We stayed encamped in the house for a shorter while this time around, only two weeks instead of the month we had taken in the past. I spent those two weeks training my brain to focus on the Cullens, following their movements in the hopes they would show me something familiar or recognizable. Nothing of importance or significance had been seen thus far other than the immense amount of snow wherever they were headed.

Marlene’s visits were, once again, less frequent than usual, due to my so-called delicate condition. I tried not to think of the “other babies” she reminded me of yet again. Jasper did his best to take my mind away by attempting to teach me horseback riding when I was feeling adventurous and giving me endless books on snowy climates when I was not.

Part of me was all right with this seclusion, as it came at the anniversary of our first meeting. We exchanged gifts (a new chain for his pocketwatch, a set of ruby earrings to match my necklace) and appreciated the quiet, private moments we had together. I did my best to make it memorable, knowing that he so longed for this time we spent as a solitary couple. Once we found the Cullens, this would be hard to come by, and I tried to make it special for my Jasper.

I was brave enough to venture into town by the second week, able to suffer through the Ladies Committee’s pitying glances I had already seen in my mind. A second long convalescence had given way to talk about my health, which quickly led to an assumption that I was miscarrying. I gave Marlene permission to confirm their fears, and the scandalous rumors turned to sorrowful gossip.

By October, I could handle their whispers and sad looks enough to make my trips to town without Jasper’s company. And so one afternoon near Halloween, I stopped at Mr. Windhurst’s General Store to pick up some sweets for the tea I would pretend to drink with Marlene and Mrs. Stromm later in the day. I was standing in front of the cookie shelf when I heard a small voice coming from next to my elbow.

“I like the chocolate ones.”

I looked down to see a small blond boy, Marlene’s five-year-old son Luke, standing next to me.

“Do you now?” I smiled down at him, stopping my lungs so that the heavenly smell Marlene had passed on to all her children wouldn’t reach me.

“Yes, they’re my mama’s favorites too,” Luke replied seriously. “You should get them.”

I reached for the package he had pointed to, a large box of chocolate-covered delicacies that must certainly look tempting to humans but only made me wrinkle my nose in distaste.

“Are you going to buy them?” Luke asked, his voice forlorn and his eyes wide with longing.

I smiled. “I’ll tell you what, Luke. Your mother is coming over to my house for tea, and I’ll give her the leftover cookies for you. How does that sound?”

The sudden glow that came over his little face would have taken my breath away, had I not been holding it already, and I laughed instead.

“Gee, thanks!” he cried happily before turning around to shout down the aisle. “Tommy! Tommy, guess what!”

Two other little boys, one I recognized at Marlene’s oldest boy Tommy, came near us, their hands clenched around new shiny toy pistols.

“What is it?” Tommy asked, flipping his pistol in a tricky way his father must have taught him.

“I’m gonna get some cookies!” Luke squealed. “The lady said so!”

Tommy peered up at me. “That’s Mrs. O’Brien, Luke,” he corrected.

“Oh.” Luke’s cheeks reddened, and I looked away, embarrassed that I was so tempted by a five-year-old boy.

“Did you say thanks?” Tommy asked responsibly.

“I did,” Luke answered in a cheeky tone. “She must like me best, she gave me the cookies.”

I laughed a little. “Luke, I think you ought to share with your brother, and his friend as well.”

“I’m Robbie, ma’am,” the brown-haired boy standing next to Tommy called out. “Robbie Feist. My daddy’s Bob Feist, the mechanic down the street.”

I nodded in understanding. “Well, Robbie, you need to tell your father I said thank you for those new brakes for my car.”

“I will,” Robbie replied. If it meant a reward of cookies, that boy would do anything, I could tell.

“We’d better go, Mrs. Feist thinks we’re on her porch,” Tommy said, his eyes darting nervously out the front window.

“Thanks again, Mrs. O’Brien,” Luke said, throwing his arms around my legs.

“You’re very welcome,” I replied and leaned down to pat his head, my hand stalling atop his blond hair as my mind filled with a picture of him lying in the middle of the road, deadly still and drained of blood.

“Uh…Mrs. O’Brien, are you all right?”

Robbie’s worried voice permeated the terrible thought running through my head. I shook myself, accidentally catching a whiff of the three boys mingling scents and swallowing hard against the venom in my mouth.

It couldn’t be possible. This little boy, this dear little thing who had been clinging to my legs just seconds ago, could not go like that. And I could not, would not be the one to take him.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I managed to stammer out, throwing in a pleasing smile for good measure. “You boys run along. I’ll have your mother bring those cookies home tonight.”

I watched them scurry out of the store before striding out myself, stopping just long enough to toss a few bills onto the counter for my purchase. I drove home at a frenzied pace, parking the car in front of the house and storming inside to throw my brown paper bag of purchases on the kitchen table.

Jasper emerged from his study a few minutes later to find me slumped over the table, my head in my hands as I tried to make any sense of what I had seen.

“Alice, are you all right? I could feel you all the way across the house.” His face was filled with concern, and I shook my head.

“I saw something horrible,” I managed to whisper as he sat next to me.

“Tell me,” he urged, taking one of my hands in both of his. I sighed and, feeling slightly comforted as he began to rub the back of my hand, told him of what I had seen. He listened patiently, his brow furrowed with worry as I finished my story.

“And did you see who…?” Jasper’s question trailed off, neither of us wanting to admit what I knew to be a certain occurrence.

I shook my head. “No, all I saw was…after. But it couldn’t be us, it just couldn’t.”

“It could,” Jasper insisted. “None of our kind comes to little towns like Ten Sleep. Disappearances here are noticed, and new faces stick out too easily. It might very well be you or me, Alice.”

“Don’t say things like that!” I cried. It couldn’t be us, I wouldn’t let myself or Jasper do anything of the sort, especially not to Marlene’s little boy.

“Alice, think of the trouble that would come with being in Ten Sleep without actually moving here, or without being a…a vegetarian,” he said. “Do you really think any self-respecting vampire would go through that without a good reason? And who has such an important quest that it takes them to such a small town?”

“We came here,” I pointed out.

“To live quietly, incognito, until you find the Cullens.”

“Maybe someone’s just passing through and they needed to hunt and found Luke first.”

“Even if it is just a passerby, I’m still not chancing it. I’m not going into town until this…happens. And neither should you.”

He stood up from his chair, stooping down to kiss the top of my head.

“You may be able to see the future, my love, but you can’t change it,” he whispered against my crown. “This horrible thing…if it does really happen, you can’t stop whoever it is. And if it is you or me, we can stay put in the house until…”

“Until an innocent little boy is killed,” I finished for him, feeling sick to my stomach. Even if I wasn’t the one who would take this little boy, I still felt like a murder for not being able to put a stop to it.

It was even harder to stay put, to say and do nothing, when Marlene herself came over. In my distraction, I had completely forgotten about our tea and hurried to put the water on to boil as soon as their upcoming arrival popped into my head. Marlene and her Ladies Committee companion, Mrs. Jillian Stromm, knocked on the door just as the kettle began whistling a few minutes later.

“Don’t do anything rash, Alice,” Jasper called out from his study as I went to open the door for the two women.

“Josephine!” Marlene cried happily, stepping slightly over the threshold to hug me. I tried my hardest to hug her back, wanting to prolong this happiness of hers in any way possible.

“Please, come in.” I opened the door to let her raven-haired companion inside.

“What a lovely home you have, Mrs. O’Brien,” Mrs. Stromm marveled, staring at the antique furniture that had come with the house and the various pieces we had ordered from Sears Roebuck.

“Thank you, Mrs. Stromm,” I said, faking a kind smile.

“Call me Jillian,” she urged me as we stepped into the kitchen where the tea was waiting.

“Only if you call me Josephine.” The false, cheery front I was putting up was going to drive me crazy. I spent the next hour and a half sitting quiet, lady-like, listening to Jillian and Marlene gossip endlessly, answered the questions posed to me, and behaving like a gracious hostess.

Marlene’s ready smile nearly broke my heart when I thought of the horrors that awaited her. I prayed that this photo-like image I had seen was just that, an image, an event that could happen but wouldn’t. The future was an ever-changing thing; I knew that better than anyone. I only wished that this time around, the future would change.

By the time the tea and cookies had been finished, I had convinced myself it would, and I felt a little better with myself. Jasper and I would stay in the house for a while, keeping the boy safe from the both of us. Vampires didn’t traipse through Wyoming, Jasper was right, and if we stayed away from town, we couldn’t possibly be so tempted. This horror wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it.

“I had such a nice time here, Josephine,” Jillian said as she and Marlene pulled on their coats.

“I’m so glad you did,” I replied, machine-like in my automatic sickly-sweet kindness. “And Marlene, I promised your boys they could have these.”

I handed her the half-filled package of cookies

“Did they do something to deserve these?” she asked, taking them warily. “Come out to mow your lawn or something I don’t know about?”

I shook my head. “No, Luke recommended them to me, and I said I’d give you the leftovers for him.” I had a promise to fulfill, and I might as well make this little boy’s life a little better before he…but no. The future wasn’t set in stone. Luke would be fine.

“They’ll have to wait until after supper, but thank you.” Marlene smiled widely, and I prayed once again that that smile would never fade.

I went to the bedroom to lie down for a while after the two women had left, trying to forget the picture of little Luke Walsh lying still on the ground that seemed to keep slipping back into my consciousness.

What if he didn’t make it? And what if it wasn’t us? What if there was nothing we could do, even if we did stay locked up on the farm? If another vampire was journeying through Wyoming, there was nothing that could stop them from feasting on the people of Ten Sleep. And if there was more than one…I willed my mind to find some sort of ending to this horribly unsettled event, but nothing came forward. Something was stopping my visions from happening, and that might have scared me more than anything else.

The sun had nearly set all the way behind the mountains when Jasper came to join me on the bed, pulling me close to his chest and burying his nose in my hair. I pressed my face into the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply and finding comfort in his familiar scent.

“I could feel you all the way in the study,” he whispered against my head. “Please don’t let this trouble you so much…you know there’s nothing you can do to change it besides just staying here.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “It’s just…I want so much to stop whatever might happen.”

“Shhhh,” Jasper comforted me, his voice murmuring soft noises into my ear as his fingertips traced rhythmic circles along my shoulder blades. For the first time in a long time, I wished I could go to sleep, have a dream, and forget the trouble this little boy might be in.

A strange wailing pierced through the quietude of the night, my vampire ears being able to pick it out despite the distance it came from.

“Do you hear it too?” Jasper asked, sitting up slightly and pulling me up along with him.

My mind began filling with pictures of horrible things I knew to be happening, the images flashing by rapidly like somebody’s vacation snapshots from Hell.

“It’s coming from the Cohen’s,” he said, listening carefully. “Someone’s calling for a doctor.”

My heart dropped down into my stomach, knowing a doctor wouldn’t be necessary.

“Is it really the boy?” Jasper asked. I nodded slowly. “Can you see who it was? Anyone we know? Peter coming to visit?”

I shook my head. “I can’t see. It’s driving me crazy, but I can’t see anything.”

He furrowed his brow. “Has this happened before?”

Again, I shook my head. “Not since I’ve been getting better at controlling everything. Something’s blocking my visions, and I don’t know what it is.”

I moved off of the bed, slipping on my shoes as I tried to block the heart-breaking keening I could hear from miles away.

“We should go to her,” I said quietly. “Now that we know we didn’t do this.”

My voice was pained, angry that this thing had happened and I couldn’t even see it, to stop it, to figure out what had gone wrong.

“Do you really want to see this?” he said softly, following me into the living room where I slipped on my coat.

“No,” I replied. “But she needs me. Just listen to her, her heart’s breaking.”

Jasper nodded and pulled his coat on as well.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I said hastily. Jasper wasn’t always at his best around the humans at nighttime, and we hadn’t been hunting for nearly two weeks.

“She needs you, and I’m not sure you’ll be able to do this without support,” he said, taking the car keys from their place on the side table. I leaned onto him as we walked to the Buick, grateful for this unyielding man I had at my side.

He drove quickly, stopping the car at the side of the main street a few yards away from a crowd gathering in the middle of the road. We walked towards the crowd with baited breath, and I was still unsure I wanted to see what was at the center of the semi-circle the people made. Even before we reached the edge of the group, we could hear the loud, unbroken wailing coming from a distraught woman.

The crowd seemed to part for me, knowing that I was close with Marlene. I stopped a few feet from the center, my eyes seeing for the first time what my mind already knew.

Marlene, her eyes wide with intense emotion, knelt in the street, her arms clutching the dead, bloodless body of her five-year-old son.