Surprise

later that day. . .

Esme, Emmett, Alice, and Jasper walked through the front door. Renee and Phil were still upstairs. They only came down a few times in between unpacking. I took my cell phone out and dialed my mother's cell number. It was much easier than walking or calling up to her. "Hello?" she said.
"Hey, mom. Come downstairs. Esme, Emmett, Jasper, and Alice are home."
"Okay, Bella. I'll be right there." she hung up.
Alice came over to me and gave me a hug. "Congratulations, Bella." she said, happily. That's right. I haven't been here in a while, or seen Alice outside of school. She knew better than to say anything about this at school.
"Congratulations." Emmett and Jasper said.
"Esme gave me a hug just as Alice had. "I'm so happy for happy for you, Bella."
"Thank you everyone." Renee and Phil came down the stairs as Esme released me.
"Hello. Welcome to our home. I'm Esme." Esme greeted. She shook their hands. "This is our family." she gestured toured the others. "This is Emmett."
"What's up?" he walked over to shake hands as well.
"This is Jasper."
"It's a pleasure to meet you." he waved kindly.
"And this is Alice."
"Its so nice to finally meet you." she walked over and gave them each a hug. Typical Alice.
Carlisle walked in the door and Esme went welcome him home with a quick kiss. Then she turned back to us. "This is my husband, Carlisle."
He shook their hands. "Welcome. Any family of Bella's is a family of ours." he said smiling.
"Its nice to meet you." Renee said.
"Well, we'll let you finish up upstairs."
Everyone went their separate ways. Esme went to the kitchen, Jasper and Emmett sat under the staircase with a deck of cards, Carlisle went up to his study, and Phil and Renee went upstairs to their temporary room. The only one who stayed was Alice. She had a huge grin on her face and, truthfully, it made me a little nervus.
"Not appropriate when we have guests. Go upstairs if your going to play that." Edward told Jasper and Emmett, disapprovingly. They looked at Edward and then went to up the stairs to one of their rooms.
"What were they going to play?" I asked, confused as to why it was inappropriate.
"Strip poker."
"Oh." was the only response I could think of for that. How many card games could they possibly think of? Seriously.
I turned back to Alice. She'd gotten closer and her grin had disappeared. She looked at Edward. "Why did you tell Carlisle but not me?"
"I thought you would've seen this coming." he sounded confused.
"Well, I didn't." she shook her head slowly. "I don't understand why."
We sat on the couch. Edward had his arm around me – like he usually did. "I'm going to call Charlie." I said as I pulled my phone out.
Three rings later, he picked up. "Hello?"
"Hi, dad. Is it okay if I spend the night here. I want to spend some time with Renee." Alice held her hand out for the phone. "Um. . .dad? Alice wants to talk to you." I handed her the phone.
"Hello, Charlie." she said cheerfully. "Were you planning on doing anything with Bella tomorrow?" she paused for Charlie to talk. "Okay. I wanted to know if it would be alright if Bella and I went shopping in Olympia tomorrow." pause. "Okay. Thanks Charlie – yeah I'll tell her. Bye." she hung up.
"Shopping?" why? She knew I hated shopping. And since we were going to Olympia, that probably meant that we were going to a mall. Clothes shopping. Ugh! Alice!
"Yes, shopping. And Charlie wanted me to tell you that you'd better be bunking in my room tonight. I didn't feel that It was necessary to tell him that Edward would probably just follow you." she smiled.
Esme came into the room. "Dinners ready."
I looked at Edward confused. "We need to eat some human food while Phil and your mother are here. So they don't get suspicious."oh. That made sense. But, their vampires, how could they digest human food? "Lets go get Renee and Phil for dinner."
I got up, and with Edward's arm still around me, we walked up the stairs to the third floor.
I knocked on the door. "Dinners ready."
"Okay we'll be right out." Phil called through the door.

- - - - - -

Esme was a good cook. She made a lovely chicken dinner. I was surprised by how much everyone ate. Emmett, Phil, and Jasper went up for seconds. I wondered were Edward and the others were hiding it.
"That was wonderful, Esme." Renee complemented.
"Thank you for dinner." Phil said.
"Thank you and your welcome." Esme smiled.
"Well, its been a long day. We'll see you all in the morning. Goodnight." Renee took Phil's hand as they got up from the table.
Once they were gone, everyone got up from the table and threw away the rest of their food – which brought me back to an earlier question.
"Where was everyone putting their food?" I asked Edward. "I mean, you can't digest it, can you?"
"No we can't digest it. We ate most of it though." he looked a little disgusted
Emmett walked by us on his way to the livingroom, and mumbled. "Good thing these are thick walls."
I turned to him, confused. "What do you mean?"
"We need to regurgitate the food, so we'll probably be throwing it back up for about an hour or two." he shrugged and walked away. I heard a football game come on the TV.
Well, I guess it is a good thing that these are thick walls. We don't need Phil and Renee to hear a bunch of sick vampires after supper every night.
I looked around while I was thinking about the hours to come. One second everyone was there, perfectly normal – well as normal as a family of vampires could be – and the next second, they were gone. I was standing alone in the middle of the kitchen. I had a good guess as to were to find Edward.
I walked upstairs to the room next to my mother and Phil's. sure enough, he was in his bathroom over the toilet.