All Grown Up: The Story of Jacob and Renesmee Part III

2

Renesmee

 "Mom! Swan is still humming!" Xandra whined. 

"And we can hear her music. What's the point of her having headphones if everybody else in the car can hear it?" Mollie added. 

"Swan, turn it down and knock it off, or that thing is mine," I said. She scowled. "Don't act like you can't hear me, either." She heaved a dramatic sigh. 

"Momma she isn't doing it!" Asa cried.

 "Sweetie, relax," I said.

 Swan made a big show of raising her arm, lowering it again to her hip where her iPhone was attached, and turning down the volume. 

"Okay, she did it," Asa said. 

"Dad, how many more hours till we get there?" A.J. asked.

 I answered for him. "A million!" 

"Come on, really. How many," he insisted.

 "About three," Jake said, looking at him in the rearview mirror. 

"Three is a prime number," Anthony said randomly.

 "Anthony!" Swan exploded. "Nobody gives a crap about what you learned on math is fun dot com!" I groaned as Anthony started muttering about creating a website called Swan is a brat dot com. "Make sure you get my good side for the website picture," Swan said, not looking at him, instead looking down at her phone and selecting a new song. 

"She must mean her butt," Xandra whispered to Mollie, they both dissolved into giggles.

 "I can still hear you two jerks," Swan muttered. 

"Here's what is going to happen: nobody is going to talk, for the next fifteen minutes. Unless you are bleeding, I don't want to hear from you," I said.

 I sat and enjoyed the silence. I'd thought the trip would be easier than the first time we moved. True, they were all potty trained now. They also were much more verbal. Constantly. We were nearing the end of our two-day journey and I was sick of being cooped up in the car. I tried to think about how wonderful our new house was. It would have been nice to go back to the old one but weren't going back to Forks, we'd be living over in La Push. I'd designed it myself, with a little help from Nanna. I knew exactly what kind of house we needed, and wanted. The main things were lots of space and lots of seating. This side of the family would definitely not be comfortable standing all night like mine was. We wanted to have people over all the time, and have lots of room for them. Another important thing was a ramp outside for Billy. I hadn't even seen the house in person yet, but I'd been given several Skype tours, courtesy of Rachel and Rebecca. They both had supervised all the construction and the deliveries. Except for the few special pieces we were bringing, all of our furniture was already there, everything was ready for us. Inside the front door was an entryway. There were shelves for shoes, a place to hang coats, and I was thinking about putting some large potted plants in there for Asa to play with. 

He had excellent control of his gift by now. He could influence any kind of plant life, it seemed to work on everything. He could cause them to wither and die if he wanted to, but that's no fun. He much preferred to make things grow and bloom. He'd figured out how to adjust the colors of things, too. If a flower was blue, he couldn't turn it to pink, but he could change the shade. At the old house, I had a blue morning glory that was slowly climbing the trellis on the back wall. I'd watched him as quietly as I could, as he spent an entire afternoon sitting on the grass in front of it, with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. Some of the flowers turned bright vibrant blue, others to almost white, barely-there pastels, and every shade in between. When he was done, it was breathtaking. So was the pleased look on his face when he finally opened his eyes. At that moment, I let him be and didn't disturb him.