1927, Philadelphia

[sheisourheart]

It's impossible to say the first night is the worse. Or the week following.

Carlisle had all but literally shut down when the door closed, that first night.

Then he'd demolished the piano bench on the second day, when she hadn't been sure he'd move at all. She hadn't been in the room, but she'd come back to him staring at the mess on the floor and in his hands. The only words he'd spoken that whole day, being a retort 'Did you want to sit there?' when she commented on it.

Whatever she'd said after that was lost on deaf ears, but she'd cleaned it up and sat by him.

Day three and four and five were remarkably alike. She didn't leave the house because there was nowhere else she would go while he wasn't leaving. He let himself be led, but didn't do anything specifically. Even when he'd rise as though with intention it seemed to get lost before anything ever made it.

She spent much of her time on those day reading to him from a book. Any book nearby that she hadn't seen Edward reading recently or heard them talk about (and how rare that was). Never once saying she felt like her mistake had helped lead to this, not giving voice to her own inner world of emotions that rocked both the leaving and the left. The house, even full of her voice, was not the expression of her sorrow or anger, both of which turned over each other daily.

When Monday came and she found him again in that chair looking out the window, blank of any receptive thought toward it, she'd bit her lip and walked in quietly. A hand curved gently around the crook of his neck and shoulder when she kissed his temple, saying softly, "It's a lovely sunrise."

Comments

[ofthefamily]

"So it is."

For them it's empirically correct, so Carlisle has no problem agreeing to it.

He doesn't look up at her.

[sheisourheart]

Exact and precise, no more and no less.

Her hand stayed where it was and she slipped to half sitting, half leaning on the arm of his chair, her head tilted against his, too look out at the colors. It'd been a long time since she felt any, even passing, bitterness about the beauty of the world in parallel to the events of her life.

"Have you been watching it long?"

[ofthefamily]

"No."

It hasn't been going on that long, all told.

"What will you do today?"

Esme is his wife. Carlisle has responsibilities to her, if nothing else.

[sheisourheart]

"Paint, maybe."

It's an easy comment, over his hair, even as she looking down at his head. She won't actually do much of anything while he's still here.

She could bring the easel in here.

She's isn't sure she wants to see how she feels in color.



With a touch more emphatic importance, even soft. "Will you return to work today?"

[ofthefamily]

"I'm not sure I should."

Work requires focus.

Work requires caring.

And he couldn't help Edward, so --

[sheisourheart]

"I think you need to." Not forceful, just truthful, stopping short of placing a kiss in his hair. Letting that be the only response. The words were more important.

[ofthefamily]

Short, "Want me out of the house?"

[sheisourheart]

Esme looked up toward the ceiling and out to the sunrise without moving. This time she did lower her lips against his hair before speaking.

"You need to remember that you do a large amount of good for this city. That there are people who need you."

She'd almost said still, but managed to force past it.

[ofthefamily]

He should move.

There are people who need him, Esme says.

The guilt in his throat tastes different now.

"Sorry. For not being...companionable." Carlisle swallows roughly. "I just -- I don't know -- "

[sheisourheart]

Esme's eyelids fluttered nearly closed. That Carlisle would need to apologize for anything in this. If apologies were owed -- it wasn't by Carlisle.

(It still helped, even when it was unnecessary.)

"Shh." Is very quiet, into his hair. A whispered sound into blonde locks. "It's..."

There are no words for trying to talk about missing a whole third of your idea of self and world. For the destructive wave it had gone with. What it had taken with it.

She slipped into his lap, looking at his face. Fingers reaching out to race his temple to part of his cheek. To lean in and hug him close to her. "I understand why."

For the most part, for a million things they'd never said and she had construct herself, for her husbands behavior for these days.

[ofthefamily]

Esme is close enough to him that his hands have nowhere to go but at her back, her knee, supporting her in his grasp even if he didn't ask for her to be there.

"I was wrong."

He doesn't elucidate, choosing instead to curl his chin inward against the crook of Esme's neck, hiding there.

[sheisourheart]

"No." Her voice was fierce near his ear, arms tightening around his shoulders, to hold him close. Her world; her entire world now. "You weren't. Still aren't."

[ofthefamily]

"Why am I having such a hard time believing you?"

[sheisourheart]

"Because you just had the world kicked out from under you."

The most of it at least. She was still here. And as much as it was both of them, Edward had been with Carlisle longer. He'd been the first one. There were depths she couldn't even fathom to understand in those two.

"Because," there's a almost-sigh here, hands slightly tighter, trying to make her voice firm. (It mostly succeeds.) "You loved someone, gave them everything, and they wanted something more."

[ofthefamily]

"He said I was keeping him from what he was meant to be. I...he always could've left."

It's the truth -- he could have left in the very beginning, before Europe. When he explained how he lived his life, Edward could have looked at Carlisle and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Maybe that's what it is.

Edward always made Carlisle feel as though he were still with them of his own accord.

Carlisle doesn't deal with lying very well.

[sheisourheart]

She wants to say, no, he couldn't have. Except that he did leave. There is part of that which doesn't stop being a shock no matter how frequently it surfaces. Especially when she means to turn and tell him something.

It's futile, even as the only thing that stays.

"I don't think he could have." The pattern on the chair is horrible this close, or maybe it's just looking back. There had been irrefutable loyalty in the boy when she'd first woken up into their lives.

She pulled back, shaking her head.

"I don't think he knows what he's getting into with his choice, either." He was so peculiar and particular in his beliefs about life already. Taking life -- she couldn't imagine anything that could make her do that again once she had.

[ofthefamily]

"He may never come back."

[sheisourheart]

"He might, or he might not." She said, evenly, with no hint of hope or discouragement. Both were fatal in these kinds of situations. How much family and friends had she once lost. What wasn't fatal? What was more important.

"But you're life is still here. I'm here." There's a force in those words, a reminder, turning his face so he looked at her when she'd said it.

"Your job is still here. Your life is still here." And with more challenge than she thought could touch it. "Unless you're letting Edward have walked out the door with both my family and my husband."

[ofthefamily]

"I wouldn't know how to leave."

Carlisle can't quite figure out how to meet Esme's gaze without his whole expression tensing up as though he could shed tears about anything.

He hurt her too, Carlisle's brain tells him -- and no one else overhearing, now, which makes his pained expression stick.

"I know you're here. You've been reading to me."

[sheisourheart]

He didn't have to leave the room or the house to leave her. She'd lived with a man who'd never realized she'd left him after he started beating her, until the day she'd walked out. He'd leave her staying the way he had for days.

But his expression kept those words locked inside, and she leaned her forehead against his. "Then you should listen to me now, dear. You need to go to work. I would keep you here for all the hours of everyday forever, if that was what would make you happiest, would make any of this, now, the minutes easier. You need to go to work."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle exhales and it fans out against Esme's hair along her shoulder.

"I know."

It's hard to care about it all. What if --

Wearily, "Do you know where my labcoat is?"

[sheisourheart]

Esme nodded, though the smile she gave was small.

"I can get it for you. I washed it."

[ofthefamily]

When Esme moves to retrieve it, Carlisle's arms stay locked around her without explaining why.

[sheisourheart]

If she's surprised it only lasts a second, and the next reaction is the one that clogs her throat. Her shoulders dropping for a second with a flicker of sadness when she drew her arms around him and hugged him closer, one arm around his shoulders and one up into his hair.

She squeeze her eyes tight, whispering with some roughness to it.

"I'll still be here. I promise."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle can only nod. Confirming anything aloud would be --

-- well, not useless, anymore, but certainly uncomfortable. Apparently redundant.

Carlisle lets go eventually, letting his wife work him. Pretend to be normal.