Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement! I'm having a lot of fun with my first fan-fic. I probably won't be posting a new chapter every day, but I'm enjoying the productivity while I have it!
Matthew stared at the wallpaper in Anne's room. The faint pattern was one that Anne had picked out herself; she had said that it reminded her of the happy feeling one got at the very beginning of summer.
It was Sunday night. The minister and doctor had left already, taking with them any bit of life that was left in the building. If Matthew felt anything, it was the familiar thick gray fog of gloom that had snuck up on Green Gables years before. He had to fight it for Anne's sake. It would not do for her to wake up to find Matthew and Marilla back in their hermit shells like they had been when she first came to the Island.
The sky was just starting to get dark and Matthew knew that he should climb into his own bed tonight instead of falling asleep in the wicker chair by Anne's bed. His own body ached with pains that he doubted would ever fully go away.
But oh, how he hated to leave his little girl's side.
A new rhythm had begun to emerge on the farm. In the morning, Jerry Boute and his brothers came over to help with the chores. And as soon as he was done at his parent's farm, Gilbert Blythe could be seen cutting across Orchard Slope and through the Haunted Wood to Green Gables.
Gilbert.
Oh how Anne would have blushed and sputtered if she knew how often Gilbert showed up at Green Gables. Matthew had heard of Gil- many times from Anne. She could never say his full name and if Matthew's suspicion was correct, Anne had carried far more about "Gil-" than she had let on.
No doubt she'd be pleased by the way Gilbert was helping keep the farm going. Or by the way he left her little bouquets of flowers every day. He had given Marilla a small bouquet of Lilies of the Valley a few hours ago, tied up with a bit of twine.
If Anne was awake, Matthew would have heard his fill of what she thought of Gilbert Blythe. But from the way he saw it, maybe it was a good thing Anne didn't know. One day she'd wake up to what a promising young man that Blythe boy was. One day.
There were many things that Anne did not know about the Blythes, the Barrys, and the Cuthberts. Secrets that weren't exactly hidden, but not talked about around the younger generation.
She didn't know that Marilla had once been courted by John Blythe or that Matthew had once been "dead gone" on her Diana's Aunt Josephine. He had even copied out some poems and sent them to her. Anonymously of course. Matthew never was a man much for courting but there was something lively about that Josephine that he had greatly admired.
But tragedy had changed the course the Cuthberts lives just as they were starting to hold a golden, growing promise. While their would be lovers had gone on to live vibrant lives, Matthew and Marilla had just grown older and grayer before their time.
Matthew quit going into town and Marilla spent as little time in Avonlea as she could. She still went to church on Sundays, but Matthew couldn't. Not with those reminders of the pain. By the time the gossip had finally settled down years later, the Cuthberts weren't as much forgotten as they were firmly categorized as strange hermits. If it hadn't been for Rachel Lynde and her sometimes bothersome ways, the Cuthberts would have faded away quietly. It wasn't until Anne stepped foot on Green Gables that life came back to the farm.
She had enchanted him with her talk of fairies and dryads. It's like she had brought in a bit of magic with the sea breeze and her large gray eyes. He didn't understand half of what she said but he enjoyed listening to her happy prattle.
Matthew shook his head, no, there was much that Anne didn't know.
One day, one day he'd tell her. Tell her how he had always wished for a daughter and how he was the one who had told Mrs. Spencer to get a girl. There had been no mistake. Not really. Not ever. Providence knew what he was doing when Anne Shirley came into his life.