twenty-one
In the new year, a letter arrived from Paris, from Amy.
Dear Jo,
Forgive me.
I have betrayed you.
-Amy.
“What does it say?”
asked Meg, seeing the frown on Jo’s face.
“It looks uncharacteristically short for our sister.”
They were in the breakfast parlor, eating jam and scones. The first snow of the new year was starting to powder the grounds outside the frosty window, and Sainted John stood to feed the fire, because he saw his wife slightly shiver.
“It’s nice and cryptic,”
Jo folded the perfumed paper and put it away. She bit into her apple with a most satisfying crunch.
“Says nothing, really. Except that she has betrayed me.”
The last they had heard from her, around Christmas, Amy was perfectly happy in Paris, and had no plans on returning for the London season. Aunt March had grown increasingly frail, and they preferred not to travel.
“She has what?”
Sainted John was affronted.
“Pray do not get excited, my lord,”
Jo told him affectionately. He loved it when she called him ‘her lord’ like that. Meg thought it childish. Even now, she was trying so hard not to roll her eyes, she looked most comical.
“Amy is given to the dramatic. I am sure she will reveal all in due course.”
But she didn’t.
After that short note, there was only silence.
Until her brother, Viscount Vidal, came back on leave for a fortnight in the middle of January.
…
He was thin as a rail, his skin slightly darker, and his hair was shaved close to his head, like a soldier’s.
He said he was a general; he looked as if he had been through hell.
“I have been a despicable brother to you, my dear,”
he said, with a slight tone of his London-days affectation. But his was now a soldier’s voice, and he could not go back to lounging about. His intonation was low, sharp and quick.
“Not despicable,”
Jo said.
“Just non-existent.” Absent.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Like our father, d’ you mean?”
he asked, watching her. A sudden vulnerability flashed in his eyes, and Jo caught in them a glimpse of open expression she had rarely, if ever, been allowed to see.
“Not like father,” she said.
“Right,”
Justin smirked, closing up as quickly as he had opened up.
“I am far too debauched to be like him.”
“You are not beyond hope, Justin.”
“I am afraid all the rumors about me are true, Jo,”
he said quietly.
“I am just as depraved as society believes me to be.”
“I do not believe you to be depraved,”
she replied quickly.
“Oh, but I am.”
He sounded so jaded, Jo’s heart bled for him.
She was silent, and she hoped he couldn’t tell how devastated his careless words made her, but, oddly, he appeared to be watching her. That was the strange thing about her brother: everything about him seemed to be carefully curated so that he would appear unaffected of anything or anyone. Cold, hard, indifferent. Uncaring. But he did care.
He did care about some things, and maybe her opinion was one of them.
She winced. His face went back to showing no emotion, trying hard to look as if he did not care that he had become the thing he had hated most. But Jo knew better—she could tell how disgusted he was with himself, and that gave her hope.
“You have barely been anything at all to me for years,”
she said and to her surprise, she saw something like sharp pain flash across his face.
His features, at one time so much like her own, belonged now to the face of a stranger. Hardened by war and arrogance. Justin hung his head.
“I guess Father was right, wasn’t he? I am good for nothing, after all.”
He smiled and it was ugly.
“I did not say that, Justin,”
Jo interrupted him before he could say more.
“Please, don’t think that I—”
“I know very well that I am beyond redemption. Hated by my peers, by society, and by my own family.”
Apparently, he would not be stopped.
“I do not hate you, by Jove!”
she exclaimed.
The viscount chuckled softly.
“Don’t be vulgar, sister.”
Jo observed the scorn curling the corners of his mouth with affected apathy. She had not noticed the subtle changes the war had already wrought on him before, but she was beginning to now. His skin had turned golden from the Peninsula sun, and he had had his hair cut short, but he wore a wig, which he’d flung to the nearest settee as soon as the servant was out of earshot.
He did not look like her little brother anymore. He looked like a soldier. A general, if his uniform was to be believed. It still seemed like a lie to her: My brother is going back to the war. He might not come back.
Justin was watching her with those electric blue eyes of his. She had never seen him so alert, so… awake. Then he shattered the illusion by lifting a hand dismissively in the air.
“Listen, that’s not what I came to talk to you about. I came to warn—to prepare you.”
Jo had never heard her brother stumble over a word before.
“There is a piece of news I became aware of. I… I received word from Paris.”
“Oh?”
Jo’s immediately thought of the little billet she had received a few weeks ago. Her stomach twisted nervously. “Amy.”
Justin nodded.
“She has gotten herself engaged,” he said.
It felt as if someone had cut off the air in her throat. Amy had gotten engaged and had not told her.
“I am sure she will write of it soon,”
she said, her own voice coming to her as if from a distance.
‘I have betrayed you. Forgive me.’
Was that what that cryptic, silly little note had meant? But why betrayal? And why would her sister not be forthcoming with the news?
Justin was shaking his head. He had gone a tad pale, she noticed now, and looked anxious, as if he were about to impart more bad news. But what was left? What else was there to break her heart more?
“You’d better sit down,”
Justin said, his voice thick with more kindness than she had thought him capable of.
“Tell me, Justin.”
“It’s Laurie,”
her brother said, his gorgeous face twisted into a mask of concern.
“He is in Paris as well. Amy and Theodore are engaged. I’m sorry.”
…
Jo did not know how much time passed. She just sat there, in front of the fire, frozen. When she looked up with blurry eyes, she was surprised to find her brother standing by the wall. Watching her. Waiting.
“How much time has passed?”
she asked.
“No more than seven hours,”
Justin replied with something akin to gentleness in his voice.
“Eight at most.”
Jo sat up quickly. It was dark outside. She had no real memory of the passage of time.
“You’ve stayed here the whole time?”
she asked him. Justin nodded as if it was a matter of course.
“You needn’t have,”
she murmured.
“You only have a few days’ leave, you should be spending it with your friends, in London, you should—”
“I only took my leave of absence to come here, to you,”
Justin said.
“I did not want you to be alone when you learnt of it.”
I will not cry.
“Thank you. Although I do have Meg and the Sainted John.”
“They do not know,”
he said simply.
Jo shivered.
“Oh and you do?”
she scoffed.
“You remember what I confided in you that day you were drunk off your head, and about to duel a man to death?”
“I do,”
Justin said simply.
“The rest of the day is quite a blur. That piece of information was too, for a time, but eventually, I remembered.”
There did not seem anything more left for him to say.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you said that.”
Jo rubbed her eyes—they were burning, even though she had not shed a single tear.
“You’re right; I have not had the courage to tell Meg. You are the only one who knows about L-Laurie and me.”
It was hard to say his name for some reason. Maybe because she hadn’t said it for so long. Also, because now it belonged to someone else.
To… No. She couldn’t even think about Amy.
All she could think about was Amy.
“Do not tell anyone about this. About him and me. Ever,”
she commanded her brother.
“It will be as if it never happened. I order you to forget it.”
Justin was fighting a smile, but his eyes looked sad. I do not want your pity, Jo thought at him with sudden viciousness. She instantly regretted it. Her anger was coming to her rescue, but she hated the darkness that was rising up within her. After fighting it for so long, she was back here, sinking into it. Deeper and deeper, with every passing moment.
“I shall not,”
Justin said calmly, and he sat next to her on the couch.
“Nor should you. You told me he loved you,”
he added, after a minute.
“Was it true?”
“He said he did,” Jo said.
I will not let my voice tremble. I will not.
“It occurs to me,”
Justin went on, as if he had given this a lot of thought, “that I never asked you the most important question of all. So, even though I have delayed irreparably, I ask it now: Are you in love, Jo?”
She sniffled. Justin’s expression did not turn to pity. He just regarded her calmly, waiting for her response.
I will never forgive myself if I cry now.
But she was crying.
“Of course I am in love,”
the words burst out of her with the suppressed force of years. Eons. Decades of hiding the truth from herself.
“Of course I am in love with him. Have been this whole time. What an absolute idiot he is. Why can he not see it?”
Justin pressed his lips together as if to stop whatever words rose in his throat from coming out.
“Then again, I am the bigger fool,”
Jo went on, still crying.
“The truth has been here all this time, staring me in the face, and I’ve only now been able to confront it.”
Justin waited for her to get it all out.
She told him everything that was in her heart. He listened; she did too.
He was better than a piece of paper, she found out. Somewhat more alive.
By the time she was done, she was crying fully, and did not even care to hide it. All she cared about was surviving this positive storm of feelings that was dragging her under like a current. It was a struggle merely to keep breathing.
But finally, she was spent. She had told her brother everything.
She sat back, fighting for breath.
“Well,”
Justin said, and his voice held that strange, sickening kindness. He regarded her with his soldier’s eyes.
“Now you know.”
Dear Beth,
Of all the things Laurie taught me, this was the best: he taught me how to fall. Well, he did not necessarily teach me that—gravity took care of it.
But Laurie was the one who allowed me to fall. In fact, he made it safe for me to fall. To climb, as well. We grew up in a world that did not allow ladies to climb trees, that did not allowed ladies to fall, not in the literal sense or the metaphorical.
But how else can one grow up and learn to breathe the highest air and taste the best fruit, unless one risks a fall?
Laurie did that for me. He let me fall when no one else would. We climbed trees together, we fell together, we patched each other up.
So, now, it just stands to reason that of all the people I could fall in love with, it should be him.
I think it might be time to fall.
If only I knew how to. Or that someone would be there to catch me.
When I was climbing trees it was not allowed—or deemed safe—for girls to do so. It was not allowed for girls to bruise and break, to bleed and fail. But I was able to do it because he was standing at the bottom of the tree, his arms open. Waiting, in case I fell.
But he’s not at the bottom of the tree anymore.
Who will catch me now if I fall?
Eternally,
Your sister.