"Impossible," I said again, because, bulge or no bulge, period or no period (and there was definitely no period, though I"d never been late a day in my life), there was no way I could be pregnant. The only person I"d ever had s.e.x with was a vampire, for crying out loud.
A vampire who was still frozen on the floor with no sign of ever moving again.
So there had to be some other explanation, then. Something wrong with me. A strange South American disease with all the signs of pregnancy, only accelerated...
And then I remembered something-a morning of internet research that seemed a lifetime ago now. Sitting at the old desk in my room at Charlie"s house with gray light glowing dully through the window, staring at my ancient, wheezing computer, reading avidly through a web-site called "Vampires AZ." It had been less than twenty-four hours since Jacob Black, trying to entertain me with the Quileute legends he didn"t believe in yet, had told me that Edward was a vampire. I"d scanned anxiously through the first entries on the site, which was dedicated to vampire myths around the world.
The Filipino Danag, the Hebrew Estrie, the Romanian Varacolaci, the Italian Stregoni benefici (a legend actually based on my new father-in-law"s early exploits with the Volturi, not that I"d known anything about that at the time)... I"d paid less and less attention as the stories had grown more and more implausible. I only remembered vague bits of the later entries. They mostly seemed like excuses dreamed up to explain things like infant mortality rates-and infidelity. No, honey, I"m not having an affair! That s.e.xy woman you saw sneaking out of the house was an evil succubus. I"m lucky I escaped with my life! (Of course, with what I knew now about Tanya and her sisters, I suspected that some of those excuses had been nothing but fact.) There had been one for the ladies, too. How can you accuse me of cheating on you-just because you"ve come home from a two-year sea voyage and I"m pregnant? It was the incubus. He hypnotized me with his mystical vampire powers....
That had been part of the definition of the incubus-the ability to father children with his hapless prey.
I shook my head, dazed. But...
I thought of Esme and especially Rosalie. Vampires couldn"t have children. If it were possible, Rosalie would have found a way by now. The incubus myth was nothing but a fable.
Except that... well, there was a difference. Of course Rosalie could not conceive a child, because she was frozen in the state in which she pa.s.sed from human to inhuman.
Totally unchanging. And human women"s bodies had to change to bear children. The constant change of a monthly cycle for one thing, and then the bigger changes needed to accommodate a growing child. Rosalie"s body couldn"t change.
But mine could. Mine did. I touched the b.u.mp on my stomach that had not been there yesterday.
And human men-well, they pretty much stayed the same from p.u.b.erty to death. I remembered a random bit of trivia, gleaned from who knows where: Charlie Chaplin was in his seventies when he fathered his youngest child. Men had no such thing as child-bearing years or cycles of fertility.
Of course, how would anyone know if vampire men could father children, when their partners were not able? What vampire on earth would have the restraint necessary to test the theory with a human woman? Or the inclination?
I could think of only one.
Part of my head was sorting through fact and memory and speculation, while the other half-the part that controlled the ability to move even the smallest muscles-was stunned beyond the capacity for normal operations. I couldn"t move my lips to speak, though I wanted to ask Edward to please explain to me what was going on. I needed to go back to where he sat, to touch him, but my body wouldn"t follow instructions. I could only stare at my shocked eyes in the mirror, my fingers gingerly pressed against the swelling on my torso.
And then, like in my vivid nightmare last night, the scene abruptly transformed.
Everything I saw in the mirror looked completely different, though nothing actually was different.What happened to change everything was that a soft little nudge b.u.mped my hand- from inside my body.
In the same moment, Edward"s phone rang, shrill and demanding. Neither of us moved.
It rang again and again. I tried to tune it out while I pressed my fingers to my stomach, waiting. In the mirror my expression was no longer bewildered-it was wondering now.
I barely noticed when the strange, silent tears started streaming down my cheeks.
The phone kept ringing. I wished Edward would answer it-I was having a moment.
Possibly the biggest of my life.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
Finally, the annoyance broke through everything else. I got down on my knees next to Edward-I found myself moving more carefully, a thousand times more aware of the way each motion felt-and patted his pockets until I found the phone. I half-expected him to thaw out and answer it himself, but he was perfectly still.
I recognized the number, and I could easily guess why she was calling.
"Hi, Alice," I said. My voice wasn"t much better than before. I cleared my throat.
"Bella? Bella, are you okay?"
"Yeah. Um. Is Carlisle there?"
"He is. What"s the problem?"
"I"m not... one hundred percent... sure..."
"Is Edward all right?" she asked warily. She called Carlisle"s name away from the phone and then demanded, "Why didn"t he pick up the phone?" before I could answer her first question.
"I"m not sure."
"Bella, what"s going on? I just saw-"
"What did you see?"
There was a silence. "Here"s Carlisle," she finally said.
It felt like ice water had been injected in my veins. If Alice had seen a vision of me with a green-eyed, angel-faced child in my arms, she would have answered me, wouldn"t she?
While I waited through the split second it took for Carlisle to speak, the vision I"d imagined for Alice danced behind my lids. A tiny, beautiful little baby, even more beautiful than the boy in my dream-a tiny Edward in my arms. Warmth shot through my veins, chasing the ice away."Bella, it"s Carlisle. What"s going on?"
"I-" I wasn"t sure how to answer. Would he laugh at my conclusions, tell me I was crazy? Was I just having another colorful dream? "I"m a little worried about Edward....
Can vampires go into shock?"
"Has he been harmed?" Carlisle"s voice was suddenly urgent.
"No, no," I a.s.sured him. "Just... taken by surprise."
"I don"t understand, Bella."
"I think... well, I think that... maybe... I might be ..." I took a deep breath.
"Pregnant."
As if to back me up, there was another tiny nudge in my abdomen. My hand flew to my stomach.
After a long pause, Carlisle"s medical training kicked in.
"When was the first day of your last menstrual cycle?"
"Sixteen days before the wedding." I"d done the mental math thoroughly enough just before to be able to answer with certainty.
"How do you feel?"
"Weird," I told him, and my voice broke. Another trickle of tears dribbled down my cheeks. "This is going to sound crazy-look, I know it"s way too early for any of this.
Maybe I am crazy. But I"m having bizarre dreams and eating all the time and crying and throwing up and... and... I swear something moved inside me just now."
Edward"s head snapped up.
I sighed in relief.
Edward held his hand out for the phone, his face white and hard.
"Um, I think Edward wants to talk to you."
"Put him on," Carlisle said in a strained voice.
Not entirely sure that Edward could talk, I put the phone in his outstretched hand.
He pressed it to his ear. "Is it possible?" he whispered.
He listened for a long time, staring blankly at nothing.
"And Bella?" he asked. His arm wrapped around me as he spoke, pulling me close into his side.He listened for what seemed like a long time and then said, "Yes. Yes, I will."
He pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed the "end" b.u.t.ton. Right away, he dialed a new number.
"What did Carlisle say?" I asked impatiently.
Edward answered in a lifeless voice. "He thinks you"re pregnant."
The words sent a warm shiver down my spine. The little nudger fluttered inside me.
"Who are you calling now?" I asked as he put the phone back to his ear.
"The airport. We"re going home."
Edward was on the phone for more than an hour without a break. I guessed that he was arranging our flight home, but I couldn"t be sure because he wasn"t speaking English. It sounded like he was arguing; he spoke through his teeth a lot.
While he argued, he packed. He whirled around the room like an angry tornado, leaving order rather than destruction in his path. He threw a set of my clothes on the bed without looking at them, so I a.s.sumed it was time for me to get dressed. He continued with his argument while I changed, gesturing with sudden, agitated movements.
When I could no longer bear the violent energy radiating out of him, I quietly left the room. His manic concentration made me sick to my stomach-not like the morning sickness, just uncomfortable. I would wait somewhere else for his mood to pa.s.s. I couldn"t talk to this icy, focused Edward who honestly frightened me a little.
Once again, I ended up in the kitchen. There was a bag of pretzels in the cupboard. I started chewing on them absently, staring out the window at the sand and rocks and trees and ocean, everything glittering in the sun.
Someone nudged me.
"I know," I said. "I don"t want to go, either."
I stared out the window for a moment, but the nudger didn"t respond.
"I don"t understand," I whispered. "What is wrong here?"
Surprising, absolutely. Astonishing, even. But wrong?
No.
So why was Edward so furious? He was the one who had actually wished out loud for a shotgun wedding.
I tried to reason through it. Maybe it wasn"t so confusing that Edward wanted us to go home right away. He"d want Carlisle to check me out, make sure my a.s.sumption was right-though there was absolutely no doubt in my head at this point. Probably they"d want to figure out why I was already so pregnant, with the b.u.mp and the nudging and all of that. That wasn"t normal.
Once I thought of this, I was sure I had it. He must be so worried about the baby. I hadn"t gotten around to freaking out yet. My brain worked slower than his-it was still stuck marveling over the picture it had conjured up before: the tiny child with Edward"s eyes-green, as his had been when he was human-lying fair and beautiful in my arms.
I hoped he would have Edward"s face exactly, with no interference from mine.
It was funny how abruptly and entirely necessary this vision had become. From that first little touch, the whole world had shifted. Where before there was just one thing I could not live without, now there were two. There was no division-my love was not split between them now; it wasn"t like that. It was more like my heart had grown, swollen up to twice its size in that moment. All that extra s.p.a.ce, already filled. The increase was almost dizzying.
I"d never really understood Rosalie"s pain and resentment before. I"d never imagined myself a mother, never wanted that. It had been a piece of cake to promise Edward that I didn"t care about giving up children for him, because I truly didn"t. Children, in the abstract, had never appealed to me. They seemed to be loud creatures, often dripping some form of goo. I"d never had much to do with them. When I"d dreamed of Renee providing me with a brother, I"d always imagined an older brother. Someone to take care of me, rather than the other way around.
This child, Edward"s child, was a whole different story.
I wanted him like I wanted air to breathe. Not a choice-a necessity.
Maybe I just had a really bad imagination. Maybe that was why I"d been unable to imagine that I would like being married until after I already was-unable to see that I would want a baby until after one was already coming....
As I put my hand on my stomach, waiting for the next nudge, tears streaked down my cheeks again.
"Bella?"
I turned, made wary by the tone of his voice. It was too cold, too careful. His face matched his voice, empty and hard.
And then he saw that I was crying.
"Bella!" He crossed the room in a flash and put his hands on my face. "Are you in pain?"
"No, no-"He pulled me against his chest. "Don"t be afraid. We"ll be home in sixteen hours. You"ll be fine. Carlisle will be ready when we get there. We"ll take care of this, and you"ll be fine, you"ll be fine."
"Take care of this? What do you mean?"
He leaned away and looked me in the eye. "We"re going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you. Don"t be scared. I won" t let it hurt you."
"That thing?" I gasped.
He looked sharply away from me, toward the front door. "Dammit! I forgot Gustavo was due today. I"ll get rid of him and be right back." He darted out of the room.
I clutched the counter for support. My knees were wobbly.
Edward had just called my little nudger a thing. He said Carlisle would get it out.
"No," I whispered.
I"d gotten it wrong before. He didn"t care about the baby at all. He wanted to hurt him.
The beautiful picture in my head shifted abruptly, changed into something dark. My pretty baby crying, my weak arms not enough to protect him....