Chapter Text
"I had a sister?"
Edward Cullen looked up from the book he was reading. His wife's voice had been so loud, he expected to see her standing next to him. Seeing nothing but sheriff 'call me Charlie, we're family' Swan engrossed in a fishing program on TV, let him know it wasn't Bella's "voice" he heard.
It has been six years since the gathering of the witnesses. In that time, The Volturi had been eerily quiet leaving the Cullen vampire clan of Forks, Washington to know a peace the likes of which they had never seen before. Even the La push werewolves had become more friendly since Jacob Black had bonded with Edward's daughter, the vampire/human hybrid, Renesmee. But one thing that had not happened in all that time, Bella had not mastered lowering the shield around her mind that prevented him from hearing her thoughts. So to say Edward was a little unnerved by hearing them now would be an understatement.
Getting up from his chair, and hardly registering the text alert of his phone, Edward turned to Charlie, "I'm going to try to get her to let me help with the attic". Without taking his eyes from the TV, Charlie wished him good luck. "She's only said she could handle it herself six times now. Maybe seven'll be your lucky number." With a chuckle, and a second alert from his phone, Edward started the slow, for a vampire, trek to the attic. By the time he had reached the second floor, his phone had dinged three more times. Checking his phone, he wasn't too surprised by the messages.
AC- Edward, what's wrong with Bella? Her future just went wonky.
AC- Who does Bella know in Maine?
AC- Why aren't you answering?
AC- I'M COMING OVER!!
CC- Alice just left here. She said she was going to Charlie's. She took the Bugatti. Is there something we should worry about?
The Bugatti was the fastest car in the Cullen garage. The way she drove, he had maybe ten minutes before she was beating down Charlie's door. Using his vampiric speed, Edward dashed to the attic in less than a second. Edward found his wife sitting in the middle of the attic floor surrounded by photo albums looking physically calm. But she was far from calm. The look in her eyes, as she stared at a familiar looking lavender photo album in her lap, ran the gambit of emotions. In short, she was a mess.
"Bella? What's wrong"
"I had a sister, Edward. Three years before I was born, Charlie and Renee adopted a baby girl named Emma. I never knew." Taking his emotional wife in his arms, Edward realized why the album was so familiar. It was a baby book, similar to the one they had bought for Renesmee after her birth, but belonging to this mystery child Emma. Giving his wife a reassuring squeeze, Edward voiced the question on both of their minds, "Why didn't you know about her?" They had to have kept this hidden. For no one, not even his own daughter, to know that the sheriff had an adopted child before her, in a town as small as Forks, was unheard of.
"That's what I'm going to find out," and in a blur, Bella was gone. A startled yelp and Bella's angry cry of her father's name told him she hadn't gone far. Edward ran down to the living room as fast as he could, which for him, is pretty fast. The sight he found in the living room would have been comical, if the look in Bella's golden eyes hadn't been so fierce. Charlie was still sitting in his favorite chair, but Bella was nose to nose with her father, pinning him in place. Her hands crushing the armrests.
"Were you ever going to tell me about Emma?" Though she was five years removed from being a newborn vampire, Bella's strength and anger were still comparable to her first year. Carlisle believed it had to do with the circumstances of her "birth". That her drive to have Renesmee and to keep her safe amplified, turning her into, what his brother Emmett affectionately called "the ultimate momma bear." If Charlie's face was anything to go by, she was far beyond "momma bear mode", for he had gone as pale as his daughter. "Emma?"
"Yes, Emma! You remember, the baby you and mom adopted before you had me! The sister I knew nothing about till I found her baby book in your attic! THAT EMMA!" Charlie appeared to crumple in on himself as he sighed, "We were going to tell you about her. We just never knew how." Bella retreated to the couch, knowing that Charlie needed no further force to answer her questions. "So tell me now, Charlie."
"Bella, Alice is on her way here. I'm going to wait for her outside, give you two a little privacy," Edward said, receiving a nod and a thank you from both Swans as he stepped outside. As much as he wanted to be by his wife's side, he knew this would be hard enough for Charlie to get out. The last thing he needed was to have an audience. Of course, with his vampiric hearing, he would have to go to the end of the block to not hear Charlie. If not for his desire to be near his wife he would have.
So there he was, standing by the front step, listening to Charlie explain how doctors had told the newly married Swans that the odds of them conceiving a child were almost non-existent. That if they wanted children, adoption would be their best if not only chance. Alice arrived just as Charlie was telling about meeting with the adoption agency to finalize the process. Eight minutes. She must have flown.
"Edward, how's she holding up?" She asked, giving the man she loved like a brother a hug. "About as well as can be expected," was his response. "It's going to get worse for her, Edward. She's not going to like some of his answers." The 'neither are you' didn't need to be said, he heard it in her thoughts anyway.
Edward knew that as soon as Bella decided to ask about Emma, Alice's visions would give her the answers Bella hadn't received yet. So he had to ask, "You haven't told anyone what you've seen, have you?" Alice looked slightly hurt at the question, but only slightly because everyone knew how hard it was for Alice to keep a secret. Especially when it effected one or more of her family members."No, I haven't told anyone. It's bad enough I know. It's her right to tell who she wants, when and if she wants. Now, shush. He's getting to the important parts."
"They told us Emma had been found in the woods by a boy shortly after she had been born. We thought it had been fate, here was this beautiful girl with no parents, and we were a couple who desperately wanted a child but couldn't have one. She was barely a month old when we were able to bring her home. God, she made us so happy. We were a family, we were whole." Charlie had tears forming in his eyes as he spoke of the happy family Bella never knew.
"A few months after Emma's third birthday, Renee got real sick and had to be admitted to the hospital. They couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, until they ran a pregnancy test. They told us that if she were to have any chance of carrying you to term, she would have to stay in the hospital under constant supervision the entire pregnancy. Even then there were no guarantees. But despite everything, we were happy. Emma was going to be a big sister." Charlie was freely crying now. "We had been living month to month off my paycheck while your mother stayed home with Emma. She had planned to go back to work when Emma started preschool, but...Renee had been in the hospital five months when the bank took the house. Though it killed your mother and I, we knew we couldn't care for Emma anymore. Not the way things were."
Bella was as still as a stone. She had to have heard him wrong. There was no way he was telling her what she was hearing. "You gave her up." Bella was torn. She knew the desire to have a child with your spouse as well as the pain of finding out it was an impossibility. The joy of finding out the impossible had happened but teetered on a razor's edge. She even knew what it was like to put your child's best chance above all else. Despite the shared, she still couldn't understand the giving up. "Are you honestly telling me that you abandoned your daughter, your baby girl, because you went broke trying to have me? No wonder you kept it secret. to anyone with eyes it would look like you sent her back to make room for me." Too upset to even look at her father, Bella stormed out of the house.
The hug Alice gave her, as she closed the door behind her, would have crushed Bella had she still been human. All she could feel though was love and acceptance. "Alice, I...", Bella started, but trailed off as her eyes fell on her husband. He was standing by the road with his back to the house, stiff as a board. Alice patted her on the shoulder, not even needing to look to know where her eyes were. "He'll be okay, you know how he gets when you're in pain and he can't stop it. That and finding out he could have lost you before he even knew about you kinda put him in overprotect mode. But don't worry, he'll be fine by the time you leave."
Bella gave her sister-in-law a confused look, "Leave? Where am I going, Alice?" Without missing a beat, the pixie haired vampire replied, "To Storybrooke," the 'duh' that was unsaid clearly heard.
"Where is Story book, and why am I going there?", Bella asked, looking the woman in the eye. "StoryBROOKE is in Maine, and you know why."
Bella knew, "Alice, I can't. I can't do that to her. I'm the reason a three year old girl lost the only parents she had known. I'm the last person she'll ever want to see. Besides, what am I going to do? Knock on her door and be like 'Hey, you remember that family that gave you up when you were three? I'm their daughter. Sorry I ruined your life.' She'll break her hand on my face."
Alice chuckled, "Okay, maybe don't lead with that. It's going to happen, Bella. I've seen it. I've been seeing it for the last half hour. And it's clear, clearer than the vision of you being a vampire. I see you drive across the Main state line. I see you walking into a diner. There's a blonde in a red leather jacket at the counter reading a paper. The vision is so clear, I can see that the paper is The Storybrooke Mirror and the main story is about a fire at the town hall. She turns to look at you, then it ends. You've already decided to find her, consciously or not."
Bella slumped down on the porch step, and with a sigh looked up at her sister-in-law. "Storybrooke, Maine, huh? Sounds about as boring as Forks."