[BamaFan121s]

“This I definitely remember.” I replied, tightening my grip around his broad shoulders in response. For the first time, I kept my eyes open as Edward easily navigate through the canopy of green, ecstatic that for once, I could enjoy the sensation of his muscles working below me and the slight breeze blowing in my hair. After what seemed like forever, but in reality couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, Edward’s pace finally slowed until he came to a stop and returned me gently to the ground. He reached down and took my hand and began leading me forward towards a clearing in the trees that I instinctually knew was our meadow.
Spread out in the middle of the meadow, amidst the summer wildflowers, was a large quilt. Obviously, this had been a planned stop. I looked up at him, narrowing my eyes in suspicion as he led me to the blanket, smiling back at me triumphantly as he did. He dropped my hand and collapsed on the blanket, folding his arms back behind his head as the sun finally won the battle over the clouds and shone down. Just like it did the first time we’d been here, the beautiful sight of Edward in the sun took my breath. He gazed lovingly up at me and reached over to pat the space beside him.
It was then that I noticed the stretch of patchwork beside him wasn’t completely empty. A present sat on the blanket, wrapped in deep blue paper and trimmed in a fancy ivory ribbon. I glance back to him as I sunk to my knees beside him. “Edward? What is this?” I accused with no real threat in my voice.
“A present…for you.” he answered innocently.
“Edward, you know—“ I began, but in a flash, he laid his fingers across my lips silencing me.
“Shhh…it’s not from me. It’s from Alice.” Confident that he’d successfully put a stop to my protests, leaned back to prop himself up on his elbow watching me. “But don’t worry, she knows you prefer the homemade kind too.”
I rolled my eyes and reached reluctantly for the present. I untied the bow and slid my finger under the crease in the paper. I couldn’t help but pause fleetingly to examine my finger for paper cuts before continuing. I finished unwrapping the box, lifted the lid and moved the tissue paper aside. I reached inside and removed a very familiar looking book that I hadn’t seen in a very long time—the scrapbook my mother had sent me for my eighteenth birthday. I immediately felt guilty for having used it for its intended purpose. But why would Alice wrap my scrapbook and give it back to me again. I opened up the front cover to the first page I’d never made it past. Edward’s perfect face smiled back up at me—the picture I’d taken the night of my eighteenth birthday, just a few days before he’d….well, a long time ago in any case.
I looked questioningly at Edward, not understanding Alice’s symbolism behind the gift. He easily understood my look of confusing and offered explanation. “Alice knew that you’d never gotten around to actually using it. She knew that there would be things you’d want to remember—things you would never want to forget.” He reached forward and turned it to the next page.
The images on the page that stared back up to me were easily recognizable, but foreign at the same time. Recognizable because I could identify the subjects of the photos, foreign because I had not put them there. I flipped quickly through the book to find that every page had been filled with pictures and inscriptions and various mementoes.
I understood and raised my eyes back to Edward. “Alice did this?” I asked, a lump of tearless emotion threatening to constrict my vocal chords. “She knew.”
He nodded, his eyes never leaving mine. “And Esme.”
I shook my head in wonder, marveling over their thoughtfulness and amazed at how Alice always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone. I sprawled across my stomach on the blanket beside Edward. He rolled and reached his hand back to prop the book up for me as I started to look through it. Together, we lay there for a long time looking at my collective life in Forks that Alice had captured for me.
The faces of my high school friends stared up at me from the lunchroom cafeteria. Ben and Angela side by side, hand’s intertwined, Jessica and Lauren, Mike and Tyler. Glued in the middle of the page, a cap from a Lemonade bottle that Edward reached up and ran his fingers over. I flipped the page and found pictures of Edward, bent in concentration over his piano set against a background of sheet music containing the musical notes of my lullaby. Page after page, familiar memories rushed back to me. Pictures of my beloved Chevy truck, gone to that junkyard in the sky sat beside the rusted key that started the ignition and pictures from the one and only prom I’d gone to sat opposite the page from the dried corsages Edward and I had worn. Pictures circled by small, polished stones from First Beach showed a bonfire and out Quileute friends while opposite the page was a picture of Jacob and myself posing beside two motorcycles.
We looked at every picture and took in every detail, stopping on occasion long enough to share a laugh, or recall a specific story. The tassels from our Forks High School graduation caps, pictures and dried flowers from our wedding, and countless pictures of Renesmee, more often than not with Jacob somewhere in the shot—all were memories and trinkets captured and preserved for me, compliments of Alice and Esme. Eventually, we reached the last page. I ran my fingers over a glossy picture of myself and Edward embracing each other before closing the cover.
I traced the outside cover of the book as Edward trained his eyes on my face. “Do you like it?” He finally asked, breaking the silence.
“Yes, very much so.”
I kept my eyes on the cover of the book, but heard the smile in his voice. “She said you would.”
“Alice amazes me sometimes,” I said, shaking my head again in wonder as I spoke. “She knows me so well. She knew just what to put in here…that I would never want to forget…” I repeated Edward’s words from earlier and sat in silent thought for a moment. I swallowed hard, clearing the lump that had arisen in my throat as I urged myself to ask the question I didn’t truly want to know the answer to. “Earlier this morning, when you and Carlisle were talking in his office…” I tore my eyes from the book and peered across at the tall grass blowing gently in the breeze, but not really seeing it. “We have to leave, don’t we?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His silence confirmed what I already knew deep down. Finally, I turned my pleading eyes to his. “Yes,” he spoke softly. I nodded in response, but did not speak. I knew the time would come eventually. I returned my gaze to the swaying green reeds as he sat up and grabbed me around my waist, pulling me to his side.