eighteen
Meg and her Sir John arrived at Orchard Hall in the last week of October, without sending word first.
“We shall stay here,”
Margaret said, “with your permission.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Jo asked, wide-eyed.
“You look so thin,”
her sister observed, sailing past her and into the Hall in a flurry of pastel silks. Jo was still dressed in mourning black.
“Thinner than I’ve seen you in ages. You were right, John, we took too long.”
“Took too long to what?” Jo asked.
“To come back,”
Sir John winced, smiling in that blonde way of his.
“How are you, Josephine? You look well.”
“She looks thin!”
Meg shouted from the top of the stairs. She was already hurrying towards her old room.
“Always beautiful, dear Josephine,”
Sir John said faithfully, and turned to direct his manservant, who kept unloading boxes and trunks from what appeared to be a fleet of carriages. A veritable army of people followed behind him with more trunks and portmanteaux.
“I shall have my own man take care of these, I do not wish to trouble you.”
“Trouble me…?”
Jo was so confused she felt a tinge of vertigo.
Everything was swirling around her in a frenzy. After all these months of quiet and solitude, the commotion was almost too much to bear, which was strange. Nothing had ever been too much for Josephine St. Claire before.
“By the look on your face,”
Meg said, sailing back down the stairs—Meg always sailed instead of walking, there had never been a more graceful creature—“dear sister, I can tell that my letter did not reach you before we did.”
“You sent a letter? What did it say?”
“It said,”
Meg said in her gentle, matter-of-fact tone, “that our honeymoon has ended. And we are coming straight to Orchard Hall to take up residence here.”
“Residence?”
Jo asked. Meg nodded. “Here?”
Another nod.
“For how long?”
“For the foreseeable future,” Meg said.
…
It transpired that Meg meant exactly what she said.
Meg and her husband had come to stay with Jo; to live in Orchard Hall, even though they had only just married. With their titles and their riches, the entire ton would be at their feet, had they established themselves in London. And yet, they chose to stay in Concord, hundreds of miles away, hidden in the country.
With Jo.
Sir John was nothing but the soul of kindness and discretion, but after the first week, Jo was bursting with questions. She couldn’t be silent anymore.
“Tell me, Meg,”
she asked her sister.
“Why are you really here? Why are you spending the last days of this glorious autumn with your sad spinster of a sister?”
Margaret, not usually given to passionate displays of affection, put aside her sewing, and squeezed Jo’s shoulders tightly in an embrace.
“Because I wanted you to know that you are not alone, Jo,”
she said.
“You will never be alone. Never. Here is proof. Remember that.”
And for the first time since losing Laurie and Papa, safe in the arms of her sister, Jo finally allowed herself to cry.
Dear Beth,
I keep expecting him to walk down the path between our houses.
I keep expecting to hear his steps bounding down the lane.
I said everyone I loved would leave me, but I didn't care, as long as he stayed.
And he didn't stay and nothing else matters.
He was the one I never thought would leave me.
I never thought I would count him among those who left.
I never thought I would avoid his name in my thoughts, on my lips.
That it would be poison to even remember him.
I never thought that he would be added to the number of people who became a reminder of loss to me.
I keep expecting him to walk down the lane between our houses. I keep forgetting he doesn’t live here anymore.
Eternally,
Your sister