He made me wait an hour and keep down a big glass of water before he fried me some eggs. I felt perfectly normal, just a little tired from being up in the middle of the night. He put on CNN—we’d been so out of touch, world war three could have broken out and we wouldn’t have known—and I lounged drowsily across his lap.
I got bored with the news and twisted around to kiss him. Just like this morning, a sharp pain hit my stomach when I moved. I lurched away from him, my hand tight over my mouth. I knew I’d never make it to the bathroom this time, so I ran to the kitchen sink.
He held my hair again.
“Maybe we should go back to Rio, see a doctor,” he suggested anxiously when I was rinsing my mouth afterward.
I shook my head and edged toward the hallway. Doctors meant needles. “I’ll be fine right after I brush my teeth.”
When my mouth tasted better, I searched through my suitcase for the little first-aid kit Alice had packed for me, full of human things like bandages and painkillers and—my object now—Pepto-Bismol. Maybe I could settle my stomach and calm Edward down.
But before I found the Pepto, I happened across something else that Alice had packed for me. I picked up the small blue box and stared at it in my hand for a long moment, forgetting everything else.
Then I started counting in my head. Once. Twice. Again.
The knock startled me; the little box fell back into the suitcase.
“Are you well?” Edward asked through the door. “Did you get sick again?”
“Yes and no,” I said, but my voice sounded strangled.
“Bella? Can I please come in?” Worriedly now.
“O… kay?”
He came in and appraised my position, sitting cross-legged on the floor by the suitcase, and my expression, blank and staring. He sat next to me, his hand going to my forehead at once.
“What’s wrong?”
“How many days has it been since the wedding?” I whispered.
“Seventeen,” he answered automatically. “Bella, what is it?”
I was counting again. I held up a finger, cautioning him to wait, and mouthed the numbers to myself. I’d been wrong about the days before. We’d been here longer than I’d thought. I started over again.
“Bella!” he whispered urgently. “I’m losing my mind over here.”
I tried to swallow. It didn’t work. So I reached into the suitcase and fumbled around until I found the little blue box of tampons again. I held them up silently.
He stared at me in confusion. “What? Are you trying to pass this illness off as PMS?”
“No,” I managed to choke out. “No, Edward. I’m trying to tell you that my period is five days late.”
His facial expression didn’t change. It was like I hadn’t spoken.
“I don’t think I have food poisoning,” I added. He didn’t respond. He had turned into a sculpture.
“The dreams,” I mumbled to myself in a flat voice. “Sleeping so much. The crying. All that food. Oh. Oh.
Oh
.”
Edward’s stare seemed glassy, as if he couldn’t see me anymore.
Reflexively, almost involuntarily, my hand dropped to my stomach.
“Oh!” I squeaked again.
I lurched to my feet, slipping out of Edward’s unmoving hands. I’d never changed out of the little silk shorts and camisole I’d worn to bed. I yanked the blue fabric out of the way and stared at my stomach.
“Impossible,” I whispered.
I had absolutely no experience with pregnancy or babies or any part of that world, but I wasn’t an idiot. I’d seen enough movies and TV shows to know that this wasn’t how it worked. I was only five days late. If I
was
pregnant, my body wouldn’t even have registered that fact. I would not have morning sickness. I would not have changed my eating or sleeping habits.
And I most definitely would not have a small but defined bump sticking out between my hips.
I twisted my torso back and forth, examining it from every angle, as if it would disappear in exactly the right light. I ran my fingers over the subtle bulge, surprised by how rock hard it felt under my skin.
“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 sex 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 A–Z.” 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 sexy 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 passed 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 bump on my stomach that had not been there yesterday.
And human men—well, they pretty much stayed the same from puberty 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 bumped 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 assured 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” button. 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 assumed 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 pass. 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 assumption 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 bump and the nudging and all of that. That wasn’t normal.