we were peaceful when we were sleeping
or after we had a fight
we were civil when people were watching
we were worst when we were right
Catherine Feeny, Hush Now
The night is coming on fast and Laurie is looking at her with something strange in his eyes. "Don't," she says, softly at first, and then sharply, fumbling for a joke to lessen the tension but coming up dry. His fingers curl around hers, firmly, familiarly.
"Don't what?" He smiles, innocently. Jo's lungs constrict.
Marmee calls her in from the house, blessed, blessed relief, and Jo slips away, all lightness and long dark hair in the dusk. "Goodnight, my boy--" the rest is swallowed in a self-conscious laugh.
He waits in the garden 'til the light in her window goes out.
A blade of grass tickles whisper-soft across her sun-warmed cheek and Teddy's low whistle hums in her ear. She stretches, cat-like, and bats him away, too sleepy to put any force behind her fists.
"Never took you for a lazybones," comes his voice, jovial, teasing, and she smiles in spite of herself, hand palmed across her eyes, Teddy a fearsome shadowy figure towering above her, blocking out the sun. She feels him, the weight of him, collapsing down, crazy limbs all helter-skelter on the ground beside her, and she shifts away infinitesimally, a reflex honed by time and habit. He is a long warm presence breathing hard beside her and she can smell the crispness of his pressed linen suit, and the breeze ruffles his curls, and oh. What a story this moment would make, she thinks, in the instant before she catches herself.
"Never took you for one either, Mr. High-and-Mighty College Man." Her voice crackles, almost giggly, humor warring with annoyance.
He chuckles and lifts one hand, as if to cuff her, like old times, but lets it fall limply back to his side, as though he has thought better of it. "Two more years, Jo dear, and you'll be out of excuses to get miffed at me." He chews the stem between his teeth, bobbing soft against his lower lip, and if it weren't for those wicked eyes, long-lashed and innocent, she'd call him smug.
"I'm sure I'll think of something," she mutters, sharp, looking away. For once, he doesn't press the issue.
Her eyes drift shut as his breathing slows, and she cradles her manuscript--it's an old story, a silly one, due for revision--tight to her chest, and when she awakens, disoriented in the chilly wet dew of evening, there is a posy, half-blossomed, pressed between the murder and the denouement.
The story is an awful one, truly irredeemable, and she shreds it to pieces two weeks later, but the posy she cannot throw away.
"Love him, dearest," Beth sighs out quietly one day, so soft that Jo almost thinks she imagined it.
"Love who?" She leans in closer. The clock on the mantle ticks and ticks and ticks and Jo's skirt rustles, too loud.
But Beth is already asleep.
"Congratulations yet again, Teddy dearest! Matrimony suits you; you're actually almost handsome." She's as boisterous, as obnoxiously thrilled, as it is possible to be, and her eyes flit from his buttonhole (a small delicate white rose) to his face. His cheeks are flushed, but not with wine, never with wine. He is too good for that. She supposes it must be love.
"Many thanks." He beams at her with the carelessness of one who has much joy to spare, one eye on his blushing bride, willowy in her matronly lavender, kissing relatives at the other end of the receiving line.
"But if you hurt our Amy, I promise I won't hesitate to hunt you down and disembowel you." Her voice doesn't tremble, and if it does it's with mirth, not pain. He laughs, smile all lopsided, and extends a hand.
"Deal. Shake on it, like a gentleman?"
He holds her fingers in his for just a half-second too long.
Another year, another wedding. Jo holds onto her Professor for dear life and counts herself lucky that Laurie looks at her only once, and when he does he is smiling. Meg cries, holding on to Marmee for support, and Jo finds herself sniffing up traitorous tears before she knows what has happened.
"You did splendidly, my dear girl." His lips brush chastely against her cheek, after, and Amy glows, delicate, refined, even in her condition. She expects her confinement in three months, and when Jo embraces her she is careful not to touch anything below the shoulders.
"For heaven's sake, Teddy, I only had to repeat what the minister said. It was hardly a difficult task." She doesn't know why she sounds so irritated. Friedrich kisses her hand, fondly.
"But a task you haf performed well." His voice is deep in her ear and his smile is the sweetest thing she has ever seen. Teddy grins brightly and Amy's charming laugh tinkles.
"I defer to the bridegroom, of course." And then they are gone, arm-in-arm, leaving the happy couple to their lemonade.
Jo waves, compelled by both habit and politeness, but for the first time in a long time Laurie forgets to look back.
When Jo has been married four years she gives birth to twins, sons. One is stillborn.
Friedrich holds her as she convulses, their wailing surviving son suckling at her chest, desperate for nourishment, and days later, when her sobs begin to heave themselves out, dry, and her pen will let her write again, she takes her baby, swaddled in blankets and his family's overbearing love, to visit his brother.
The gravestone is unmarked and she traces the space where his name would have been, ink-stained fingers shaking with the cold. Laurie is there, a long warm presence kneeling on the grass at her side, and this is familiar and yet not, and his hands run through her long thick hair, letting it flow loose down her shoulders, and the past eight years are blurred, distant, through the film of their tears.
Don't, she whispers, and her voice doesn't shake, and he ignores her, as always, and when his breath whistles against her neck she imagines it is the wind.
"His name is Teddy." It comes out more insistent than she'd intended. Friedrich nods, understanding, loving, and doesn't ask questions.
She takes him to Amy's one night after supper, and little sweet Beth, frail and placid, kisses her new cousin on the cheek. Uncle Laurie plays a lullaby, something by Brahms, and Teddy drifts to sleep in her arms, rocking to-and-fro, to-and-fro, until she herself can keep her eyes open no longer.
When she awakens there is a posy in her hand.