Prologue: Alibi

It would have been a perfect alibi, really . . . the Spanish influenza; perfect because it had an ounce of truthfulness to it and because there were so many who remembered its gruesome wake.

But while time erased the vividness of the whole ordeal, it did not ease the source of my unrest. I, Carlisle Cullen, who have painstakingly braved the heartache of losing my long-dead family, who have successfully repressed my vampiric cravings for human blood, who have magnanimously saved more human lives than destroyed them, was harboring the most vile of thoughts. I desired the one thing that I should not have had the right to desire and that I should have felt remorse for even thinking it. I desired a son, and not just any son-the son of a dear friend.

I sighed despondently. How has fate teased me so wickedly? The battle between remorse and elation still raged within my conflicted soul.

It would have been a perfect alibi except that the one person it was meant for had an uncanny and inconvenient ability to read minds.