. And we were supposed to put up with the humans, respect that their lives were worth just as much as ours and be nice when they gave us weird looks. Renesme also explained that we had to lie and tell them that we were adopted by Bella and Edward, that we were their nieces, and I had been being fostered by another relative until recently.

Saying thank you to everyone who passed was a blur. I remember when Paul passed me and he mussed my hair, trying to annoy me into smiling. And when I did, he leaned in and whispered, "No smiling, this is a funeral." But I could tell he was joking when I saw his own smile close by my cheek, just trying to make me feel more comfortable in this weird situation. His smile disappeared when he stood back up to his full height, and he looked properly solemn as he moved on, nodded at Edward and Carlisle and then Bella's dad.

When the procession of respects was finished, and people began to find their seats to watch the service, a hand came down on my shoulder, and I looked up to find that it was Bella's dad. Renesme stepped forward and hugged him. "There's two of you now?" he asked in wonderment. He didn't mean it in a bad way, I think it was just his way of breaking the ice, although at a funeral for his own daughter, he looked very sad as he said, "The world never ceases to amaze me."

"This is Stormy," Renesme said, "Alice mentioned her to you, right?"

"It's good to meet you," he said, as he shook my hand. "You can call me Grandpa Charlie."

"It's good to meet you too," I told him, although I remembered meeting him many years ago at a birthday party in La Push. I didn't say it though, he seemed a little confused already and that would only make it worse.

He kept hold of my hand and turned toward a woman who stood beside him. Her face was blotchy, and her makeup was almost wiped away from how much she was crying. "She's our granddaughter," he said. "Just like Nessie."

The woman blubbered, "I still don't understand."

"You don't need to understand, Renee. Sometimes life doesn't make sense. I've just learned to take it one step at a time."

The woman named Renee took a tissue out of her sleeve and blew her nose, and then she stepped forward and took me in her arms, cradling me tightly. "You almost look exactly like her when she was your age." She let go with one of her arms and wrapped it around Renesme. "Both of you." She kissed the tops of our heads a lot, and cried on us, and then we followed her and Grandpa Charlie to the seats.