662I'm excited to present this first, teaser chapter of the second half of the story begun with Stepping from Shadows. Note the word *teaser.* The fic itself is still a work in progress. I broke my own cardinal rule and published this chapter before the fic was finished, or at least close to finished, but I had good reason. Anyone who read Stepping from Shadows might remember that Gray was a suffragette during her human lifetime. This first chapter was posted the day before election day here in the U.S. I thought it was a good time to remember that not even 100 years ago, women in th U.S. did not have the right to vote and to say Thank You to all the real life women who risked everything and fought so that all of us could speak our minds. (Update 1/2020: I'm almost finished with chapter 15, and I hope to be able to post the full fic starting in the spring. I expect the whole fic will be in the low 20s for chapters. There are a few changes to canon here and there, some small, some big. A lemon or two . . . Hopefully a little drama and a little humor. If you don't want to read the first chapter until the full story is ready to post, go ahead and Follow and come back later.)
There is a prequel story to Stepping from Shadows published in full called By Just One Vote. It shows the first time Gray lived among humans after her change and is set in Tennessee in the summer of 1920, during the final battle in the seventy year long fight for women's suffrage in America. If you're interested, I hope you'll check it out. Warning though, it's not a light read.
A huge thank you Raum and to Patricia for all their help, advice, and their endless patience, and to everyone else who has helped this Pennsylvania girl with advice, recommendations, and information on the Olympic Peninsula.
Disclaimer - All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners.
Men tell us 'tis fit that wives should submit
To their husbands, submissively meekly,
Tho' whatever they say their wives should obey,
Unquestioning, stupidly, weakly;
Let man if he will then bid us be still,
And silent, a price he'll pay high for it,
For we won't and we can't, and we don't and we shan't,
Let us all speak our minds if we die for it!
"Let Us All Speak Our Minds"
A Suffragette's Song
~.~
Chapter 1
~.~
". . . What you object to is very different. He's not a scholar, not an artist. Doesn't paint, doesn't write poetry. If he did, you'd overlook everything else. He'd be the raging artist. He'd be allowed to behave unspeakably. Tell me something."
"You have more to lose. . . ."
"Tell me this. What kind of painter is allowed to behave more unspeakably, figurative or abstract?"
Edward stared at the words on the page until they began to look foreign and unrecognizable. Exhaling loudly, he closed the book and pushed it aside.
Outside, the sun shone brightly, as if to mock him. A sunny weekend was once the highlight of the week, if not the month. It was hard to believe, but that was not so very long ago. It felt like a lifetime. Now, every morning when he woke up, there was a minute or two before he was fully awake, before he remembered that his reality had been forever changed. But then it all came back to him.
Grace was a vampire. A real life, one-hundred-and-eleven-year-old vampire. And Jake turned into a freaking massive wolf. Elbows on his desk, Edward pressed his fingertips against his eyes. His girlfriend and his best friend were literally mortal enemies.
Grace was away with her family. Hunting. He shuddered. It was what she had to do, he knew, but the thought still made him gag. When the sun would force them out of sight for any length of time, she'd explained, they traveled farther. They might go as far as eastern Montana, southern Oregon and Idaho, or like this time, north, up into Canada, even as far as Alaska. They'd left Friday and were due back sometime during the night. Without her, it had been a very long couple of days.
Edward picked up his phone and pulled up the poem Grace had sent him before she'd left.
Blue skies do not a prison make,
Nor sunny days a cage:
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
He grinned, but then sighed. There were other texts on his phone. Texts from Jake. He'd read them, but he hadn't responded. Jake had said things about Grace that Edward didn't think he could forgive.
And his father . . . When Edward had come home that night, after running out of the house before Jake and Billy arrived, his father's face had gone purple, a vein bulging in his forehead when he saw that Grace was with him. Edward had thought he was going to have an aneurysm. His father had assumed that once he knew what she was, he wouldn't want Grace anywhere near him. But what she was didn't matter, not to him. She was more than her diet. He knew her, who she really was, and he trusted her. But his father refused to listen to reason. He was convinced she was plotting to snatch him away and change him. He wouldn't allow her in the house, and Edward might as well be under house arrest for the third-degree he got when he went out, in case he was planning to sneak away to meet her. He was surprised his father hadn't outright forbidden him from ever leaving the house again accept for school. Hell, Edward was surprised he hadn't signed him up for cyber school so he couldn't even see her there, or gone ahead and packed them up and moved them to the sunniest place he could find to keep Grace and him apart.
Then there was Grace's family. They had their own concerns because of Grace and his relationship. Edward squirmed in his seat. Knowing Grace was a vampire was entirely different from knowing her family were too. Being in school together, he saw Alice and Jasper every day the weather permitted. He'd always felt a weird vibe from them, and now that he knew why, he felt it all the stronger. The way Jasper looked at him, it felt like he was issuing a challenge, like he was going all Alpha Male. Alice looked more like she was trying to decide how she felt. Remembering back to that day out fishing at the lake, when Grace had found him hanging out with everyone, they had seemed to feel differently then. Encouraging. It had been the two of them who had opened the door to Grace's going with him to the Hoh, Edward remembered, and Jasper had even been the one to start it. Then, Alice had made the suggestion that Grace might go with him. What had changed? What had changed to put them off now?
Edward put his head in his hands. All he wanted was to be with the most amazing and most beautiful girl he'd ever met, who for some reason wanted to be with him too. It shouldn't be this hard.
Sitting back, he rapped his knuckles against the desk and stared out the window. He felt caged. The trees across the yard were vibrantly green, and they called to him.
With his playlist ready and his headphones in his hand, he left his room, mentally visualizing his route, but as he approached the kitchen, his father's voice, though hushed, carried to him.
". . . I know that, Billy." A pause. "Yeah, I know that, too." Another pause, then an exasperated, "Because he's almost eighteen, and they have more money than God!"
Edward's steps slowed, and his temper flared. Maybe if it wasn't for Billy's interference, his father might be able to see Grace as she really was, rather than the monster Billy and all of them painted her as.
He waited till his father got off the phone, then slowly entered the kitchen, bracing for an argument.
"I'm going for a run."
His father looked at him, then quickly away. He was unloading the dishwasher one-handed.
Thoughts of Grace momentarily pushed aside, Edward worried his lip as he watched his father. While the bullet had missed the bone and the major blood vessels, it had done a hell of a lot of damage to the soft tissue. It mangled sensory and motor nerves, and had left him both with pain and numbness and what his father described as constant pins-and-needles. Like ants were crawling under his skin. He was seeing a physical therapist twice a week, but no one knew how full his recover might be. Or might not be.
"I got that." Edward stepped forward and set his phone and earbuds on the table. He'd been making an effort to do more around the house without being told or asked, but he could do more.
His father stepped back with heavy sigh, and Edward felt his spine stiffen at the sound, waiting.
"How many miles today?" his father asked.
"Eight."
"Good weather for a run."
Edward's jaw clenched. He didn't respond as he gathered the silverware. He was sure Billy'd know Grace and her family were away, and that he'd have passed it along to his father. Otherwise, his father'd have grilled him about where exactly was he going on his run and how long would he be. He glanced at his father from the corner of his eye. He looked sheepish, fidgety. It made Edward's apprehension grow.
"Got plans for later?"
"Not really."
"Maybe you'n Jake—"
"I don't think so."
"What about Mike or Tyler or any of the other guys?"
Edward hummed noncommittally.
"Get out of the house. Do something."
"I am getting out of the house. I'm going for a run."
"That's not what I meant. When was the last time you saw your friends?"
Edward put the last of the dishes away and closed the cabinet. He could hear the impatience creeping into his father's voice, and he could feel his own rise as well.
"I see them every day at school."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it. Get hold of some of the guys and meet up somewhere. Hang out with your friends."
Edward turned on his father and folded his arms.
"Maybe I could text Jake and see if he got the bike I wrecked fixed back up."
Anger flared in his father's eyes, but other emotions swirled around it. Fear. Resentment. Edward regretted bringing the bikes up, but at the same time he didn't. It wasn't fair. Grace and her family had done nothing to deserve the way his father and their friends out on the reservation treated them. For fuck's sake, just the opposite. But Jake and Billy, they could do no wrong. His father hated motorcycles, but Edward had never heard him say a word about the bikes. The road rash from when he'd skimmed across the pavement had healed up pretty quickly, but he'd only just gotten the splint off his fingers.
"That isn't funny."
"It wasn't a joke. Anything, so long as I'm nowhere near Grace, right? 'Cuz, God forbid, I spend time with the girl who saved Joe Crowley's life."
His father flinched and looked away.
"Whatever. I'm going for a run."
~.~
The door slammed as Edward left the house, and Charlie cursed to the empty room. He had to get through to Edward somehow, but fuck if he knew how. He wouldn't listen to reason. Charlie might be almost forty, but he wasn't so old he didn't remember how stupid a girl could make a guy act at Edward's age. Hell, even at Charlie's age. That girl only wanted one thing from his son—his life. Everything she'd done, everything any of them had done, had been nothing but biding their time.
Before that girl and the rest of them had come, Edward had had a crush on a perfectly nice girl. No parent relished the idea of what their seventeen-year-old son would get up to with a girl, but with Leah Clearwater, the worst Charlie'd have had to worry about would've been diapers. If only. . . .
Charlie opened the fridge and reached for a beer. It wasn't often he made the mistake of reaching for something with his right hand anymore, but this time he did, and a burning pain shot down his arm. His hand closed around the can, but his fingers couldn't grip it. Left-handed, he cracked it open and downed it.
~.~
Nearing the end of his run, Edward's feet pounded the ground, and the music pounded his ears. Even after almost seven miles, the fight with his father still had him bristling. Before, a good hard run had always centered him, cleared his mind. He could leave everything else go for a little while and just focus on the run, but no more. His legs burned, but his temper burned stronger. Songs bled one into the next, until out of nowhere, someone ran up next to him, close enough to brush arms. Startled and swearing under his breath, he tripped over his own feet, but before he could hit the ground, cold hands caught him.
"Hi," Grace said, her musical voice rich with amusement.
"You're here!"
Just like that, his anger and resentment were forgotten. Seeing Grace drove them away. Thrilled to see her sooner than he'd expected, Edward reached for her.
"I hurried back ahead of the others," she said. "I missed you."
He played with her hair, sliding his fingers through the strands before tucking it behind her ears and kissing her.
"I missed you, too."
"Eight today, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, come on, then," she said, turning to face him and jogging backwards. "Let's see how fast you are."
"You know, it's really weird when you do that."
o0o
0o0
"Out of everything you've ever done, tell me what was the one most incredible thing."
After finishing his eight miles together, they were walking through the woods not far from his house, holding hands and talking, trying to snatch as much time together as they could before his father missed him. As always, Edward was lost in her.
She looked at him in surprise. "I met you," she said, as if it should've been obvious.
He laughed. "No, seriously." Grace had lived through the entire twentieth century. Everything she'd experienced . . . it boggled his mind.
"Meeting you."
Edward rolled his eyes.
"If you were to ask me to name the most amazing ten or twenty or one hundred things I've ever done," Grace looked down at their joined hands, "everyone of them would involve you."
Her voice held nothing but sincerity, and Edward's chest felt warm.
"Before that, then."
Her surprise only grew at the question.
"You have to ask? Edward—I was a suffragette. Apart from meeting you, the most incredible thing I've ever done was vote."
Lost in her memories, her face and voice went dreamy.
"You can't understand what it was like. You've never been told that because of your sex, you weren't entitled to have your own opinions, let alone to express them. A woman was told what her opinions were to be—first by her father, then later, by her husband. To walk into that polling place beside Carlisle that first time and cast my own vote, for my vote to count equally to his. Knowing that Trudy and Sybbie, and women all across America, were doing the very same thing . . . There are no words."
Edward tried to imagine it. He couldn't.
She touched the base of her throat. "I wore my mother's brooch." She came back to the present with a smile that held a range of emotions. "I was jubilant, but it was bittersweet. I missed her so very much. I'd have given anything for her to be there."
They walked on.
"We were in Nashville, Carlisle and I, when they ratified the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote," she said. "I think, if I had lived, I should have liked to run for office some day."
Edward could see that.
"I saw Madame Curie speak at Vassar in 1921," she said, changing the subject. "That was . . ." Words failed her, but her face showed him what she couldn't articulate. She was radiant.
Edward scratched the back of his neck. Madame Curie. Grace had seen Madame Curie speak over ninety years ago. At Vassar. Where she'd earned a degree in Greek and Latin.
He had a B+ in Biology II.
"Imagine a lifetime's worth of World Series, Super Bowls, and NBA Championships, all rolled into one. She was my idol," Grace said. "And Amelia Earhart. I adored her. I was inconsolable when she went missing. We were living in Forks at the time, actually."
Grace clasped her hands together and held them under her chin, grinning and arching an eyebrow.
"And slacks."
Not understanding, Edward's eyebrows drew together, making Grace laugh, delighted.
"Pants."
"Pants?"
"Pants. The very first pair of pants I ever wore were navy blue with a white pinstripe, and came up to here." Seductively, she indicated a spot just below her ribs. "And they had four white buttons down here." She touched her hip bone. "They had very wide legs, and I wore them with a smart, white blouse. And I had a light khaki colored pair with a belt and pleats that I wore with a navy blue blouse, very Katharine Hepburn."
Her playfulness turned subdued, and she twisted her fingers together. "Wearing pants being a memorable occasion must sound silly to you."
"It doesn't sound silly."
"In the world I was born into, more than just the roles of the sexes were carved in stone. What they wore was as well. A woman could be arrested for wearing trousers in public. It was seen as a perversion." In a mocking, resentful manner, she added, "Freud called it penis envy, a sure sign of lesbianism.
"For all my progressive ideals, Rosalie was the first of us to wear trousers." Her voice fading away and her eyes falling, she said, "She wore them exclusively for decades. It was the sixties before she wore a dress again."
Edward hadn't met Rosalie yet. Grace didn't mention her often, but when she did, everything about her changed. There was something there, something between them, but he didn't know what that something was.
"Where did you go after you left Forks?"
"London. It was World War II. They needed doctors badly, and Carlisle is originally from London."
London. From Forks, to London.
"And you had to start all over again." He couldn't imagine that either. "New lives. New names."
"We used the last name Atchison that time. That one was for me. Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas.
"I got to work with injured soldiers. I presented myself as older. I got a lot of double looks, but the need was great enough that they didn't ask questions. I was there and I knew what I was doing, and that was enough. I was glad to be able to be of use. I don't get to be often."
Edward could argue that, but he didn't. "You're sort of amazing." It was hard to imagine why she'd ever find any reason to smile at a seventeen-year-old kid from the middle of nowhere, who'd never done anything particularly interesting, the way she smiled at him.
"I think you're sort of amazing, too."
Edward couldn't think why, and he scoffed.
"You don't believe me." Grace folded her arms in front of herself. "The day of the robbery, with a gun pointed at us, you tried to shield me. You were so brave."
At the reminder of that day, a cold shiver ran through him.
"I wanted to tear their throats out," she said, her voice going flat.
Edward stepped forward and folded his arms around her. "Don't think about it. It's over."
Her hands gripping his shirt at his sides, her forehead pressed to his chest, she took two deep breaths. "When I heard him decide to pull the trigger, it was all I could do to not jump over the counter." She paused, and Edward held her tighter. "He died a much easier death than he would have had I gotten my hands on him."
Edward stroked her hair.
She laughed derisively. "Now, see? I'm confessing to intending to kill someone in cold blood, and you're consoling me."
"Someone who was pointing a gun as us." Edward thought she got a bye for that.
"Your father ordered me to stay out of it," she said resentfully after a moment's pause. "He said we'd made a treaty with the Quileute, and he expected me to honor it.
"The one who got away, Tanya and I went after him that night. While you were with the Blacks."
Edward braced himself for whatever he was about to hear. The one who'd gotten away had overdosed. Grace hadn't killed him. But even if she had, he knew he wouldn't let go.
"We traced him to Seattle. We told ourselves we would find him and let the authorities have him, but he was already dead by the time we found him. I admit, I was never more glad for anything. It was a relief. Letting him live would've been the hardest thing either of us had ever done. Much as we wanted to earn your father's good opinion, I'm not certain we'd have been able to walk away."
They stood together, in each other's arms. Occasionally, the sun's rays reached them, and Grace's skin shimmered. Edward stroked his fingers along her cheek.
"Tanya went with you?"
Grace's shoulders stiffened, then sagged as she turned her head away.
"She's very fond of your father."
Edward remembered how much she'd been around the house after the robbery, but he hadn't seen her since that day out on the rez. He could only guess his father had told her what he'd expected Edward to tell Grace.
"How is she?"
Grace kept her face averted and dropped her eyes. "She misses him."
"Maybe if—"
"No. He made it perfectly clear he wanted her to stay away from him. She will respect his wishes."
Grace rubbed her hands together.
"That day, when you drove out to the house to confront me," she said. "I watched you drive up, but when you stayed in your truck, I lowered my eyes. I thought you'd changed your mind, that you were going to drive away. I couldn't look. I couldn't bear to think that your turning and driving away from me would be the last time I ever saw you. I thought, 'This is it. The mirror has cracked from side to side. The curse has come upon me.' But if you had told me to stay away from you—"
Edward touched her jaw, turning her face toward him. "I'll never want you to stay away from me."
She looked at him with sad, doubtful eyes.
"I want to be with you," he said.
"One day, you might feel differently. Should that day come, should your feeling change—"
"They won't."
He kissed her. It started slowly, long, languid kisses stretching on, their lips separating only for a quickly drawn breath before finding each other again. Edward loved the taste of Grace's breath in his mouth. He loved the feeling of her in his arms, her body pressed against his.
Hands roamed, sliding over the other, finding their way under shirts, until Grace's hand slid up his chest, making him flinch involuntarily at the contact of her cold skin against his, and she pulled away. Not letting her, Edward moved with her.
"You're cold."
"I don't care."
He pushed her hair off her shoulders and let his fingers trail along her jaw and down her neck. His eyes followed where his hand went. The sun shone down on them, and her skin glistened, smooth and even. He was about to ask what was up with the sparkling thing when something caught his eye. There was a spot on the side of her neck where the otherwise flawless radiance of her skin was marred by curved lines, like tracks sunken into freshly fallen snow, where the light shimmered differently. Edward traced his finger over one of the curves, and Grace's eyes went wide. He looked at her questioningly, but before he could ask, he realized what the curved lines were.
Bite scars.
Unlike the two, small pinpricks left by Hollywood vampires, the scars on Grace's neck were the size and shape of human bite marks.
"You can see them?"
"In the sunlight. That's where Carlisle—?"
She shook her head and touched similar but much fainter curved lines just above her collarbone. Then, silently, she pushed her sleeves up and held out her arms. Matching scars marred the even shimmer on her wrists and the inside of her elbows.
"The transformation takes three days," she said clinically. "I didn't have three days. I probably didn't have three hours. Carlisle did what he had to do to get as much of his venom into my bloodstream as he could as quickly as possible."
Edward winced. "Did it hurt?" he asked before he could stop himself. He felt like an idiot. What kind of question was that to ask? Of course it had hurt.
She hesitated before answering. "I was barely conscious for the actual bites. But the transformation . . . It felt like I was being burned alive. There's no physical pain on earth comparable." She fell silent and stood perfectly still for several moments before coming back to herself with a start. "Carlisle doesn't often think about about that day but when he does, seeing myself in his memory, obviously dying. Watching as the cyanosis grew darker as the final minutes of my human life ticked away. Hearing his internal struggle over what to do. It's surreal. I know it's me in that bed, but it feels like looking at a stranger."
She drew her hands to her chest, one folded over the other, and Edward pulled her into his arms.
"How—" he cleared his throat. How did she get the other two scars? Why were they so much more prominent?
Before he could ask, she turned her head in the direction of the house as if someone had called her name. From her profile, Edward saw the corners of her eyes droop, and she looked at the ground. He fidgeted, both wondering what she'd heard and not wanting to know.
She stepped back and twisted her fingers together.
"You and your father have been arguing. Because of me."
Edward rubbed his forehead. He wished he could deny it, or at least downplay it.
"I can't pretend to be surprised. I could hardly have hoped otherwise, but I'm selfish enough that I've been trying very hard to not think about it." She closed her eyes. "I don't want you fighting with your father over me."
"Grace—"
"Please, Edward, don't argue with your father. Especially not because of me."
"I can't just—"
"You don't understand." Grace covered her face. "That last year," she lowered her hands and shook her head, "I argued with my parents daily. What I put them through . . . I'll never see them again, and I have to go on living each day knowing how much time with them I wasted. I'll never get back all those hours I lost arguing with them. I didn't know how little time we had left together. Had I, I'd have done so much differently, but none of us know what's coming. You could have fifty years with your father—and I pray you do—but you also might not. He's only thirty-nine. But my mother was only forty, and my father forty-four. Don't waste time arguing, Edward, please. You'll never get that time back again."
Edward remembered the day of the robbery, hearing the words "officer down."
"Your father loves you so very much. He genuinely believes we intend to change you regardless of what we say and what you wish, and he's terrified," she said. "His fears are unfounded, but they aren't unreasonable. He and your friends have very valid reasons for believing as they do. They are drawing their beliefs from a long history with my kind."
Frustrated, he kicked at the ground.
"He just won't listen."
"Scared people rarely will, and the more afraid they are, the less likely it is that they will. Please, Edward. For me? No amount of fighting will make him have a change of heart. We really are the exception. They have no real reason to trust our word, and experience has given them every reason to disbelieve it."
"They know you don't . . . you know, go after people."
"This is different."
Frustrated, he exhaled loudly. His instincts told him to defend her, but for her, he agreed.
"His shoulder doesn't seem to be getting any better," he said.
"It hasn't been very long. It needs time. Nerve damage can take months to heal."
"I know. That's what the doctor said. It's just—it feels like it's been months already. It will—it will heal though, right?"
"I wish I could promise you it will heal fully, but I can't."
"Yeah, the doctor said that, too."
"I do understand how difficult waiting is when you're worried."
"He never . . . He never called that doctor. The one out in Port Angeles."
"The psychiatrist."
"Yeah." Edward rubbed his arms. "Do you think he should?"
"I think he needs to talk to someone about what happened, yes. But he needs to be ready. It's not like dealing with a cut that can be stitched up or a bone that can be set. And it needs to the be right someone for him. Someone he feels comfortable with."
Frustration suddenly getting the better of him, Edward swore.
"I'm sorry," he said.
One corner of Grace's mouth twitched, but she didn't smile.
"I'm not that easily offended."
"Everything is just so God damn complicated."
"And I don't make it any easier."
"I didn't mean—"
"It would be easier for you to be with a different girl, a human girl," she said. "Your father, your friends, they'd all be so happy."
Edward wished she wouldn't talk like that, but he couldn't deny it was true. And it wasn't just his father and their friends. Grace's being with him made her family uneasy, too. For her family's part, they'd probably all be much happier were she to find someone like them.
"It's not easy for you either, being with me."
"I don't want to be with anyone else," she said.
"Well, neither do I."
She stepped closer to him, looking up at him through her lashes. "Then, for as long as you want me, a pack of wild wolves couldn't drag me away."
~.~
~.~
There you have chapter 1! Chapter 2 however . . . will be a while. Follow the fic to get an alert when the full fic is being posted. If you'd like a teaser for chapter 2 in the meantime, go ahead and send me a review—tell me you voted, and get a longer teaser!
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The title, To Hold Something Beautiful, was inspired by a line from Submarine by Joe Dunthorne.
"I took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful."
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". . . What you object to is very different. He's not a scholar, not an artist. Doesn't paint, doesn't write poetry. If he did, you'd overlook everything else. He'd be the raging artist. He'd be allowed to behave unspeakably. Tell me something."
"You have more to lose. . . ."
"Tell me this. What kind of painter is allowed to behave more unspeakably, figurative or abstract?"
Falling Man, Don DeLillo
I've tried to read this book three or four times, but I just can't get into it.
This is the passage Edward mentioned briefly to Gray the first time he visited the Cullen house, the day they went the to Hoh.
.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone, that sore above,
Enjoy such Liberty.
To Althea, from Prison
Richard Lovelace, 1642
(Altered to fit Grace's circumstances)
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Amelia Earhart disappeared July 2, 1937 (aged 39)
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The mirror has cracked from side to side. The curse has come upon me.
From The Lady of Shallot, Alfred, Lord Tennyson