New York City, USA
October 2010

Don't say the morning's come so soon

I am awoken by a soft touch to my cheek.

Groaning, I throw an arm over my face to stave off the disturbance. "It's too early for this. Let me sleep," I mumble, squeezing my eyes shut against the encroaching light of dawn.

The touch becomes a nudge against my shoulder.

Turning around with a huff, I pull up the covers over my head. "It's Sunday. Can't you let me sleep on Sunday at least?" I ask, voice muffled by the blanket.

A second passes. Then I feel a tug at the blanket.

Alright, that's it! He's asking for it!

Throwing the blanket off and heaving myself into a sitting position, I glare at him.

"Seriously, George. It's Sunday. It's practically still night-time. Just because you insist on being up at the crack of dawn doesn't mean I have to be! So, what the hell do you want?" I hiss.

George doesn't answer.

"I asked you a question!" I snap.

For a moment, George considers me silently, head cocked slightly to the side.

Then – "Meow."

"Oh? Meow, is it? Well, I'll give you meow!" I warn, raising a finger to emphasize my words.

Not that any of this concerns George. Obviously highly pleased at having achieved his goal of waking me up, he merely starts purring loudly and rubs his head against my elbow.

Cats, I'm telling you!

Muttering some not so very polite things, I swing my legs over the side of the bed, taking a sharp intake of breath when they hit the cold floor. "It's too early for this, George," I point out once more, feeling more than a little disgruntled.

George, however, pays me no heed. Jumping off the bed much more elegantly than I did, he prances ahead of me, over to the kitchenette tucked into a corner of my studio apartment. It's only when I don't follow quickly enough that he stops to gaze at me accusingly.

Padding over to the kitchenette, I open the fridge and peer inside it for an opened tin of cat food. Coming up successful, I empty its remaining contents into a bowl while a purring George winds figures of eight around my legs.

"If it's true that everyone is guilty of at least one of the seven deadly sins, yours is gluttony," I inform him as I put the bowl down. "Just so you know."

George doesn't appear overly interested in his own damnation though. Instead, he hastens over to where I set the bowl on the floor, devouring the food with the air of a famished cat that has gone hungry for at least two days (and not just since I came home which was… oh, four hours ago?).

"Greed, too," I add, looking down at George making short shrift of his food. "Pride as well, come to think of it." For was there ever a prouder creature than cat?

I don't get an answer. George is fully occupied emptying his bowl and does not appear to have any further mental capacities to spare listening to me. Just like a man, really.

Speaking of which – "By the way, I didn't see you when I came in last night," I tell him conversationally. "Off to romance that pretty tabby from down the road, were you? Shall we add lust to the list, what do you think?"

But the cat's head remains firmly hidden inside the bowl, his ears closed to anything I'm saying.

With a sigh, I give up. The digital numbers on my microwave inform me that it's just past seven in the morning, which surely is an ungodly hour to be up on a Sunday by anyone's standard. Still, thanks to the man in my life I am up now, so I might as well try and spend the morning usefully.

Before I do anything at all though, I need a good strong coffee!

"Having had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with your claws, I reckon we could make a case to include wrath as well," I muse, as I reach for the coffee powder and measure a generous spoonful into a cup.

George, as expected, does not react.

Continuing to mull this train of thought over in my mind while I wait for the water to boil, I therefore add, "despair is a tricky one, except if we include the cat's despair at the human's general inability or unwillingness to conform to any and all of its wishes. Shall we include that one, George, what do you think?

No reply.

Turning, I find the bowl sitting lonely and clinically empty on the floor by my feet. A quick look around the room reveals that George, on the other hand, is back up on my bed, nose tucked beneath a paw, apparently fast asleep once more.

"And there's sloth," I grumble.

George merely flicks an irritated ear into my direction but otherwise gives no outward sign of having heard my complaints.

Pouring the now boiling water over the powder in my cup, I give it a quick stir. After waiting a second for the drink to mix, I take a large gulp, immediately feeling my face twist into an involuntary grimace. Instant coffee might do the trick of waking you up, but there's no getting around that fact that it tastes revolting.

Emptying my cup of coffee as quickly as George cleared his bowl, I put both into the sink and walk back over to the bed. George takes this as his cue and uncurls himself, luxuriously stretching out over the length of it. His eyes are firmly closed still, but I know he's perfectly aware of me standing next to the bed.

"Come on, make some space for me," I ask him.

Is it me or is George squeezing his eyes shut a little tighter?

"I know you're not asleep," I inform him. "Now, move over. You're a cat. You don't need a whole bed to yourself."

However, he does apparently very much need a bed for himself after all. For when I nudge him to the side a little, I just about manage to dodge the sudden swipe he directs at my hand a split of a second later.

"We already had wrath," I remind him as I sit down on the bed and slide my legs under the covers, all under his decidedly disdainful gaze.

George does not deign this with an answer, instead continuing to glare at me in the way only cats can.

"Now, what's left?" I ask him pensively. "Envy, isn't it? Any idea as to how we can include envy in there?"

If he has one, he does not share it. He merely gets up, turns his back to me and starts kneading the blanket with fervour. And watching him thusly, this utterly spoiled cat that, as I have long since realised, does not accept any cats beside him, I come to the conclusion that no, there's no way to include envy. For a cat to feel envy, it would have to accept that there's another being on earth that is somehow superior to cats and clearly, that won't do.

"Looks like you aren't guilty of all the deadly sins after all," I cheerfully point out to George. He, now purring again, swirls himself into a cat-shaped donut at the bottom end of the bed and blinks at me with something akin to affection. (Rarely have I met a being more prone to mood swings than that cat. Or any cat, really.)

Suppressing a yawn, I reach over to my bedside table and get a hold of my textbook on macroeconomics. It disgustingly early to bother my already (still?) slightly befuddled brain with 'the study of aggregate economic analysis' but needs must and it wouldn't be wise to let this quiet Sunday morning go to waste.

So, I cuddle back under my blanket, flip open the book at the current chapter, try to focus on the words all lined up on the page and –

And give a sudden start when the alarm clock next to me starts beeping.

Feeling disoriented, I first stare at the textbook lying next to me, a distinct fold now running down the middle of one page, then down at George who is currently lying on his back, paws in the air, trying his utmost to ignore the still beeping alarm. Blindly hitting the top of the clock, I manage to get it to quieten down. Only then do I peer over at it, attempting to discern the time.

10 o'clock sharp.

So much for making good use of a quiet Sunday morning.

Groaning, I shut the textbook and get up from the bed. George, suddenly alert, quickly jumps down to the floor as well and starts rubbing his head against my shins in a not very subtle attempt to get me to prepare him a second breakfast. (Or would that be third breakfast? Does the food I gave him at three in the morning qualify as breakfast or would it still be considered a midnight snack? Existential questions, these.)

After having laid another edible offering at the altar of cat (in my defence, he's prone to feet-biting if not fed according to his personal inner schedule), I quickly pull a brush through my hair and throw on a random cardigan.

At five past ten, I'm sitting back on my bed, laptop in front of me, chocolate bar in hand and another cup of instant coffee by my side. I'm all ready for our weekly chat – or as ready as can be, I suppose. For me to miss it, something much more drastic would need to happen. Joy and I see each other often, but with Di away in Winnipeg and Nan in Toronto, it's a rare moment when we're all physically together in the same place. Hence the weekly calls on Sunday morning. (We used to do them by phone, but when Di suggested video conference calls recently, it proved a much-appreciated upgrade.)

As usual, it takes a second or two for Skype to open, but when the screen springs to live, I am greeted by the three smiling faces of my sisters.

"Now, would you look at what the cat dragged in!" Nan greets me cheerfully.

"I'll have you know that George would never drag in anything of my size," I shoot back. "It's much too much effort. He has people for that."

"Meaning you," remarks Di.

"Meaning me," I confirm with a wry smile.

Sometimes I wonder whether, if I had known a year ago that the tiny, shivering, bedraggled-looking orange kitten sitting on my window sill would turn out to be such a despot, I still would have taken him in.

(The answer is that yes, I totally would have. Go figure.)

"You do look quite like something dragged you in though," states Joy, sounding mildly interested and peering at me (alright, at her screen) over a Mulan cup. Does Izzie know about this, I wonder?

"Or someone," persists Di and wiggles her eyebrows.

"Oh, har har." I roll my eyes at them. "If you must know, I spent most of the evening waitressing and afterwards met Chelsea and Megan in that new club on Gansevoort Street. I got home late, but I got home alone."

"Huh?" Di blinks. "Where's Gansevoort Street? Aren't all streets in New York merely numbered?"

Feeling rebellious, I tilt forward my chin a little. "Gansevoort Street is right to the north of Horatio Street."

"Oooh, you mean Horatio as in Hamlet?" pipes up Nan, visibly brightening.

Joy immediately whips out her phone and starts typing. "Wait a moment…" she asks, frowning at the screen. Then, "Sadly, no. It's Horatio as in Horatio Gates. He was an officer in the Revolutionary War. And, let me see… yes, so was Gansevoort."

"Oh." Nan pulls a face.

But Joy isn't done yet. "Wait, there's more. Apparently, said Gansevoort was the grandfather of Herman Melville," she adds, lowering her phone.

"I do like Moby Dick," Nan concedes thoughtfully.

"Yeah, like we didn't already know that," mutters Di and Nan sticks out her tongue at the screen. Di merely gives her a cheery wave in return.

"And having established that, can we now return to the more pressing matter at hand?" asks Joy with all the authority of the eldest sister and I swear, all three of us sit up a little straighter purely by instinct.

A second passes in silence.

"What is the more pressing matter at hand?" Nan finally asks cautiously.

"As I told you, Rilla accompanied Dan to that UN party on Thursday. I've been waiting for an account for two days now, but so far, she's proved as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel," remarks Joy meaningfully.

Di perks up in interest. "Could it be said that she has been avoiding you?" she inquires.

"It could, indeed," confirms Joy, toasting me slightly with her Mulan cup.

They're all three of them looking at their screens now in a way that leaves little doubt that they're looking at me specifically.

For the second time in about as many minutes, I roll my eyes, eliciting a smile from Nan and causing Di to mimic me rather dramatically.

Truth is, I totally have been avoiding Joy, mostly because I've yet to come up with a good excuse for the stained dress. Now, I'm not too worried about Joy being concerned about the loss of the dress itself, but she'd want to know how it happened (she's curious that way) and can't very well tell her that I sacrificed her dress to save the future king from vomiting all over a woman dressed as a pumpkin, after which he threatened me with both kidnapping and imprisonment and I almost offered him drugs. Can I?

"I've been busy," I declare haughtily, though not without stealing a slightly guilty look at the dress hanging from the back of my front door – out of sight of my laptop's camera, naturally.

"Of course you've been busy," replies Joy with such an exaggerated wink that I can't help laughing.

Di flaps her hands energetically in an attempt to get us to quieten down. "Would that UN party be the one where a certain prince was present?" she asks.

In her part of the screen, Nan sits up a little straighter.

"The very same," confirms Joy with a firm nod.

"Did you get to meet him?" Nan wants to know, eyes bright with interest.

Now, what to say to that?

"He mostly kept to the more important people present," I answer carefully. I mean… that isn't wrong, is it? He did mostly keep to the more important people present. Incidents involving spilled wine notwithstanding, I would never have gotten to talk to him.

"But you saw him, didn't you?" persists Nan.

I suppose there's no danger in admitting that.

"I did. He was making the rounds most of the evening and once came quite close to where I was standing." There. That's no lie either. I'm getting rather good at this.

"Does that mean I do get my report on his looks after all?" enquires Joy

"We-ell," I answer slowly, "I can confirm that he is, in fact, dark-haired."

In return, she gives me such a dirty look that Nan jumps a little in surprise. Di raises an eyebrow. "There's a story there," she recognises.

But Joy just waves her off. "Later." Which is just as likely to mean never, to be honest.

Taking pity on her anyway, I elaborate slightly on my report. "He's taller than he looks like in pictures. Quite as handsome though. And he has rather a nice smile."

"Hm… Methinks you must have gotten quite a bit closer to him if you can judge the niceness of his smile," remarks Di slyly.

Drat.

Quick. I need an explanation.

"He… he made a speech," I point out hurriedly. "He was up for all to see. I had a pretty clear view from where I was standing."

Not a perfect explanation, but it'll do. At least all three of my sisters are nodding and none of them seem to have anything immediate to say to tease me with, which happens seldom enough.

"I was quite sure he'd take some note of you," Joy remarks, sounding slightly wistful. "It would have been fun. You could have introduced us to the Queen."

I'm sorry, but… What?

"Oh, yes," agrees Nan happily, even while I'm still trying to collect my bearings. "She's so beautiful." Nan, like Walter, values beauty highly.

Thankfully though, I can rely on Di at least. "You two will tell us when you're back from whatever fantasy world you've temporarily defected to?" she asks drily.

Nan rather looks like as if the only reason she's not sticking out her tongue again is that she doesn't want to pull the same move twice in such a short time. Joy moves her hand in a way that suggests flicking Di off but stops short of the actual gesture. Di just grins.

"No meeting the Queen, I'm afraid. Nor the King, come to think of it," I shrug, and for the first time in a while, I am at least entirely sure of the truth of what I'm saying.

"Not that that was ever an option in the first place," adds Di. "I mean, surely the prince is already dating some impossibly posh girl who has both the legs and the pedigree of a race horse, isn't he?"

"Actually, no, he isn't," corrects Nan. "He broke up with the last one – Lady something or another – before coming to the US. Apparently, she felt that after sticking with him through years of military service, she was due some more commitment. So, faced with him moving to New York for a year, she set him an ultimatum – which, obviously, backfired on her."

For a second or two, no-one answers.

"Well. Someone did their homework," Di finally states, looking incredulous.

Nan colours prettily (Nan does everything prettily). "It was in Hello," she mumbles. "And they'd never be wrong about something as important as this."

"As important as who's currently keeping the royal bed warm, you mean," Di amends and Nan laughs lightly.

"I doubt he's short of offers," I remark with a shrug.

Joy cocks her head to the side. "What makes you say that?"

Because he's good, isn't he? That act of making the other person feel as if they're telling you exactly what you've always wanted to hear? He has it down pat.

"Oh, nothing specific," I deflect instead. "It's just that there's probably a sizable number of women out there who'd do just about anything to bag themselves a prince."

"Probably", agrees Joy. Di pulls a face that makes her look as if she's in dire need of root canal.

We've all of us been raised in the firm belief that no woman needs a man to accomplish whatever she wants in life (though short of conquering, say, Luxembourg, I don't see how becoming Queen is possible these days if not by birth or marriage). Di just has the added advantage of not needing a man for anything else either.

"Anyway," I say quickly before anyone else can come up with further questions on a princely encounter I don't want to talk about. "Has anyone talked to Mum or Dad recently?"

If any of them is surprised at my not very elegant change of subject, they don't show it. Instead, Di shrugs slightly and offers, "Mum called yesterday."

"And I talked to her on Thursday, so you win," adds Nan.

"Any news?" queries Joy. Like me, she certainly got a call from Mum within the last couple of days as well, but if Di talked to her yesterday, she's bound to be the one most up to date.

Di looks thoughtful for a moment. "Dad has a complicated surgery on a two-year-old girl coming up next week, which he's a bit wary of, according to Mum," she supplies.

Dad is one of the premier neurosurgeons in Canada, so it makes perfect sense for him to be called upon to conduct a complicated operation, but I can see why operating on the brain of such a young child would cause even the most experienced surgeon to feel a bit wary. It's an awful lot of responsibility.

"And Mum herself slightly despairs over some of the essays her students handed in on Friday," Di adds. "But in happier news, the latest book is coming along nicely."

"Oh, yes," agrees Joy. "She sent Jake the first four chapters of her draft a while back and he was quite taken with them."

During day-time, Mum is a professor at Dalhousie University, teaching English to college students of varying enthusiasm. In the evenings, she writes widely praised and widely sold children's books. At ten, Jake is slowly starting to outgrow her main demographic, but he's been her premier critic ever since he was old enough to understand what she was reading to him, so expect both of them to hold on to that a while longer. Especially seeing as it's difficult to get Izzie to sit still long enough to read more than a page to her and as further grandchildren don't look to be forthcoming for the time being.

"Now, let me think…" Di continues slowly. "Was there anything else?"

"Anything on the boys?" asks Joy, meaning our brothers.

"Not much, when I talked to her" replies Nan in Di's stead. "No-one is seeing much of Jem these days, from what she said. She also hadn't heard from Walter in a couple of days."

Jem stayed in Halifax to study, so is theoretically close to home, but as he's also halfway into a five-year General Surgery residency program, he's more than a little busy.

"Walter's good. I called to check in on him Friday night," provides Di.

Walter lives in Ottawa, doing some government job that sounds, frankly, quite boring. I've never particularly cared to find out what, exactly, it is what he does there, nor how a degree in Russian Literature (born out of an early fascination with the Pushkins and Tolstoys of this world) qualifies anyone to work for the Canadian government. I reckon he's mostly translating stuff for them – he's fluent in Russian after spending his gap year there and did some years of freelance translation work before landing his government job. And it is a nice and safe job to have at twenty-six, so I suppose that's one advantage, even if it's all very boring.

"And how's Shirley?" I enquire after our youngest brother. "Is he any closer to figuring out what he'd like to do with his life?" (Not that I have it figured out yet, but that's neither here nor there.)

At eighteen, Shirley is the family baby. There were some complications after his birth – a time which I remember not at all and the twins only with very little clarity, but which the elder three steadfastly refuse to talk about – ensuring that he would always remain the youngest.

I mean, not that seven children aren't a lot by anyone's standard. You do sometimes wonder what our parents were thinking.

"Not from what anyone knows," answers Di. "Mum says he seems content to spend the entire day shut off in his room, doing something or another with his computer. It does worry her a little, I think. At least he used to have to come out for school, but since graduating in summer, she says they're lucky if they see him twice a day when he's foraging for food."

"Apparently, last week he meandered out of his room, randomly informed Dad that the Peruvian Ministry of Health really needs better cyber security, and went back inside," adds Nan, frowning slightly.

Several seconds pass in silence as we all try to process that information.

"Well… at least we have two lawyers in the family?" I offer weakly.

Nan nods. "Yeah. At least we've got that." But she doesn't sound convinced.

"You can't deny that puberty hit strangely with that one," Joy remarks to no-one in particular and I just know she's crossing her fingers that puberty won't hit nearly as strangely with Jake.

"Why's that anyway, what do we think? Nan?" Di raises an eyebrow in question, her eyes fixed on a spot slightly to the right where her twins obviously occupies her screen.

"Why me?" protests Nan immediately.

Joy shrugs. "Di's right. You are the child psychologist," she points out.

"In training!" Nan immediately corrects. "You all know I still have almost my entire Masters course to go through, which takes no less than two years, and then there's the PhD, which should take another five."

She and Di have just turned 24. Add seven years and she'll be in her thirties when she's finished.

Madness.

"Uh-huh," makes Di, her expression leaving little doubt that she agrees with me. "I still don't understand why there's any job at all that requires eleven years of training!"

"Jem needs a year longer to become a surgeon," Nan points out quickly. "He expects to be done – when? Summer 2013? He'll turn thirty-one then!"

"Some professions just carry a high amount of responsibility. Child therapist and surgeon are clearly among them," Joy tries to mediate. The tone in her voice reminds me of the one she adopts whenever Izzie has scribbled all over Jake's latest book again.

"Well, call me crazy," I speak up anyway, "but I'd prefer it if Di didn't get her viruses all mixed up either. And they're already letting her work part-time in that lab even though she's only just started with her Masters course."

Di's studying to be a microbiologist. She's doing a lot of things that go completely above my head, but she once explained it to me as "inventing vaccines" and I think I can understand that.

"Thank you!" she now exclaims, throwing her hands up dramatically. "You can have a responsible job without doing that many years of studying."

I don't quite have the heart to point out to her that six years of university are plenty in most people's book. (And to think she and Nan both effectively delayed university graduation by a year when they went travelling through South East Asia and Australia after school!) Sometimes I think that, with Walter the only one so far to have left college with 'just' a bachelor's degree, my family's standards are pretty skewed.

Nan says something in reply to Di, but I don't quite catch it as George takes that moment to tap over to me and butt my hand with his head, demanding to have his ears scratched. "Hello, you," I greet him quietly and he purrs in appreciation.

When I turn back to the screen, I just catch the rest of Nan's sentence, "…and putting that subject to rest – does anyone want to have a guess at who has just asked me to move in with him?" She's trying to keep her face composed, but there's a smile threatening to break out any second.

Di scoffs good-naturedly. "Like there are so very many options."

"Diana!" scolds Joy mildly.

But they're both laughing, and Nan is positively beaming with happiness. (How she managed to hold that news back this long is quite beyond me). And I have to say that my parents might have been quite mad to have seven children, but on balance, I wouldn't want to miss any of my siblings for all the world.


The title of this chapter is taken from the song 'The One that You Love' (written by Graham Russel, released by Air Supply in 1981).


A/N: I know Shirley is older than Rilla in the books. But be honest - it works out so much neater this way 'round, doesn't it?


To AnneShirley:
You know, Rilla would probably have preferred the romantic fairy tale beginning, but I think it's boring and I'm the one calling the shots - hence, nausea and red wine it is! And I'm having lots of fun with this story, so it's great to hear that it translated well onto page.
Joy is indeed a lot like Anne (minus the overactive imagination, I'd say). Actually, so is Grandma Bertha (which we will learn about more in two chapters time) and so is Izzie, so I thinks that's something to be passed from mother to oldest daughter. And yes, Joy won't forget the ruined kangaroo suit in a hurry!
There's a little bit on Walter and everyone else in this chapter already, but there's certainly more to come as the story progresses (and never fear, Walter's life isn't as boring as Rilla thinks it is!) And there'll also be a family reunion soon-ish, so I hope all your demands will be met in due time ;).

To Teresa:
Hello and thanks for reviewing! I always love to hear readers' thoughts. And your review made me laugh especially, because I'm entirely with you on modern AU stories. I'll go out on a limb and say that I never read a modern AU myself and yet I am here, writing one. Strange how the world works, isn't it? Either way, I'm really happy to hear that you're enjoying the story so far and hope you will do so in the future as well!