The subtlest fold of the heart
"Sometimes," Amy said dully, her fingers pleating the silk of her wide skirt. The star sapphire Laurie had given her was heavy on her finger. "Sometimes I wish we'd never come home." Whatever she had expected from her sister, it was not laughter. It was soft, a sweet, low chuckle Amy would never have believed Jo capable of—Jo was brazen, given to yelps, shouts, guffaws, nothing ladylike, never reining herself in, her delight bold and explicit. Amy lifted her head and saw her sister regarding her with a steady, affectionate amusement.
"You utter goose," Jo said, shaking her head a little. Her chestnut hair was simply arranged, her dress just this side of drab and she wore a knitted wool spenser instead of the cashmere shawl Amy had draped around her own shoulders. "What will it take to convince you?"
"Convince me?" Amy repeated.
"That Teddy, I beg your pardon, that Laurie loves only you and that I love Fritz," Jo said calmly.
"What?" Amy felt herself flush, shocked into rudeness. Shocked that Jo would speak so frankly of the fear that gnawed at her, waking her in moonless nights to watch Laurie sleep. Without the moonlight, her bright hair was dark; when he woke and sleepily drew her down to him, she wondered if he knew which woman he held in his arms.
"He won't even think you're worried about it. It hasn't occurred to him, that you have doubts, that you are jealous," Jo said. "He doesn't think he needs to prove it to you. You wear his ring, you've his name and his house and you sleep in his bed."
"Jo! You're brazen!" Amy cried. Jo laughed again, more sharply, as Amy might have expected.
"I know, I've given up trying to be any different, and Fritz isn't bothered. I rather think he likes it," Jo said. She smiled then, a confiding smile, a little sly. "He said this would happen, you know."
"I don't know what you mean," Amy replied. Somehow, it was just as when they were girls, Jo knowing, superior, conspiring against her. Amy tried to draw her dignity around her like a queen's ermine cape and saw in Jo's expression that her sister noticed.
"Amy, you really needn't worry. About any of it. Fritz and I, we're not discussing you and your marriage late into the night. Laurie loves us both, but I am his friend and you are his wife and he knows, Amy. He knows the difference. Go back to Europe if you want but not because you think he'll love you better there," Jo said.
"He loved you first. He proposed to you," Amy said and she heard how bitter she sounded.
"And I loved him. As my friend, my dearest friend. And I said no. I've never regretted it, Amy. There is more than one sort of love and I'm blessed to have them all—a friend's love, a sister's…a husband's," Jo said. Amy suddenly saw her as Friedrich must, such an intrepid soul, lovely, brilliant. "A lover's," Jo added, her grey eyes bright and wicked.
"Jo March!"
"Josephine Bhaer," Jo corrected her. "Fritz's Professorin. His Schätzchen. I shan't go on or you'll combust, you'll never be able to look at Fritz the same way and I'll note, you never worried that he might be jealous too."
"Oh, Jo, please! This isn't appropriate, we can't—"
"Will you stop fretting then? Or Teddy will come 'round to scold me, about what I said that fussed you and he'll insist on sitting with us every time we visit and there are some thing I don't mind telling you that I'd rather talk about with only my sister," Jo said.
"There are? And Friedrich doesn't mind?" Amy asked. She couldn't bring herself to call her sister's husband, tall and bearded and capable of great gravitas, especially with his spectacles and when Jo tied his cravat properly, by the sprightly, teasing nickname Jo used.
"Oh no! He knows all my secrets worth keeping," Jo answered.
"But you said, to share only with your sister," Amy said.
"I'd tell you half a dozen things he wouldn't attend to," Jo said. "He knows I tell him everything that matters to us."
"You're so sure, Jo," Amy replied.
"It's what I promised and Fritz too," Jo said, leaning over to pat Amy's knee. "You and Laurie did the same, even though none of us were there to see it."
"We did," Amy said, remembering the brief ceremony, her black veil trailing behind her and the white roses Laurie had brought her, his dark eyes watching her steadily. The smile he'd given her before he kissed her. It was the same one she saw every morning, even before she'd poured out his coffee.
"Well then, I don't mind saying I'd hate it if you went abroad this fall. I've been counting on Laurie and Fritz to run a musical recital for the children and I have concocted quite a plan to make them play a duet on your grand piano." Jo smiled broadly then and Amy recognized that look, the director of the play, the instigator of the lark. Her sister's face, honest and forthright, entirely trustworthy, even if Amy did not always trust herself.