Jo & Laurie Read online

  He was surprised at how glad he was to see her. More than glad—he was relieved. There would be someone at the dinner whose company he would enjoy, besides Fred.

  Harriet was spirited and cultured and witty, the life of any gathering. She would make the evening not just tolerable, but maybe even fun.

  Besides, both their hearts had been broken by a March sister; perhaps this would remind them that one family could not possibly be the center of the universe.

  There was more to life than Orchard House.

  Wasn’t there?

  Harriet was lovely tonight in gold brocade, which brought out the unusual gold flecks in her eyes. He had never looked at her seriously before, having preferred Jo to any other girl, but he was surprised to find himself admiring her lively expression and fine figure. So different from Jo, who dressed in drab, even shabby clothes. Who refused to wear the beautiful polonaise he’d had made especially for her.

  She’d given it to her sister, and still he’d refused to see the insult. Not until she denied him, firmly and irrevocably.

  She would not marry him.

  So why shouldn’t Laurie learn to change his mind about women in general—and Harriet in particular?

  Give me one good reason.

  Lady Hat wasn’t just the most vivacious girl in any room. She was also wealthy and titled in her own right. A marriage to her would be Laurie’s guarantee that he’d never again have to live by Grandfather’s rules.

  If he wanted to live abroad, he could live abroad.

  If he wanted to be a musician, he could be a musician.

  No one would ever again own him. He would be himself, free. Even Harriet, with her ancient name and title, would not be his master. He would chart his own destiny.

  At last.

  Lady Hat was watching him with a quizzical look on her face. “Is everything all right, dear boy?” she asked. “You look pensive.”

  But Laurie felt his troubles beginning to lift. There was light in the distance of his long, dark hour.

  Perhaps his grandfather was right. Perhaps an old friend of the family could be the answer. A different family.

  How had Laurie himself failed to see it for so long?

  He held out his arm to her to lead her into the Perkinses’ house on Beacon Hill. “Shall we go inside together?”

  She took his arm and leaned into him a little. He felt the weight and accepted it gladly. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  25

  ALL ALONE

  Mama! Come quick!” Jo cried from where she was reading to Amy in the sickbed. The entire household heard and came running: Mama and Hannah. Meg was still at the Kings’.

  Amy had gone very still and very white. In the room the air was as still as she was. The curtains, open just a crack, didn’t stir at all.

  They held their breath and waited, fearing the end had come.

  Until Amy took another small rattling breath, and coughed and coughed, the wetness in her lungs sounding like the wringing of a damp sponge.

  Then the three of them crept out, slowly, and went to their separate private spaces to weep. The worst had not happened.

  But it was clear that the worst was still coming, and they were afraid. Good Mr. Laurence’s doctor had come and told them to “make her comfortable,” which was all he would say about Amy’s diagnosis.

  Amy’s illness had consumed them all for days and days. Mama, Hannah, and Jo took turns nursing the youngest girl during the day, feeding her broth and teas, putting mustard plasters on her chest to ease the cough, boiling camphor day and night to open up her lungs. Nothing had worked. Amy—who had always been small and delicate, though not frail—now positively seemed to shrink before their eyes day by day, hour by hour.

  The worst was happening, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

  Poor Amy, who was always left behind, who had been too young to join them in New York, even as her artistic dreams spun fantasies of Paris and Rome.

  She would never leave Concord.

  She would never see the Colosseum, and the Prado, and the Uffizi.

  Jo hadn’t even been able to take her to the seashore, as she had Beth.

  Every day was difficult in an unforeseen way.

  There were times when Jo was convinced Amy was getting better, but then she’d come around a corner and find Mama weeping silent tears, her apron held to her face and her shoulders shaking. Jo would ease back around the corner, alarmed and unsettled to see her calm, collected mother so undone.

  Jo herself was determined and grim sometimes, hopeful others, but always afraid.

  She hadn’t written a word in days. The sequel was utterly beyond her now, and what was more, she found she didn’t care a whit.

  The fictional Amy was far less important than the real Amy, the one who needed her. Her characters would not have suffered anything worse than what her family was going through now.

  It was hard, too, on Meg. There had been no celebrating, not even with what should have been her joyous news. John Brooke had gone back to Boston, and she wrote him every day to tell him what was happening at home in Concord.

  What was happening was alternately dull and frightening.

  Days, Meg worked at the Kings’, trying to be patient with her little charges, who played and laughed and argued as all children do who are oblivious to the cares and worries of others. It was hard for her to be angry at them. Why shouldn’t they be cheerful and argumentative, as usual?

  It was only that she envied them, being so free of care. Neither illness nor poverty had touched them, while Meg had too much of both.

  Nights, she tried to stay away from Orchard House, though sometimes she would walk home to find out if Amy or Mama or Jo needed anything. She wanted so desperately to help, but it was sapping her strength, and though Mama (and dear Mr. Brooke, who was becoming more and more a part of the family since he and Meg were betrothed) did their best to encourage her to rest and let the others take care of Amy, she couldn’t bear to be away from her at such a time.

  None of them could.

  They haunted Amy’s little bedroom, with its stuffy, camphor-scented air, with its constant noise of coughing, like they were the ghosts and she the living one on whom they fed.

  She could not die. The horror of it would be too much for all of them. Not their dear little Amy, who was only fifteen. And worst of all, she wouldn’t get to see Father one last time.

  One evening, when Mama came down looking paler and sadder than ever, holding a tray of broth that had remained untouched, Jo said to her, “Is there nothing else to do?”

  Mama shook her head. “I’ve asked everyone I can think of for their remedies. Nothing seems to make any difference.”

  They were quiet for a long time, listening to the weak sound of Amy’s cough.

  Finally Jo asked, “Do you think we should write for Father to come?”

  “I think we must. Your father—he would never forgive himself if he didn’t come. I think—I think she’s waiting for him.”

  And Mama set down the tray, and the two of them fell into each other’s arms.

  * * *

  • • •

  MAMA SENT THREE copies of the letter, in case the other two were lost, but they all said essentially the same thing—

  Amy is ill. Come home.

  Come now.

  There was no way to know if he would get the letters in time or, if he did, whether he would be able to come quickly enough. The last they’d heard, he was someplace in Mississippi, where there was a new school and a church being built. Even if the letters arrived, he might not make it home in time to attend the deathbed of his youngest daughter. He might not be able to risk the journey north with no money and little food.

  But Mama said they had to risk it anyway, for all their sakes. It would take a mir
acle to get Father home, but if it would save Amy, if it would rally her spirits to see her father home again, Mama said she had to try.

  They spent several terrible days waiting for word from Father, debating whether they should tell Amy or not. Would it help her more, or less? The snow had not started to fly yet, so the mail and the trains were still running, though both were somewhat unreliable, and the roads were passable.

  Four days passed, then five. Mostly Amy slept and coughed. They fed her when she was strong enough, changed her soaked night-dress and sheets, kept her room warm, but little by little, they could feel her slipping away.

  Jo watched the road with an intensity that even she hadn’t known she could possess. Because Father had to come. He had to. Every other consideration was forgotten.

  She was filled with fury.

  How wrong it was that Amy had fallen ill because the family continued to show a little kindness to people less fortunate than they!

  That Father had been gone for years upon years, first during the war, then during Reconstruction.

  That there was no money for train tickets for Father, or doctors for Amy, or any other thing that would have made Amy’s illness even the slightest bit more bearable.

  That Mr. Laurence was away, and there was no one to help.

  There was no justice when the Amys of the world sickened and died of poverty, and the Lady Harriets of the world flourished. When kindness and sympathy were punished and insolence was rewarded. No justice whatsoever.

  Jo was starting to understand that there was a kind of anger that burns the humanity out of a person, a kind of anger that started in the brain and disoriented the body as it worked its way from muscle to bone.

  How Jo felt was . . . furious.

  Betrayed.

  Utterly alone.

  She felt like telling someone the intimate details of that betrayal and that aloneness, but there was no one left to tell. Mama was barely strong enough to survive this herself without Jo pouring out the weight of her own heavy heart. And Meg had John Brooke now.

  Jo could feel a membrane slide between her older sister and herself, the thinnest windowpane, covered just so with frost. Enough to telegraph what there was beyond, but not enough to make out any of the detail. The effect was a ghostly reflection of the image that Jo had once been able to see so clearly.

  She was losing Meg, too. Meg was John’s now—and he was hers. If there was someone Meg would pour out her heart to, it would be him.

  For a moment, just that moment, Jo hated everything about love. Because love was betrayal. Without it, there was no loss. Perhaps without it there was nothing, but even so—no loss.

  At that moment, Jo believed that, between those two choices, it was the possibility of nothing—of not feeling, not aching, not even knowing—that might be worth it.

  Love was madness, was foolish, senseless. Love was a problem, and yet somehow the loss of it was a worse one. Love made normal things, sensible things, make no sense at all.

  It made Meg almost refuse a good man who loved her.

  It made their mama give all their bread to the Hummels and wait forever for a chaplain husband who was practically a ghost.

  It made Amy and Poppet speak in their own private language, the language of long-lost and now-reunited twins, shipwrecked together in the seas of some faraway world.

  It made familiar things terrifying, and terrifying things familiar.

  It burned the wings off moths, sending them headlong into the flame.

  There was no escape, no recovery, no happy ending. You loved and you lost. Your heart beat and the beating left it bruised beyond recognition. You could feel it, or try not to feel it, or long for it, but you didn’t get to keep it.

  It didn’t matter how, or even why. He loved you or he didn’t. She died or she didn’t. He left or he didn’t.

  In the end, you were always the loneliest person in the world, no matter who you were. Because that was what love was, the very raggedy edge of that feeling, the coming or the going of it. There was nothing else.

  Only shadows.

  * * *

  • • •

  JO WAS NAPPING and didn’t hear the knock when it came. “Hullo!” cried a voice. “Anyone home?”

  Startled, she flew to the door and flung it open. Outside, it was dark and raining, so the dark figure in the doorway looked for a moment like Father in his blue Union uniform, come home as if Jo had conjured him.

  Except the face had no beard. The figure’s hair was brown, not white.

  It wasn’t Father. It was John Brooke, who had come back from Boston in his ordinary brown coat.

  Beside him stood Laurie, looking sheepish in his own dripping hat and coat. “Oh, Jo,” he said. “I came as soon as I heard.”

  Theodore Laurence had come home.

  26

  A RECKONING

  After the two men were inside and their coats hung up to dry next to the fire—after the surprised hellos, the embraces, and (in the case of Meg and Brooke) a furtive kiss in the pantry—Jo took them upstairs to Amy, who cheered to see Laurie and rallied a bit, sitting up and whispering how glad she was that he’d come.

  “You look—different,” Amy wheezed. “Happier—than when—I saw you—last.”

  “I suppose I am,” said Laurie.

  “Don’t speak, dearest,” Jo whispered, smoothing Amy’s pillow. “Save your strength.”

  “That’s right.” Laurie gave her small white hand a squeeze. “Let us do the talking for you.”

  Amy smiled weakly. He gave her a little doll he’d bought in Boston, a fancy one with a china face and a beautiful gown of gold brocade. Amy, who’d never received such a lavish gift, clutched it to her. “It—will—be my—most favorite—possession,” she said.

  Jo nearly wept. But then Amy’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she went limp—fainted from exhaustion or happiness, or both.

  Laurie made a startled noise. Alarmed, Jo rushed Laurie out of the sick-room and back downstairs while Mama and Hannah scurried around fetching smelling salts and more camphor. The beautiful doll was put aside on a nearby table in hopes that Amy would be cheered by it later, when—if—she felt better.

  The four young people waited downstairs, the two girls trembling with fear that Mama would come downstairs to tell them that the worst had happened, the two men helpless to ease their suffering. For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of the wind rising outside. An autumn blow, with a hint of thunder. Everyone both tense and gloomy.

  No one said as much, but it was there in the air, unspoken: Amy was unlikely to make it through the night.

  “Your father?” Laurie asked, looking at Jo’s dark eyes.

  “I’m afraid he won’t come in time,” Jo said, quietly.

  “Oh, Jo,” Laurie said, for the third or fourth time.

  Jo simply nodded. There was little else that anyone could say.

  An awkward silence descended. Meg bustled into the kitchen for some tea and some bits of biscuit, leaving Jo alone with Laurie and Brooke.

  Jo couldn’t decide if she wanted to sob with relief to see Laurie there, or to slap him so hard his teeth rattled. For punishing her so. For ruining everything.

  Except, wasn’t this love, also? Showing up when you were needed, without being asked?

  She softened. Everything was forgotten, everything forgiven, because he had come to her family in their most desperate hour. “I’m so glad you’ve come, Laurie.” Her voice carefully neutral. She wouldn’t cry, not now. Not if she could help it.

  “I’m glad I could be here,” said Laurie. “If . . . to see Amy. She’s a dear girl, and I’m so very sorry she’s ill.”

  “And thank you for bringing him to us, Mr. Brooke,” said Jo warmly.

  Brooke nodded. They were all emotional, and being as careful
not to upset one another as they could.

  For his part, Laurie was surprised that there was not a single teasing note in Jo’s voice, nor the barest hint of sarcasm or mockery. She was genuinely glad to see him.

  She doesn’t know, he thought. Brooke hasn’t told her.

  But then, how could Jo know Laurie’s news when Brooke himself had only just learned of it earlier in the day? No one knew. And Laurie was not relishing the telling of it—not under these circumstances.

  Jo seemed not to notice his distress. “I hope your journey wasn’t arduous.”

  “Not at all.”

  Brooke bent to build up the fire and gave Laurie a significant look as he passed. Get on with it, the look said, but Laurie would not. Let someone else ask if there was something they wanted to know; he would volunteer nothing if he could help it.

  How different things were now than they’d been in New York, where Jo and Laurie had been each other’s dearest confidants. Where the four of them had been so merry, going to the opera and eating in cafés and rambling up and down Broadway all day long! Laurie could hardly believe that had been just a few short months ago.

  “How is university? Cambridge treating you well?” asked Jo.

  “You’ll be proud of me, Jo; my Latin has improved leaps and bounds,” replied Laurie with a faint smile, even as Brooke snorted.

  “And how is your sequel coming along?” asked Brooke. “Meg tells me you are working on the latest draft?”

  Jo stiffened, as every writer does when asked about the progress of the current work. “Oh, it’s coming” was all she said.

  At last, Meg came in from the kitchen with the tea things and spent a few moments pouring and passing out cups, which gave them all something to look at and a way to pass the time.

  “Thank you again for coming, Laurie,” Meg said, sitting down with her own cup. “It’s so good of you to be here now. I’m sorry if it will cause trouble with your studies?”

  “Of course not,” Laurie said. “Not even wild horses could keep me away.”