They were perfect, Beth thought. Little faces, tiny noses, minuscule noises. Her niece and her nephew. She held Demi, stroking the little tuft of hair on his head softly. Daisy was comfortably nestled in the arms of Aunt Jo.
"Aren't babies just... the most wonderful things in the world?" Jo said, in a hushed tone Beth hardly ever heard from her. At first, Jo had been a little detached from the whole situation, as if she couldn't believe it would really happen. But as soon as she had set her eyes on them, she had fallen head over heels in love.
Beth smiled. "These babies are. Look, I think he's going to look a lot like Meg."
"I think you're right," Jo said, after leaning over to take a look and appreciate his chubby little cheeks. "Oh, I can hardly stand to keep looking at them they're so dear, but I simply can't look away. When I have ones of my own, it will be nice not to have to give them back to anyone."
Ones of her own? That shocked Beth for some reason. She had never heard Jo talk like that. Well, we all have to grow up, I suppose.
"When I..." she began, but the words got stuck in her throat. She tried to imagine herself with a baby in her arms. It didn't come as easily as the image of Meg or Jo as mothers. The closest thing she could conjure up was one of her dolls.
Demi yawned and squeezed her finger. She fixed her smile back on her face though her chest ached, and not from lingering sickness. This life was not for her.
"All serene! Coming in tonight."
Laurie had walked all the way from the post office and probably hadn't needed to stop for breaks along the way. His strides were long and his back never bent. He may even have run part of the way, his strong heart allowing him to without getting a dizzy spell.
He breathed in the cool night air deep into his lungs, and it didn't irritate him and make him cough.
"How strong and well and happy that dear boy looks."
Throughout the years, her parents have fallen into their little routines. They send looks to each other like telegraphs, entire conversations passing between them without a single word.
There is no one who understands Beth March like that. Not even Jo, who tries so hard to read her but bless her heart, gets things wrong quite often.
She could never imagine herself in a house of her own with someone the way her father and her mother are. She sews and works, sure, and bakes some, but she requires such frequent rest. As a wife, Meg is so industrious. Beth couldn't possibly pull her weight. and the weight of a family.
She only tries to make the family she has now happy.
"I had no idea, Beth, that the professor had been so honored and esteemed in his own country. He was known for his public speaking skills and was quite well-known as one of the best professors at the university he worked in. Of course, he never told me though, a friend of his from Germany was in for a visit and he divulged this bit of information to Miss Norton, and she told me about it.
And you know what, I like it all the better that he didn't tell me. I am very happy I know.
I do sometimes wonder how Friedrich stands it. He went from where he was, among other scholars having such in-depth discussions to his heart's content with words in a language that came so easily to him, to here, trying his best to teach a stupid girl like me how to conjugate and trying to speak our slip-shod language. I hope I used the right word there- conjugate?- and didn't pull an Amy. I really do try his patience, Bethy, I really do. Just yesterday I forgot how to pronounce the o with the dots on it, and he had to teach me again from the very beginning. It was awful. He has allowed me patience, patience, more patience. Yet somehow it never seems to run out. He made me coffee for our last lesson and we practiced asking how was your day, how is the weather, and are you well? I try to speak German to him sometimes- Guten Tag is good afternoon and Guten Abend might be good evening (I think)- but I can only carry on the shortest of conversations. They always end when I fumble with a word and he laughs a bit. But it seems to make him happy when I try."
Beth put the letter down about halfway through it, a wave of exhaustion washing over her, followed by a tug of something at her heart.
Jo was thriving in New York, and of course, Beth was happy about that. She felt a swell of pride while she cut Jo's little poems out of the newspapers and pinned them up.
But something else, something almost sinister, wouldn't leave her alone these days. Jo was away, she was falling in love by the looks of it. She was growing up. Where would Beth fly to, if she had the chance? How long would she last before she came running back home because deep in her heart, she knew she inevitably would.
She always ended up back here, back in this little house, as inevitable as the tide crashing into the rocks lining the shore, as inevitable as the end of the flight; the bird could not fly forever.
She could finish Jo's letter later, she decided, with a small pang of guilt as she tucked the paper into a book she had been too tired to finish last night. Her head was heavy, and so she laid it down to sleep.