Jo & Laurie Read online

  “The Slough of Despond?” Jo wiped her face with her sleeve. “That’s not how it felt. It felt like we just lost our way. I know I did.”

  “We all did. Meg, fleeing as soon as she could to make a home of her own with Mr. Brooke—”

  “As if she could escape the shadow in ours,” Jo mused.

  Mama Abba nodded. “Amy, acting out for every scrap of attention she could beg from us—”

  Jo smiled. “Good or bad.”

  “Your father, hiding his own grief in the pain of the wounded.” Mama Abba looked away, and Jo wondered at the unacknowledged pain her mother must have endured, these long years on her own.

  “Me, running like the devil from anything that could make me feel,” Jo said, tiredly.

  “Me, furious with your father for going, and with Beth for having to go. And beyond furious at God and every angel in heaven for taking her,” Mama Abba said, finally looking Jo in the eye. “And for very nearly taking Amy.” She shook her head. “I’ve been so angry for so long, Jo.”

  “Oh, Mama. You never said— I never knew. But you couldn’t say, could you? Because you had to hold the rest of us, what was left of us, together.”

  “No, my dear girl. That was you. I’ve blamed myself for letting you, and I’ve blamed myself—and your father—for needing you to. And then, one day, I just stopped.”

  Jo touched her mother’s cheek. “I wanted to help, Mama. Any way I could.”

  “I know that, Jo. At least, now I do. And it’s how I made my peace with it. Do you know why?”

  Jo shook her head.

  “Because of the letters that come addressed to you, by the hundreds. Because of the way your little sister speaks of you when you aren’t there to see it. Because of all the other little sisters—the ones you’ll never know or meet—who you’ve made believe they could tell a story of their own.”

  Jo could feel her heart hammering inside her chest.

  Tell her.

  You can tell Mama.

  Jo began slowly, because they were not words she had ever spoken. “There were times, Mama Abba—there was a time—when the shadow of death seemed too great to outrun. When I thought I would not come back from it. I could not. When I stood at the edge of the Mill Dam and wondered if I should just—”

  Mama Abba pulled Jo into her arms. There it was, that wordless, reassuring warmth. That was her mother. Jo could remember it—the brush of her sleeve, the smell of her cloak—from her earliest days.

  Now Jo was sobbing so hard, she could barely get the words out. “And I thought—I thought that no one with that sort of darkness in them could, by any right—”

  “Love and be loved?” Mama Abba stroked her shaking curls.

  Jo nodded, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder.

  “Yet here you are. Because you’re Josephine March, the bravest soul I’ve ever known. And that girl never leaves a fight, not before it’s over.” Mama Abba pulled back, raising Jo’s chin with a steady hand. “There is nothing little about you, Jo. And I’m so, so proud to call you my daughter.”

  Jo smiled as Mama Abba pulled the familiar handkerchief from her sleeve—the one with the cross-stitched AM—and dabbed at Jo’s tears. “Do I have your blessing, Mama Abba?”

  “To be married? To a boy I raised almost as my own? What do you think?”

  Jo smiled, taking the handkerchief from her mother. “I think I must look even more of a wretch than usual.”

  Mama Abba placed Beth’s porcelain dolls carefully back in the cedar chest, closing the lid with a thump.

  “It’s your life, Jo. Write it however you like. Just write it true.”

  * * *

  • • •

  NOBODY—WELL, ALMOST NOBODY—NOTICED when Jo and her mother slipped back into the party. Meg and Brooke were leading the dancing; Grandfather Laurence was complimenting Hannah on the luncheon; Mr. March was sharing a plate of cake with Amy, who had frosting on the tip of her nose. The scene was a sublimely happy one.

  Only Laurie was pacing at the edge of the festivities.

  “And?” He looked nervously from Mama Abba to Jo when Jo reappeared by his side. “Are you all right? Did something happen?”

  “Yes. And—yes.” It was all Jo could manage, but her eyes were shining with love, and before she could even attempt to say more than that, he stopped her.

  “Wait!” He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and came back again with something in his hand. Something small and light. He opened the box and put it into her palm—a ring of sapphires encircled with diamonds.

  “What is this?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “It belonged to my mother.” Laurie coughed. “And don’t worry. I never gave it to Harriet. She insisted on using one of those fancy New York jewelers. She picked out her own ring and is returning it to Tiffany.”

  Harriet. It already seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “My mother would have loved you, Jo. Knowing that, it makes me feel . . .”

  “What?” she asked, leaning closer to him, suddenly giddy.

  “I don’t know. Just . . . feel, I suppose. You make me feel so much, Jo. You always have. When you ask me what I’m thinking about, or how I’m feeling—”

  “How do you feel, Laurie?” she asked, teasing.

  “How I feel is you.” The words came husky from his throat, and from his heart. “My home.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Theodore Laurence. We may make a writer of you yet.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “No, thank you. There’s already one writer in this family.” He grinned.

  This family.

  Jo leaned closer—but he stopped her.

  “Please, Jo. Let me do this properly. I’ve been waiting for such a long time,” he said, as he slowly got down on his knee. Savoring every moment.

  “Oh!” She had no words for once. She felt so happy, she wanted to laugh. And he looked so happy, she did.

  The room went hushed as Meg and Brooke, Mama Abba and Father, Grandfather and Amy all looked on at the sight of Laurie proposing to Jo one more time. Amy’s mouth dropped open as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

  Neither can I, thought Jo.

  Meg leaned her head on Brooke’s shoulder. Her eyes held Jo’s, blazing with sisterly love. Jo felt her own eyes begin to prickle before Laurie even said a word. As if there hadn’t been enough said already.

  “Will you have me, Jo?” he asked. Something in his tone was so raw—as if he still didn’t quite believe he could ever have the answer he sought. “Will you? I know I’m not worthy. I know I’m not perfect. And I’ve done this all wrong, I know—”

  Jo moved a finger to his lips. “You know me, Teddy. Just as I know you. And that’s enough, so much more than enough. Why—it’s perfect.”

  His eyes were twinkling now, but it wasn’t the usual Teddy twinkle. They were sparkling with tears. Unembarrassed, unabashed, almost proud. Running down a face full of joy. Then he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and laughed. “You still haven’t answered the question, Mr. Snodgrass.”

  Jo reached down and held his hand tightly in hers.

  Then she took hold of his other one, pulling herself down until they were both on their knees, face-to-face. True equals.

  “Yes, Mr. Weller. I’ll have you and I’ll love you, just as I always have. For now, and for always, old boy.”

  “Old Snod.” He cupped her face with both hands and drew her toward him, kissing her with such passion that it felt to Jo like the sun itself was embracing her.

  A kiss like that can explode a person into nothing.

  Into everything.

  Finally.

  I love you. I love you. I love you.

  Jo pulled away, gasping. “Teddy!”

  Laurie grinned back at her, lacing his fingers through hers.
“The point at which whalebone corsets melt? I think we’ve found it.” Then he dropped his mouth near her ear and whispered, “And I’m quite certain we’ll find it again . . . and again . . . and again.”

  All she could do was nod as he slipped the ring on her finger, and marvel at the feeling of it.

  The family broke out in applause, and then Jo and Laurie realized, dazedly, that they were not alone.

  They never had been.

  They were surrounded by love. Love for each other, love for their family, a love that would sustain and carry them all their lives.

  Beginning now.

  “To Jo and Laurie,” said Meg, lifting her glass.

  “To the Cherry King and his Queen,” agreed Amy.

  “To my dear children,” said Mama Abba.

  “May they find happiness in each other for the rest of their lives,” said Father, looking at his wife. “And may we.”

  “It’s about time!” shouted John Brooke, to the delight of everyone present.

  And so it was.

  A BRIEF HISTORICAL NOTE

  JO & LAURIE is a work of fiction inspired by Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, and also by the life of Alcott herself. Because Alcott chose to use her own life—growing up as a fledgling writer in a cottage full of sisters in Concord, Massachusetts—as the inspiration for her first domestic fiction, using what we now know about “Lu” Alcott has allowed us to reexamine and rethink her beloved literary stand-in, Jo March.

  In general, we tried to follow the basic touchpoints of Alcott’s original story line—certainly the spirit of it—as well as her original cast of characters. From smaller details (like Amy’s infamous punishment for smuggling pickled limes into her school, her burning of Jo’s first manuscript, the scorched dress Jo was forced to wear to Sally Gardiner’s ball, and The Pickwick Papers) to the larger beats (like Beth’s death, Laurie’s rebuffed proposal, Jo’s trip to New York, and their father’s absence), we took great efforts to continually reconnect our story to Alcott’s. When we chose to depart from the world of the established fiction, or from explorations based on questions raised by the established fiction (see: Jo and Laurie’s romance), those decisions were usually inspired by Alcott’s personal history or the letters of Louisa, Bronson, and May Alcott.

  The Alcott family did live in Concord, Massachusetts, at Orchard House, named for the forty apple trees Bronson Alcott planted. Lu Alcott described the home, in a letter to her editor, as “damp and earwiggy”—she wondered at how disappointed her readers would be to see it. When they were young, the Alcott children were allowed to draw on the walls, and Bronson Alcott referred to his girls as a “golden circle,” which inspired the image our Amy draws on the March girls’ bedroom wall.

  Like the March family, intellectually minded Bronson and social-work-minded Abigail “Abba” Alcott had four daughters—Anna (“Meg”), Louisa (“Jo”), Elizabeth (“Beth”), and Abigail May, called May (“Amy”). Anna married John Bridge Pratt, who like John Brooke, was not a man of means. Elizabeth died of scarlet fever at the age of twenty-two. May trained and ultimately became a successful painter who married a Swiss businessman and lived in Paris until her untimely death at age thirty-nine, eight weeks after childbirth; our Amy’s brush with death was inspired by May’s own sad, sudden fate.

  Both Jo’s and Louisa’s father was a chaplain in the Civil War, where Louisa herself served as a nurse, though Jo nurses only Beth. The fictional Mr. March and the real Mr. Alcott both struggled to earn a living for most of their lives, pressuring both Jo and Louisa into early careers writing for the penny press under a variety of names. (Louisa wrote as Flora Fairfield and A. M. Barnard.) Even at the height of her success, Louisa’s letters unfailingly mention the price of every expenditure she makes—including booking second-class passage to cross the Atlantic—something every writer alive can understand, including the authors of this book. (Ha!)

  The romantic musician “Laurie” is, according to Alcott herself, a hybrid character. He’s based on a Polish musician, Ladislas “Laddie” Wisniewski, with whom Louisa spent time in Paris, and Alf Whitman, an actor Louisa performed a Dickens play—The Haunted Man—with at the Concord Dramatic Union.

  Thomas Niles really was Alcott’s editor at Roberts Brothers Publishers in Boston. He also posthumously published Emily Dickinson, as well as most of the major American Renaissance writers. The first publication of Little Women was, indeed, a sudden and phenomenal success—a print run of two thousand sold out and went into reprints almost immediately. Alcott’s royalty, in lieu of the one-hundred-dollar advance she was otherwise expecting, became the sustaining income of her extended family for years to come.

  The pressure to resolve the marriage plots of Little Women is how Good Wives came to be published immediately after (in the United States, the two books are now published as one, under the title Little Women). At the time, Louisa steadfastly and openly refused to allow the fact that her readers were overwhelmingly shipping Jo and Laurie to influence the marriage plots in the second book; she famously said, “I won’t marry Jo to Laurie for anything.” Of course, Louisa herself never married.

  When our own story’s departures were not inspired by Alcott’s history or letters, they were framed by the historical context of literary or popular culture in mid-nineteenth-century America, especially in the greater Boston area, about which much has been written. Charles Dickens really did tour the United States for speaking engagements in both 1842 and 1867, traveling with his wife to speak at Steinway Hall, as in our story; Alcott did refer to “old Charley” with affection in her letters, upon hearing that he had died. Also in our story, Jo refers to feminist essayist Margaret Fuller’s “Manifesto of Femality”; there is no question Alcott would have known of that text as well. The couturier Charles Worth was a famed dressmaker of the period—especially to the uppertens—though he had no salon in New York City. Just as Meg is married in the “Worth dress,” it was the custom of the time for most brides to be married in the finest dresses they owned, as opposed to purchasing new ones. Finally, the language of flowers was a Victorian code that assigned meanings to different flowers, which were sometimes used to send messages. Though, in our case, vegetables have been quite useful as well. ☺

  Finally, it is through Alcott’s own letters that we know there was a day in 1857 when the author stood at the edge of the Mill Dam, in Boston’s Back Bay, and contemplated jumping. The high highs and the low lows of one of the most successful writers the world has ever known is strangely relatable to our modern reader and writer friends, so we thought it was important to share that moment with Lu’s doppelgänger Jo in our retelling, too.

  —MS & MdlC

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WE WOULD LIKE to thank the little women and one little man (ha!) who helped bring this book to your hands: our awesome editor Stephanie Pitts, “fourth sister” Jennifer Klonsky, and brother-from-another-mother agent Richard Abate. Pickled limes and peppermints for you all!

  Thank you to everyone at Penguin, especially Jen Loja, Shanta Newlin, Elyse Marshall, Felicia Frazier, Emily Romero, Christina Colangelo, Alex Garber, Carmela Iaria, Kristie Radwilowicz, Eileen Savage, and Cindy Howle. You’ve hidden our scorch marks so beautifully, we might actually enjoy this ball.

  Thank you, as always, to the third musketeer, Rafi Simon, and fourth musketeer, Susanna Hoffs, as well as the YALLkids, Tori Hill and Shane Pangburn. (Pickwick Club, please come to order!) And to our own beloved Lady Hat, undying thanks for lending us your fabulous name!

  Thank you to our families, especially our own Marmees, Marilyn Ross Stohl and Ching de la Cruz, who gave us our copies of Little Women and encouraged us to chase Jo March up into her writing garret. Thanks and love to our dearest Emma, May, Javi, Mike, and Mattie. Everything we write is for you.

  And lastly but mostly, a huge and enduring thank-you to you, Dear Reader, because Christopher Columbus! The thanks we f
eel for you is not little at all.

  —Margie and Mel

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Photo credit: Joseph Moretti

  MARGARET STOHL IS a #1 New York Times bestselling nerd, world-builder, video-game creator, comic-book writer, and festival founder. She has published fifteen novels and graphic novels and contributed to several games and countless comics, including the Beautiful Creatures series, the Black Widow: Forever Red duology, the ongoing Mighty Captain Marvel comic, and the Life of Captain Marvel miniseries.

  You can visit Margaret at

  mstohl.com

  @mstohl

  margaret_stohl

  Photo credit: Maria Cina

  MELISSA DE LA CRUZ IS the #1 New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly internationally bestselling author of many critically acclaimed books for readers of all ages, including the Alex & Eliza trilogy, the Queen’s Assassin duology, Disney’s Descendants novels, the Blue Bloods series, and the Witches of East End series.

  You can visit Melissa at

  melissa-delacruz.com

  @MelissadelaCruz

  authormelissadelacruz

  MARGARET AND MELISSA are longtime friends and cofounders of the YALLWEST book festival.

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