Back Home

(Carlisle's POV)

As I drive home from the hospital, I can't help but think what was awaiting me at home. My family had moved back to Forks almost a year ago after making sure that everyone we had previously known from the last time, when Bella joined our family, was deceased or long gone. Charlie had passed away nearly 35 years ago of natural causes and Sue followed him shortly after. Jacob was the only werewolf left. He decided to continue phasing so he could stay young with Nessie. Of course some of the pack was still living, but had stopped phasing in order to age with their mate. Needless to say, they didn't matter because they knew our secret.

Everyone had started back into their original roles. Everyone of course knew us as the beautiful Cullen's. The story was that my wife and I adopted 8 teenagers, all of whom wanted to go back to high school with the exception of Nessie and Jake, who preferred to be home school. Even though Nessie had been an adult for a long time, she still had everyone wrapped around her pinky finger and Jake did what she did. At the school, the other 6 were known as the Cullen and the Hales. Since they were all paired up as couples obviously, we to make sure that everyone knew that they all weren't blood related to keep down gossip. Edward, Alice, and Emmett were blood related and decided to take on the Cullen name; Rosalie and Jasper were the Hale twins with Bella being their younger sister.

After travelling to almost every known sunless place in the world, we all decided that we were ready to go back to the small town of where our new lives began many, many, decades ago. That being said, Forks held a special place in all of our stone hearts because was the town that made our family complete. However, since moving back, I couldn't help but feel that something was different and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Every evening, when I returned home, I would find the downstairs empty. Each couple was either locked up in their room doing only God knows what or just out spending money.

I pulled into the garage that was nearly as big as the home. We had to have an extra garage to hold the many Cullen cars. All of the kids had their own vehicle except for Nessie and Jake, but Edward and Bella had given them the cottage since Nessie asked for it and they couldn't tell her no. Esme hated driving so she had no need for a vehicle. Each vehicle would be upgraded every two years to keep up with trends. My garage consisted of Edward's Volvo S60R, Bella's Chevy Avalanche, Emmett's Jeep Commander, Rosalie's BMW M3, Alice's Porsche 911 Turbo, Jasper's Ducati motorcycle, Edward's Vanquish (only Nessie or Jake were allowed to drive that), and of course my Mercedes. That's when it dawned on me. My children were spoiled rotten and it was my entire fault. I had spent so much time trying to make my family happy and look normal that I failed to make them value what they have. Everything came so easy to them and they never had to lift a finger. It was already bad enough that they could get anything they wanted from humans through intimidation and looks alone. What made it worse…….I was their enabler. I was the only one who ever had a job. Something had to change and it was; many of them were not going to like it. I was going to talk to Esme and shortly after, we were going to have a family meeting.