About
Esme's full name was Esme Anne Platt Evenson. She was born in 1895 in Columbus, OH. She was married at twenty-two to Charles Evenson, just before he was shipped overseas to fight in WWI. He returned in 1919. She ran away from him in 1920, pregnant with their first child. She lost that child in 1921 in Ashland, WI, and attempted to commit suicide–she was 26. She was brought to the hospital where Carlisle was working nights. Esme is 5'6" tall.Esme's marriage was all but arranged by her parents. She wasn't in love with the man she married, though she was willing to give it a try. She wanted very much to fall in love with anyone, but she’d never met anyone that measured up to an encounter she had when she was sixteen.
In 1911, Esme broke her leg falling out of a tree she'd climbed. Her family lived on a farm on the outskirts of Columbus. The local doctor was away, and it was after dark by the time they got her to the small hospital in Columbus. She was treated by a Dr. Cullen. It was his last month in town (he was already claiming to be 35). She never got over the experience.
Esme was the last of her friends to marry (they got married earlier back then). She was thinking of moving West to be a schoolteacher, but her father didn't think it was respectable for a lady to live alone in the wilds. The son of a family friend, a man with good prospects, wanted to marry her, and her father pressured her to accept. She was indifferent towards Charles Evenson, but not opposed to him. She married him, and quickly found that this had been a bad decision. Charles' public face was very different from his private face; he abused her. Her parents counseled her to be a good wife and keep quiet. When he was drafted, it was a huge relief to her. When he came back, it was terrifying.
The pregnancy was Esme's catalyst to escape. She knew she wasn't letting a child be brought into that home. She ran to a second cousin that lived in Milwaukee, and then moved further north when word of her whereabouts leaked to her parents. She blended in easily, pretending to be one of the many war widows. She taught school in a small community outside Ashland. When her baby died of lung infection just a few days after he was born, she had nothing left. She had no idea that Carlisle was working in the little hospital in Ashland when she jumped off the cliff outside the town. Carlisle remembered her, of course, remembered her as the happy girl she had been at sixteen. He didn’t want her to die.
So you can imagine what she thought when she opened her eyes, in all that pain, and saw the face that she'd never forgotten in a decade.
She was not really that upset to find out she was a vampire–she didn't take it as in stride as Emmett, but she was just happy to be with the man/vampire of her dreams. She did always have that maternal ache, and, as the physically oldest of the Cullens, she fell into a mothering role.
"She held the food out to me, her face all soft and pleading. I don't know how she did it, because she didn't look older than her mid-twenties, and she was bone pale, too, but something about her expression suddenly reminded me of my mom."- Jacob on Esme's kindness.