Charlie took my hand and, in a symbol as old as the world, placed it in Edward’s. I touched the cool miracle of his skin, and I was home.

You are safe inside your mind. No one can reach you there.

You’re still waiting for the running and the screaming, aren’t you?

I wondered to myself why no one else had seen him standing so far away, before he was suddenly, impossibly saving my life. With chagrin, I realized the probable cause - no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.

Unca Jay!" "How's it going Claire?" She giggled. "Qwil aaaaawl wet now." "I can see that. Where's your mama?" "Gone, gone, gone," Claire sang. "Cwaire pway wid Qwil aaaawl day. Cwaire nebber gowin home." Jacob and Claire, Breaking Dawn, page 152.

I struggled to find the words to name the feelings that flooded through me, but I had no words strong enough to hold them. For a long moment, I drowned in them. When I surfaced, I was not the same man I had been. My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?

I don’t care about anything but keeping her alive. If it’s a child she wants, she can have it. She can have half a dozen babies. Anything she wants. She can have puppies, if that’s what it takes.