The Girl Who Was Taken (Renesme Cullens Twin Sister)

Fifty-Four

In the end, the Cullen's left for Italy, to participate in a summit to create a new government for vampires. We were left in the care of Billy Black. I wondered why we weren't left to our actual grandpa Charlie, and he said as much himself, but Renesme clarified that being in Billy's care kept us on the reservation, surrounded by the wolves, which was much safer from vampires and other supernatural creatures than Forks.

Billy Black was the old man in the wheelchair, the one whose birthday party I attended all those years ago. He was Jacob's dad, and I had a suspicion that maybe Renesme had chosen his care because it meant she could spend unlimited time with Jacob. Of course, Charlie was over here almost every day anyways, and him and Billy taught me how to play card games, and took us to the beach, and Sue Clearwater took me and Renesme shopping. But the days passed slowly, and we would occasionally get text messages with vague updates in the Cullen Family group chat.

"Discussions were very civilized today, making progress," Carlisle would text. "We should be home within the month." That was a lie of course. They weren't home within the month, which made me wonder about his conversation with that angry man during the funeral, and how he had said there was no rush to set up a new government, that vampires had all the time in the world. I suppose I understood that more than Renesme, after living in a castle with sixty vampires who were much older than me, all of whom were much older than the Cullen's as well. They were never in a rush to do anything.

And deep inside, I knew that was the same mindset that Edward had decided to adopt. He would text us, "I miss you girls a lot," quite often, but he didn't call. Renesme would try calling him over and over just to get an answering machine. Then he'd text her back, "Sorry I missed your call sweety, I was in a meeting. Will call you back in ten." And he would call her back, but the conversation would be short, and he never asked to talk to me, and I never asked her to give me the phone so I could talk to him even though she'd sometimes try to hand it to me. I'd slump down on my twin bed, resting my head against the wood paneling of the room, and I would wonder if he could read my mind through the phone from ten thousand miles away.

I hoped not because then he would know how much of a relief it was to me that he wasn't around right now. It would only give him a better excuse to stay away.

But it wasn't all bad. I was having a good time. I liked the people better, I had more freedom. No one ever really cared what I got up to, or worried when I started fires in the backyard burn barrel because the trees here were so wet anyways, they'd never catch fire. There was more room to breathe out here in Washington state. And it was always raining too, so most often I'd sit out on Billy's porch and watch it pour down from the tin roof, feeling the mist on my cheeks, remembering the day I chose my name. A lot of the time Billy would sit with me and teach me how to whittle.

"It's good to do something with your hands, to keep your mind off the bad stuff," he'd say a lot. And then he'd invite me to go fishing with him and Charlie the next weekend, and I'd say I'd go because it made him happy, and I liked him the best out of all the grownups because he didn't look at me like I was dangerous or as if I couldn't take care of myself. He just looked at me the same way he looked at any of the pack, with a slight annoyance that I'd eat all his food, but not always, most of the time he'd see I was just trying to figure my life out.

So I sat on his porch again one day, three quiet months had gone by, and the Cullen's were still at the Summit, creating the new government. I had grown more, but I think the strangest physical change I found since I lived here was how my eyes slowly faded from that familiar bright red, and settled on a soft green, all the way on the opposite side of the color spectrum. I was listening to the cold rain hit down on the tin, and slowly working a knife against wood, one sliver at a time. It became smaller and smaller, and I wondered what I would turn it into as I went, looking for the image in the wood, trying to find out what it should be. And on this day, toward the end of summer, a familiar figure walked through the rain toward me. I knew the shape of his shoulders by now, and the way he walked, with a long gate, hurried, his head tipped forward to keep the rain off his face. He shook his hair out as he got closer, and brushed it back, pressing it against his scalp to get the water out as he stepped onto the porch. He came to visit almost every day, and I looked away, hiding my face because I knew what he was going to do next.