He thinks it looks like a straitjacket from the back. Nothing but loops and ribbons, ropes and chains designed to keep anyone from escaping.

He wishes that was all that was keeping her here.

The scents on her skin are harsh and acrid and too strong for any perfume to mask. It's as if she's already one of them. He imagines that her eyes are red; it makes it easier to stay mad.

And like always he knows what she's thinking, that he doesn't look like her Jacob. It's okay, she's not his Bella anymore. All white and formal and dressed up like a porcelain doll. Something to be displayed, admired from a distance.

In his head he smells motor oil and grass, and tastes the sticky-sweetness of warm soda on the back of his tongue. One boy and one girl, the ghosts of his memory, laugh at him.

They look so young.

She says his name, and it sounds jagged on her tongue, like a wound. "I'm glad you came back." And it as though she's been waiting.

"I didn't come back for you." The sound of his voice is unfamiliar, dusty and rough hewn after so long without use. "I came back for Charlie. That man has been like a second father to me. The least I can do for him is be here when he learns that his daughter is dead." He spits out the words like something dirty.

Tears leave off-white streaks on her dress, but her mascara never runs. Even in sadness she looks inhumanly pristine, unchanging. It seems unfair.

Bella is thinking the same thing.

"Why do you have to make this harder than it already is?"

He's walking out the door, drawing an invisible barrier in his wake. A line in the sand. A boundary that she is no longer permitted to cross.

"It's death, Bella," he mutters. "It's supposed to be hard."