Chapter Twenty Seven
There’s this old bridge fifty-two miles out of town. It used to connect a logging camp to the highway, but two workers died there in less than a month, and the Feds shut the whole operation down nearly ten years ago. Now it’s just a bridge to nowhere. Old trestle style, the metal is rusted, and the wood is rotten, and the river below is so far away that it’s hidden by the fog. There’s wind and birds and the far off sound of water, but it’s so isolated from any kind of humanity that it’s blissfully quiet.
No cars. No voices. No heartbeats.
I’m there for nearly two days before Edward decides to bother me.
“Are you ever coming home?” He’s standing in the fog just a few feet away, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on his shoes like he fully expects me to say no.
I roll my eyes at him and dig my fingers into the soft rotten wood beneath my legs. A week ago, I would have gotten a handful of splinters. Now, I can’t feel anything but my brain.
“What’s supposed to happen to me now? What am I supposed to do with myself?” I ask.
“You just… live, I suppose.”
“Live,” I huff. What a fucking word. “What would happen to me if I jumped?”
“You’d land in the water, probably.” Edward looks over the edge.
“Would I die?”
“No.” He shakes his head with a certain sort of conviction, and my cement heart drops right down into my stone stomach.
“I’m a fuckng vampire,” I say. I’m not looking for an answer or a justification or even any sympathy. It’s just a statement. A fact. A sad reality because my hair will never get any longer, and I’ll never be any taller than this. I’ll never crave another hamburger, and I’ll never want to eat another peanut butter sandwich, and I’m never going to need to shower if I don’t want to.
At least I’m never going to sleepwalk again.
“Yes. You’re also very upset with me.”
“Are you going to tell me?” I ask. “What happened to her—are you going to tell me?” I don’t need to say it. I know he understands who I’m talking about because his pale face goes greyer than ever before, and his eyes narrow at me like I’m asking him to pull out all his fingernails.
“I killed her,” he says, simple and bland, like we’re talking about a houseplant.
“Like, changed her?” I ask.
“No,” he says roughly. “I was too young, too unpracticed. I drained her before I knew what was happening. There was no saving her from me.”
Oh.
“How old was she?”
“Six,” he manages to choke. He reaches into that limp suit jacket and pulls out a photograph, stained and dog-eared like it’s been handled too many times. She was pretty. Very pretty. Big eyes, big smile, big curls. There’s a lot of Edward in her face, most of it in the way her mouth splays out wide across her face and in the bridge of her nose.
“What was her name?”
“Charlotte.” He looks away, and I think if he could cry, that’s exactly what he would be doing right now. “She was the accident I’ve never escaped from. I thought I could atone for it by saving Alice.”
“That’s why you took her? Alice? Charlotte is why you changed her? ”
“The thought of leaving her there to die was unbearable.”
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