Elizabeth hunkered down for another Saturday night in. It had become almost a routine after Jane and Charlotte had left: Kitty and Lydia would put on far too much makeup and too little clothing and go out, her mother had her 'book club' (she and her friends established it a decade ago with a rather ambitious reading list, though when it turned out that none of them enjoyed reading they decided to just get together weekly to gossip), her father secluded himself in his study with a new book for the weekend, and Elizabeth and Mary would sit down and do a puzzle together.

With her best friend and her closest sister out of the country, spring semester had been long, boring, and tedious thus far – and it was only February. In the absence of her two usual confidants, Elizabeth had been trying to develop a better relationship with Mary. Sure, they had their differences but they also found a surprising amount of common ground as well. Mary could never truly replace Jane or Charlotte but Elizabeth was realizing that she'd never really given her middle sister much of a chance either.

Their puzzle routine typically included swapping between who chose the music – once one album ended the other sister made her selection. This week they'd started off well: Mary had chosen a nice classical album that made good background music to their conversation about creative arts therapy and the ways that it bridged between their fields of art and music. When that album ended, Elizabeth selected a catchy pop album without much thought and continued working on the puzzle. By the fourth song in the album – and the first allusion to sex – Mary began a sermon about the dangers of popular music to the moral fabric of society and how it promoted over-indulgence in sex, drugs, and alcohol. Lizzie sat through this monologue through the next half hour, biting her tongue because she knew that arguing with Mary on this would get her nowhere. When the album ended, Mary selected a Christian rock album. Elizabeth, in turn, pointed out that Christian rock as a genre was merely emulating rock and pop music in a sanitized form that stifled the creativity of the original musical expression. At the end of that (thankfully) brief album, Elizabeth had had it with her sister and put on Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar just to piss her sister off.

As they shared the Bennet stubborn streak, both refused to leave the table first and therefore lose the argument. How many more pieces do we have left, maybe fifty? A hundred? Elizabeth thought to herself as she fit in the last missing piece to the section she'd been working on, cursing herself for choosing a puzzle with so many repetitive patterns. Mary had just been silently fuming as she worked on the far corner of the puzzle. Elizabeth moved to the central portion. A half hour later Elizabeth triumphantly placed the last piece and both sisters stormed away from the table.

Collapsing on her bed in the room that suddenly felt too big and empty, Elizabeth reflected on her current loneliness. She missed Jane, but she'd had regular emails and texts with her to know that she was enjoying London and finding her courses and shadowing interesting. She felt Charlotte's absence more keenly since they hadn't really talked after their fight. They'd hugged goodbye before she left, but things still weren't normal between them. Had she over-reacted? It was true that she'd practically pushed Jane into her study abroad while trying to pull Charlotte back. If she was honest with herself, neither reaction was based on the academic and cultural enrichment opportunities the programs offered. Jane had been so sad since Charlie left and the two had been such a perfect couple that Elizabeth was certain that if they could just see each other again it would all work out well. They were in love and whatever Caroline and Darcy had done to separate them surely wouldn't hold up if they could just talk to each other openly.

With Charlotte and Willa it was different. Charlotte liked Willa, they were cute enough together when Willa wasn't blathering on about Lady Catherine, but Elizabeth could tell that Charlotte's heart wasn't as invested as Jane's. She had witnessed all of Charlotte's relationships from middle school on, she had seen Charlotte in love, and this wasn't it. She didn't like to see her friend settle for less than she deserved and Charlotte deserved love and acceptance and passion. Elizabeth's mind wandered of it's own free will to Darcy disheveled and breathless whispering that she'd bewitched him. For that brief bubble, closed off in his room with the party raging downstairs she'd thought she might have found … well, she knew better now.

She'd made plenty of her own mistakes and she couldn't bear to see her friend fall down the same hole. Willa was kind and affectionate but the compliments she gave Charlotte seemed too general, too rehearsed, as if their recipient could be swapped out without much fuss. Her friend deserved better than that.

Her thoughts drifted back to Jane. The fateful night at the Netherfield party Charlotte observed that while it was obvious to Jane's family and friends that she was in love, to an outsider her guarded affection could come off as cold. She'd seen a similar phenomenon with Darcy's passion, she'd initially noticed no preference on his side until they'd slept together and all of a sudden his disdainful glare looked far more like a passionate gaze. Perhaps she had been too harsh in her assessment of Collins. Perhaps beneath all of those studied compliments and officious chatter she really did care deeply for Charlotte and Lizzy just couldn't see it.

She pulled out her laptop and tried to coral all of these wayward thoughts into a coherent apology to Charlotte. She missed her friend and couldn't bear it if this stalemate festered through her entire absence. She would put aside her reservations and trust Charlotte's judgment.