JO POV

I miss him. My best friend. My best, best, best...if anyone could love me, surely, he. Surely, he can.

I know women have brains and goals and a soul, not just what's between our legs, but I'm so lonely. The more I talk about my passions, the more I drive men away.

I have friends who are the same as me in New York. They're suffragists, feminists, they call themselves, but they marry...they nearly always marry, but I can't...I can't explain why I fall in love with 15 pretty girls a day, but never a man. What's wrong with me?

I feel like if I could only be around Jane Austen or Emily Bronte the whole day through, it would be fine. I would have someone to commiserate with. No one understands me. Is this the price of art? To be alone?

Well, I won't pay it. I will be the greatest writer of my generation, but I will not resign myself to a lifetime of loneliness and heartbreak. Teddy is coming! He's on his way! My best friend! He loves me, he can't live without me, he said so. How long has it been? Not that long. Feelings don't change fast. I know he's devoted to me. He'll be happy, he'll have gotten what he wanted.

And me? I'll revel in the pleasure of his company. We'll be up all night talking. That's real love, real connection, when you can stay up all night with someone talking and never miss a beat, never have a moment of uncomfortable silence.

We know each other so well, we'll be a marriage of souls, of intellects. Part of me wants this so badly, I'm talking myself into it, and part of me knows it will be the disaster I predicted 8 years ago. He's coming home, that's all that matters.

I quickly write a note telling him how I feel and run out to the tree that borders the two properties, putting it in the mailbox he fashioned so we could always communicate with each other.

I'm so lonely here. I have no one to talk to. Meg is always busy with Daisy and Demi. And Amy is still MIA, shopping on the Champs Elysees in Paris probably, while her sister goes into the cold ground. I just hope she finally found her rich husband. Let him take her back abroad. I don't particularly want to live next to her if she comes back home.

AMY POV

"And don't think you're getting a marriage bed here", Aunt March says as we drag our trunks into a hotel in Lille, as we didn't make to Calais before nightfall.

"Amy and I have stayed in the same room..."

"Different rooms, adjoining door", I point out.

"The same room", she repeats, "for the length of this trip. And that will be the status quo until we arrive in my brother's home. From there, you're his problem, but while Amy is my problem, she will not be deflowered in my presence...do I make myself clear, Mr. Laurence?"

"As a bell", he says steadily. Aunt March smiles and starts bellowing at bellhops to come help us.

"A month at sea", I grit out.

"We're grown people, man and wife, and your aunt does not rules for my life or yours. However... you're not a cottage bride, Amy, nor was I going to take you like Blackbeard on the high seas."

I crack up. "The picture you paint, Laurie."

"The mansion is your home now. You have the right to the wedding night of your dreams. I don't see us together for the first time when we're exhausted in a hotel room with your aunt, nor in an oppressively tiny cabin at sea with the world rocking below us", he says.

I look at him trying not to laugh for 30 seconds before he lifts me up and spins me around. "You have a dirty mind, Mrs. Laurence."

"You never did listen well", Auntie chides as she comes up on us.

Feeling Laurie's temper rise, I take her by the hand and help direct the bellhops with our trunks. It's going to be a long voyage home.

LAURIE POV

"Jo, Jo, Jo", I whisper, standing over her.

"Teddy", she says, coming awake. "You're home."

"I couldn't let Amy come by herself with Aunt March so ill", I say, avoiding the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

"That's so nice of you. Did Amy drive you crazy preening all the way from Europe?", she asks.

"Yes, yes she did. But...I kind of liked it", I say, but she tunes it out.

"So where is my sister?", she asks. "Took her long enough to get to her own sister's grave."

"She's at Meg's", I say, knowing I have to stop this. I have to come clean with Jo. My best friend. And cannot let her continue to say negative things about Amy.

"Marmee is there, they're all together. I knew there would be no springing my wife from their clutches."

She stops cold. "Wife?"

"I'm married. We intended to wait. We were engaged, but just went ahead with it. I mean to say that we are now man and wife..." What is it about Jo's approval that I so long for? And I know just how injured and furious she's going to be.

"Married?", she asks, "To AMY?"

"Yes", I answer. I can feel the waves of emotion coming over her.

"Are you in love?", she asks, as if it's the most unlikely thing imaginable. She wants me to say I was somehow forced into it at gunpoint. That Amy is not the woman I wanted, that I had to duel Fred Vaughn or something, and I really love...her? Could it be she's actually come around to me at last? She's never seen eye to eye with her youngest sister, but this is more than that.

"I am", I answer and she deflates. "I'll just say this one thing and then we can put it away forever. I love you, Jo. I've loved you my whole life. But the way I love Amy is...different. It's just different."

"Teddy..."

"You've always been the only person to call me that", I say, smiling.

"What does Amy call you?", she asks.

"My Lord", I say, laughing.

"Sounds like her", Jo offers.

"It does", I have to admit.

"Can we still be friends, Jo, please?", I ask.

"Of course, my boy", she says, ruffling my hair. That's what we were always like—best friends, just a couple of guys. Her strength, her courage, her rebelliousness, it all drew me in.

"I think it all ended as it was supposed to", I add, "I think you're right, we would have killed each other."

Her face falls, but I found a way to make it entirely her choice. She rejected me, she can do better than me, yes, yes, just let this be over. Can we go downstairs now?

I stand up and hug Jo. I really do want us to be friends. But right now, I want to know where my wife is.

"I just...don't see it. I thought you were more...imaginative than that", she says, leaving the room. She finds my underbelly and delivers a direct shot straight in the heart.

I smile lamely and let her go. What else can I do? Defend myself? I don't want her to know that I confused like with love, and feel like I made a young fool of myself that day I proposed to her. I don't want her to know I think about being inside Amy day and night, though we still haven't been together. Of her body, her beauty, her kisses, that I want to see her pregnant with my child. Mine. She's mine.

I can't say that I want to shoot Fred Vaughn in the fucking heart every time Amy says his name. That she drives me insane because she's so annoying and proper and vain and greedy and gorgeous and knows just how to set my jealousy off, my naughty little Venus, whose clothes I want to shred. I can't say that I crave her and even her faults with every part of me, that every time I hear that snippy little "My Lord", I want to put her on her back and prove to her that's exactly what I am. I can't tell Jo any of that. She wouldn't understand. Love like that is sad, silly, pathetic to her. The only things she loves that way are writing and independence. But I'm weaker than you, Jo. I always was weaker and vainer than you would admit. I can't play hide and seek with you now, my dear friend, I'm too busy wanting my wife.