June 16, 1920.

Charles Evenson awoke to the feeling of an ice pick piercing his skull. The sip of bootlegged whiskey he presumed to be water, had last night’s dinner threatening to make itself known. As the wrinkles in his face deepened — making him look like his father more each passing day — his tolerance for the drink that once sustained his youth deteriorated. 

He stumbled to the bathroom, tripping over his own feet as he squinted to avoid the rising sun peeking through the blinds. He had asked his wife to replace the flimsy lace curtains to something more substantial. She refused, whining she had spent hours crocheting them while he was away. He didn’t have the energy to fight her. 

The bathroom door was closed, a sliver of light telling him his wife was holed up in there, again. The same sight and pain in his head had greeted him the morning prior, and the one before that. 

Naively he had presumed she was avoiding him, throwing one of her hysteric fits after a disagreement. The memory of their fight had evaded him, the cause long forgotten. What remained was dried blood caked to his knuckles, pools of rust-colored stains on their bedsheets, and a knife lodged in the kitchen countertop. 

That morning, unlike the two previously, he twisted the doorknob. His shoulders straightened, preparing for one of their early morning fights. It was a habit of theirs. The oak door creaked open to reveal an empty room. 

“Hello?” He muttered. The only response he received was the flicker of the overhead light. 

The impending disagreement escalated. He let the anger simmer as he went about his routine; using the restroom, showering, cooking himself a breakfast he burned, smoking a cigarette without opening a window. 

He half-heartedly searched the rest of the house, paying closer attention to her typical hiding places. She was nowhere to be found. The impending battle jumped another pitch, his nails dug into his palm. 

She had insisted on publicly embarrassing him before. Less than a month into marriage, after she had pushed him too far, she had run off to her parents. A weekend with her cousin for Christmas had turned into a week. He was forced to traipse all the way out to Milwaukee. He refused to acknowledge how exhilarating those fights had been. The hours spent sitting in ugly silence as a train engine chugged along, a tea kettle at a near boiling point for an uncomfortable, unnatural amount of time until the kettle nearly exploded. A shrill scream as a room was drowned in blinding steam. 

A thrill ran down his spine as he began to think of the hunt. It was cut abruptly by the realization she may not be hiding but hidden.      

———————   

He pulled his automobile off the dirt farm road, parking in between dense rows of fruit trees he knew well. Despite its density, Charles knew the orchard had not turned a profit in nearly a decade. The peaches were never quite sweet enough, the apples never red enough, the plums too tart. 

The Platt’s grove had made a brilliant hiding place for Charles over the years. In the few months they courted, they had secretly met in the orchard a handful of times, away from her mother’s grating inquisitiveness. 

Once they were married, many months in, he had met another woman among the trees. One less stubborn, who did not pester, a woman whose name he could not, nor cared to, remember. He had met a half dozen forgettable women thereafter. 

A little over a year into their marriage, in the middle of the night he had raced to the grove. His wife wrapped in a bed sheet lying lifeless on the back bench seat. Frantically he had dug a grave under the apple trees, under the light of his headlights and the full moon. Four scoops of dirt had been thrown into the shallow grave —  making a point to cover her face first — when she screamed. He helped her out, and they went home and never spoke again. 

Less than a month later, after one particularly loud argument, he snuck back onto the property, spending most of the night digging the small hole into a proper grave. He covered the grave with a board and leaves, telling himself it was a precaution. He would never need it.  

When he returned from the front the times he thought he would need it were countless — countless fights and snide remarks — but he had never used it, at least not as a grave. An occasional barrel from his friends in New Straitsville had been stored in the hole to avoid his wife’s nagging. 

The engine shut off as he stepped out of the car, scanning the night. It smelled like rain and wet soil. The cicadas screamed, a deafening incessant buzz. 

He looked for the heart he had carved in the trunk of an old apple tree; hoping if someone ever discovered the symbol they would suspect adolescent antics, not a morbid gravestone. The trunks looked as if they went on for miles, rows, and rows of evenly spaced trees taunting him. 

He walked further into the grove, twigs crunching under his boots, his step quickening. The sun was almost done rising, the old farmer was undoubtedly moving about his routine, unaware of the potential disaster lurking in his yard. 

Charles could foresee one of the old hounds digging up the grave, dropping her femur at the front door. He shook his head violently, the ice pick returning to its familiar place in his skull. 

She was hiding, throwing a fit, mocking him. She was not buried hundreds of feet from her childhood home at the hands of her husband. 

His search was a precaution, he would not kill his wife. 

The boy’s face flickered across his mind. He shook his head. That was different, war. His life had been on the line, anyone would have done that. 

He was not evil. His wife’s screams echoed in his brain, her pleading, the words ‘no, God no,’ beat in his brain like a pulse. The blood, hers, under his nails, on his knuckles, the bruise on his forearm. Disagreements, like any other married couple. 

They had disagreements, but it wasn’t the only thing they had. The happy moments. Summer evenings were spent watching the neighborhood as they sat on the porch swing, nursing a drink. The feast she had cooked when he returned home after sixteen months. The taste of apple pie, the promise he made to do better, her genuine smile. The first time he had brought her to his house, she had prattled on about decorations and Christmas stockings. The moment they learned she was expecting, and every moment after, the bump, the kicks, the nursery that would never be used. 

The light of his lantern fell on a mound of fresh dirt, five feet long, and three feet wide. Shit. Shit. Shit.

No. 

She was not dead. 

He did not kill her. 

He had not held a pathetic burial for a pitiful woman, and forgotten entirely. 

No. 

Excuses for the public began racing through his head: she ran in the middle of the night, it was a complete surprise. No, that would lead to questions about why she would leave him. She could not handle the grief any longer. She slipped on the stairs. 

He could move, let her slip from everyone’s memory as he lived a life without her. 

“Charles?” A deep voice called out through the trees. 

Charles's head snapped to attention. “Hello, George,” he called to the father-in-law he had not seen in nearly four years. 

Carlisle waved off the comment, his eyes focused on the screens above Bella’s bed, watching the steady waves on the heart monitor mounted above Bella’s bed.

“I won’t be foolish enough to ask how you are,” Esme said, drawing Edward’s attention back to the phone. “I know I have said it before, and I know you are sick of hearing it but I am so sorry, sweetheart.”

“Thank you,” he said half-heartedly. “How are… things with you?”

“I feel safe to assume you do not care how I am, but instead are covertly asking about Officer Swan?”

Carlisle bit the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from cracking a small smile at that line.

“Mhm,” Edward muttered again, attempting to ignore the man at his side.

She took a deep inhale. He could hear a distant tap-tap-tap in the background, she had gone with pacing. “He was quite upset to hear the news, as any father would be.”

“I know, I heard.”

“Carlisle should know better than to have let you hear that,” she sighed. “Mr. Swan is… fine. He is physically fine. I am remaining close, I have no reason to suspect the threat has returned. Yesterday we went to the courthouse out in Port Angeles. I managed to listen to the trial from the parking lot and it was fascinating.”

“I’m glad you are having so much fun,” Edward said coldly.

Carlisle glanced over, his brow furrowed in a puzzling blend of chastisement and curiosity. ‘Be nice,’ he thought.

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” Esme said and he could practically hear her eyes roll over the line.

“I know,” Edward murmured, looking at the toes of his shoes.

“His friend did come over, the one in the wheelchair, I didn’t catch his name. He is quite furious.”

“I will deal with that later,” Edward sighed, yet another problem of his making.

“We will deal with it later. You do not need to hoist the entire world on your shoulders.”

Edward scoffed in reply.

“I hope you are not blaming yourself for all of this too much,” she said gently.

“Too much?”

“I knew it would be a fool’s errand to tell you not to blame yourself at all. Am I wrong?”

“I think you know me too well.”

“Eighty years will do that.”

“I suppose it will.”

There was lull in the conversation, an almost comforting silence. One he had experienced countless times before, whether it be lying on the couch in her art room, or her seated beside him at the piano bench. Only this time the gentle warmth of her thoughts were thousands of miles away, and he was left in a cold sterile hospital room.

‘Will you ask her if Rosalie went with Emmett, please? I cannot ask, lest I risk her calling me a worry wart,’ Carlisle thought, taking advantage of the silence.

“How is Rosalie?”

“On her way to Phoenix, only after threatening that if I die while she is gone she will never speak to you or Carlisle again, so I must stay alive for the sake of the family.”

Carlisle frowned at this, twisting his wedding ring as he focused on the word that had bounced around Edward’s head for the past two days, albeit for a different person.

Die, die, die.

“That sounds like her.”

“She will come around, I promise. She is acting out of fear.”

“I wish I could have your faith.” In Rosalie. In modern medicine. In the universe , and a God neither of them believed in if they were brutally honest.

“I will have enough faith for the both of us, at least until you find yours. Although, truth be told I think you have found yours, she’s simply asleep right now.”

“Thank you, Esme.” 

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“This will all work out, I promise you,” she said, sincerity dripping off her words. More than anything he wished he could believe her.

‘I would like to speak to her again before you hang up, please,’ Carlisle thought, holding his hand out slightly. Edward nodded, about to hand over the phone when his mind flashed to the tape Alice had shown him and he held out his index finger to Carlisle.

"Have you spoken to Alice lately?" He asked. 

"Not in the past two days, no. What happened?" 

"Nothing happened, but you might want to give her a call. She's going stir crazy in here." 

"I can imagine," Esme laughed. 

“That was it. Carlisle wishes to speak with you before you hang up,” Edward said. 

“That man is obsessed with me,” she laughed, which earned a small smile from Edward. “I will see you soon. Give Bella my love.”

“Bye, Mom,” Edward said quickly, handing the phone back to Carlisle, whose eyes were wide in surprise at Edward’s use of an endearment, specifically that endearment, not out of practicality to keep up a ruse but out of genuine feeling.

“No, you’re not losing your mind, I heard it too,” Carlisle laughed when he got the phone back. Edward watched out of the corner of his eyes as Carlisle stood and snuck out of the hospital room.