New Moon - Stephenie Meyer [12]
“I’m sure all this sounds a little bizarre, coming from a vampire.” He grinned, knowing how their casual use of that word never failed to shock me. “But I’m hoping that there is still a point to this life, even for us. It’s a long shot, I’ll admit,” he continued in an offhand voice. “By all accounts, we’re damned regardless. But I hope, maybe foolishly, that we’ll get some measure of credit for trying.”
“I don’t think that’s foolish,” I mumbled. I couldn’t imagine anyone, deity included, who wouldn’t be impressed by Carlisle. Besides, the only kind of heaven I could appreciate would have to include Edward. “And I don’t think anyone else would, either.”
“Actually, you’re the very first one to agree with me.”
“The rest of them don’t feel the same?” I asked, surprised, thinking of only one person in particular.
Carlisle guessed the direction of my thoughts again. “Edward’s with me up to a point. God and heaven exist...and so does hell. But he doesn’t believe there is an afterlife for our kind.” Carlisle’s voice was very soft; he stared out the big window over the sink, into the darkness. “You see, he thinks we’ve lost our souls.”
I immediately thought of Edward’s words this afternoon: unless you want to die—or whatever it is that we do. The lightbulb flicked on over my head.
“That’s the real problem, isn’t it?” I guessed. “That’s why he’s being so difficult about me.”
Carlisle spoke slowly. “I look at my...son. His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him—and it only fuels that hope, that faith, more than ever. How could there not be more for one such as Edward?”
I nodded in fervent agreement.
“But if I believed as he does . . .” He looked down at me with unfathomable eyes. “If you believed as he did. Could you take away his soul?”
The way he phrased the question thwarted my answer. If he’d asked me whether I would risk my soul for Edward, the reply would be obvious. But would I risk Edward’s soul? I pursed my lips unhappily. That wasn’t a fair exchange.
“You see the problem.”
I shook my head, aware of the stubborn set of my chin.
Carlisle sighed.
“It’s my choice,” I insisted.
“It’s his, too.” He held up his hand when he could see that I was about to argue. “Whether he is responsible for doing that to you.”
“He’s not the only one able to do it.” I eyed Carlisle speculatively.
He laughed, abruptly lightening the mood. “Oh, no! You’re going to have to work this out with him.” But then he sighed. “That’s the one part I can never be sure of. I think, in most other ways, that I’ve done the best I could with what I had to work with. But was it right to doom the others to this life? I can’t decide.”
I didn’t answer. I imagined what my life would be like if Carlisle had resisted the temptation to change his lonely existence...and shuddered.
“It was Edward’s mother who made up my mind.” Carlisle’s voice was almost a whisper. He stared unseeingly out the black windows.
“His mother?” Whenever I’d asked Edward about his parents, he would merely say that they had died long ago, and his memories were vague. I realized Carlisle’s memory of them, despite the brevity of their contact, would be perfectly clear.
“Yes. Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Masen. His father, Edward Senior, never regained consciousness in the hospital. He died in the first wave of the influenza. But Elizabeth was alert until almost the very end. Edward looks a great deal like her—she had that same strange bronze shade to her hair, and her eyes were exactly the same color green.”
“His eyes were green?” I murmured, trying to picture it.
“Yes....” Carlisle’s ocher eyes were a hundred years away now. “Elizabeth worried obsessively