(Thomas POV)
The drive home was quiet, I think neither of us wanted to start a conversation that could lead to what was coming. It wasn't a painful silence though, it actually felt rather comfortable. At one point, Leah turned her gaze from the passing forest and seemed to focus on her hands and then she had a faint blush on her cheeks.
When I turned down the driveway, I noticed the porch light was on. Just one of the little things Edythe did that made me love her. The light on or off wouldn't mean anything for her eyesight, but she did it for others.
Turning the truck off, I looked at Leah, she still seemed lost in her thoughts. I don't think she really registered anything until I got out and walked around to open her door.
"You okay Leah?"
"I'm fi…" Leah's natural response to the question paused, "Actually, I am a little nervous, Thomas."
I held my hand out for her and smiled, "Yeah, I get the feeling tonight is going to be…important."
She was quick to let go of my hand once she was out of the truck, but she stayed close to me as we walked up the stairs to the door. Before I could reach for the handle, the door opened, and Edythe was standing there with a smile on her face.
She was barefoot and wearing what we called comfy clothes. A simple pair of yoga pants and a loose T-shirt. Her smile was wide and friendly, for a vampire. For a human it showed too many teeth would be considered off-putting or predatory. It made me smile because it showed that she had no intention of playing human in our house. I hoped Leah would come to understand this and not feel threatened by it.
"Welcome home, my love. I see you brought Leah with you." She moved out of the doorway so we could enter the house as she spoke.
I stepped forward and gave her a quick kiss as I entered, "Yes love. I think we both agree with you that it is time we all talked."
Leah was a little more hesitant at the doorway, but she still stepped in and off to the side so Edythe could close the door.
"Wow Leah. I love that shirt, it looks so soft."
"Tha, thanks, Edythe. And thank you for having me over tonight."
For just a few seconds I think we all felt a little awkward, but I was quick to cover it as much as I could. "Why don't you two get settled in the Livingroom while I grab Leah and I drinks. The juice from last time okay Leah?"
Leah nodded, not saying anything.
I passed Edythe to get to the kitchen, and she took a deep breath through her nose, "Ohh, they burnt Pine and Oak. Smells so good. I love the smell of campfire. Come on Leah, let's go make ourselves comfortable."
When I came out of the kitchen, I saw Leah was seated on the small couch, while Edythe was in her glider rocking chair. It was a carryover from her human life. A wedding gift to her mother and father from her grandparents that she had kept in storage all these years.
I placed Leah's cup of juice on the coffee table in front of her and then took a seat in my recliner.
"Before we get too far into this, I think we need to set some ground rules here."
Edythe nodded and Leah just waited for me to continue.
"The obvious one is full transparency. No half-truths, or double talk."
Edythe nodded and added, "There can be no secrets between us. If something happens or if something is said that makes anyone feel jealous, unsafe, pressured, or unsure. We say it out loud."
Leah was the next to add, "We can't jump to conclusions either. Wait for someone to finish speaking before reacting. And no mindreading tonight, Edythe. I need to say what I have to say knowing it's coming out of my mouth, not being pulled from my mind before that."
I waited for more suggestions and when they stayed quiet, I decided I would begin. "I will speak first, as I think I have the least to say." I took a drink of my juice and set it down again.
"I know my life has been short compared to you Edythe, but in all that time, I have only felt attraction toward anyone since coming to Forks. There have been girls I felt looked good at school in Phoenix and naturally I played the guys game of who is the best-looking actress. But to be physically attracted to someone had never happened before."
"Looking back, you were the first person to stir that in me. I was already keyed up being my first day in a new school and I felt the most vulnerable in the cafeteria surrounded by people I didn't know. But when you came in with your family I felt… desire."
I kept my eyes on Edythe as I continued, "But then while I watched, everyone at your table became defensive and you looked at me angrily. That moment then stirred my own anger mixed with the uncomfortable moment of feeling desire for another for the first time. The combination of this feeling led me to leave the cafeteria in anger and confusion."
Edythe shook her head and had a half smile on her face. I could see she was remembering the time I was talking about.
I smiled as well and turned my eyes to Leah, "You were the second person to make me feel desire Leah. It was ironically the first day that Edythe ever spoke to me. We had an argument in the school hallway, and I was so angry that I had to get out of there, so I ran into the nearby forest. It helped to cool my head and slow my heartbeat."
I paused for a moment, "But when I was running, I heard what sounded like someone screaming. When I followed the noise to offer help, I found a beautiful young woman screaming into the forest while standing on a cliff."
A full blush broke out on Leah's face when she put it together. Edythe looked back and forth between us with curiosity in her eyes.
I answered the unasked question, "I stood there for probably longer than I should have just watching, because for only the second time in my life I felt desire towards another person. Just before she would have noticed me on her own, I stepped forward and asked if she was okay."
Leah squirmed in the couch a little as her face grew even more red. "Only to be told to mind my own business and leave her lands, along with a comment about my 'Pale Face'.' I finished with a chuckle.
Edythe laughed for a couple minutes, "At least I wasn't the only one who screwed up our first meeting. Poor Thomas, feels desire for the only time in his life and is insulted both times by the object of that desire."
Leah tried to defend herself, "Hey I was out there letting my feelings out into the forest, no one was supposed to be around. Then this cute as hell guy walks out of the trees looking at me with messy hair, tear tracks on my cheeks, along with puffy eyes. How would anyone react to that. And I apologized the very next time I saw him."
We all took a moment to let our emotions settle, Edythe her laughter that she wasn't the only one to make a bad first impression, Leah her mortification over her past actions and I needed a minute to get past that even back then Leah thought I was attractive.
Finally, Edythe broke the silence, "Just from what you said here Thomas, I think you have an idea of what Leah, and I have been discussing. And if I had to guess, I would say you are at least willing to discuss the idea."
I took a breath, "I think I do, but I want to hear it out loud before we go further. It has some wonderful implications, but it could also be disastrous for everyone involved. We can't start something and not think of that. I love you Edythe and you are my wife. I think I could easily have the same feelings for Leah had we been closer in the beginning, but I am a bit afraid of losing what I have by reaching for more."
This caused another moment of silence, while we were all lost in our own thoughts.
Edythe started, "I thin…"
At the same time Leah started, "I don't wa…"
Then they both pause looking at the other.
Edythe was the first to break the silence a second time, "Let me go next because I think this is happening mostly because of me, as conceited as that sounds."
Leah reluctantly nodded.
Edythe took a deep breath and sighed; her human habits still made me smile unconsciously.
"I am 104 years old and will be 105 in less than two months. I was turned at the age of 17 because I was dying of the Spanish influenza." She was talking directly to Leah because I knew this already.
"In the time I was born, I should have been married off and had at least one child by that age. But I was considered strange by those that knew me, because I had no interest in the boys around me. I listened to the other girls talk about their feeling for the boys that ran with my brother and even had many of them try and set them up with my brother because they were convinced that they would die if they didn't get him."
She let out a snort at that, "I just didn't get it. But then I realized that the feeling of longing they described for boys were actually the feelings I had for one of my friends. She was blond haired with blue eyes that sparkled with mischief, and she was desperately in love with the local blacksmith's son. We made up games where she was his wife and I was a customer coming to get some pots fixed. It was very childish and innocent to us, but her mother must have noticed something because she started to keep us apart more and more. She spoke to my mother and the other mothers in the area, and I was starting to be isolated for something I just didn't get."
"I could sometimes feal flashed of what people were thinking when I concentrated on someone and I was usually able to talk my way around people fairly easily, so we managed to work things out. But as I grew older and my friends all started to marry, I was feeling left out again."
"Shortly after Sherry married the blacksmiths son, I felt very sad and tried to explain my feelings to her. But she didn't understand and turned away from me from that point on."
She began swaying back and forth in her rocker as she continued, "My father was talking about marrying me to someone in the town over when we all fell sick. Once I was a vampire, I didn't think about it much for many years."
"Carlisle was afraid that he had done something wrong when he turned Edward and I because neither of us were interested in anyone we came across for many years. That changed for me when we spent some time with the Denali coven in Alaska. There I met Katrina. She reminded me very much of Sherry in looks, but was older than me by nearly one thousand years."
Leah let out a shock of surprise that pulled Edythe from her thoughts for a moment. "She was the one at our wedding Leah, she was going by Kate, she is also what we call a vegetarian vampire. Her coven had been surviving that way long before Carlisle was ever born."
Leah just shook her head, "That just seems like an impossible amount of time to be alive. We have stories from those times but to think that someone lived for that long, it's a lot to take in."
Edythe nodded her head, "Luckily for me, she was wise enough to see that I was…not normal as I thought of it. She saw how I watched girls more than guys and took me to the side and explained it to me. These days it is much more acknowledged and accepted than it was back when I grew up, so it really did surprise me that it was possible to love someone of the same gender."
She was once again lost in the past as she continued to speak. "For a time, I gave my feelings to Kate and thought it was love. But after a few years, we both came to realize it wasn't and went our separate ways."
Her rocking stopped, "Life 'such as it is' went on, and then one boring day of endless monotonous schooling I saw him. This giant among children who casually reached into places I didn't think I had. Who left me with thoughts I had never had for another man before. It was so against anything I had felt for nearly one hundred years. And wow did I manage to screw it up quickly. After trying to read his mind I was left curious, then I tried to use my compulsion on him only to have it fail. Was this stupid impossibly gorgeous man sent here to foil my entire being. I think I was the last in my family to figure out what was going on with me and by that time, I was hopelessly entangled. Now he is my husband."
I felt warmth in my chest and had to resist the urge to stand up and drag Edythe to the bedroom. As if she could read my mind, she winked at me and then turned to look at Leah.
"But shortly before that happy day, I stumbled across someone who I had always dreamed of meeting. That was you, Leah."
Leah looked confused.
"I didn't know I was looking for Thomas, but you… When I touched your mind the day you came with Jacob to deliver the warning about breaking the treaty." Edythe paused here for almost a full minute.
"Even though your mind was desperately trying to force an imprint with Thomas as you looked at him, to me your mind felt like my memories of a warm bath. Comforting, relaxing, and seeping into all the spaces of my mind. Being in your mind felt just as comfortable as being in my own. I had finally found what I had been looking for all those years."
She paused there again for a moment, "I fell in love with you in that brief touch of our minds. Not in competition with the love I have for Thomas, but alongside it. I could tell that Thomas had feelings for you as well. Okay it was more that… He talks in his sleep sometimes."
I was instantly embarrassed, and lost for anything to say. I just sat there trying to think of something to say when Edythe laughed at me.
"No worries love, just some words, never full sentences. Besides I would never hold it against you regardless. If anyone understands random thoughts it is me and my brother."
Leah had gone very quiet and looked like she was barely breathing. Her eyes were unfocused, and you could tell what Edythe had said was shaking her view of the world.
Edythe went on, drawing Leah's attention back to the conversation.
"So, when I had the chance to speak to you, I took it. I knew you were fixated on Thomas, in hopes he would help ease the pain brought on by Sam's imprint to Emily. But I wanted to see if there was room for all of us. That's why I believe I am the driving force that brought us to this point. I love you both already. How much I express that though isn't up to just me."
For the first time tonight, I saw real worry on Edythe's face as she looked at both me and Leah in turn.
I smiled at Edythe and let all my love build in my mind and then I tried to convey that in my eyes. "I could never fault you for being who you are Edythe. You are my wife and so long as we don't hide things from each other nothing will ever change that."
The worried look faded from her eyes a bit at my words, and we both turned to Leah, waiting to hear her thoughts.
It seemed like the minutes turned to hours as we both watched Leah's internal struggle. All we could do was wait patiently for her to speak.