Page 61 of Rejected
After we had put a protesting Teddy into a bed, and forced him to at least try to go to sleep, Meg told me:
“I did not think you had it in you, Josephine.”
“And what, pray tell, does this mean?” I asked her, my hackles immediately rising.
I do that, you know. I instantly become defensive and quarrelsome when I am anxious. I wonder what Laurie will make of it. Of course, he knows that I am like that already. But still. Won’t make for a very good wife.
“I thought you would torture the poor boy for at least a decade more before accepting him,” Meg told me bluntly.
“You knew he had proposed?”
“No thanks to you,” Meg said. “I guessed that was what had happened when he cut off all contact with you. What did you do to the poor man?”
“I rejected him,” I said.
“Why on earth would you do that, when you have been in love with him since you were little?”
“He did say everyone around us knew he was in love with me,” I said, feeling the most embarrassing blush spread all the way from my cheeks down to my neck.
“That would be obvious to a blind man,” our sister pronounced, unimpressed. “What was more subtle was your devotion to him. I do not know when that devotion turned to infatuation, but at some point it became obvious to me that it had, even though you tried valiantly to hide it, even from yourself.”
I was shocked. Who knew that anyone was paying that much attention to me—and not only to criticize my manners? Apparently, she had.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her, still trying to pick a fight.
“Because,” she said, almost as calmly as her John would have, “it was not infatuation. It was love. And you needed to find that out for yourself.”
Can you believe her?
So now it turns out I have two siblings I need to murder.
Eternally,
Your sister
twenty-five
When Laurie woke up, Jo had closed herself off again. She saw the minute he noticed the change in her. He changed too. It was as if her darkness was visibly spreading to him, stealing his sunny countenance right before her eyes. Laurie pressed his lips together.
To keep himself from kissing me, Jo thought, and wanted the earth to swallow her up.
“All right, let’s do what we always have done. Let’s talk,” he said.
“Let’s eat,” Jo retorted.
So they did both.
By midday, a weak, mealy sun had come up, but the house was freezing outside and in, and they fed the fire in the smallest library until they were comfortable enough on the carpet in front of it, eating scorching-hot delicious raspberry pie, fresh from the kitchen.
“I think… I always loved you too—that way,” Jo said with her mouth full. “You were right after all.”
Laurie pushed his plate away. Closed his eyes, swayed.
“You—I knew it,” he whispered. “I knew you did. I could kill you for putting me through this.”
“Look at you, fighting with me the minute I said I loved you.” Jo smiled and took another bite, burning her tongue.His mouth will have to fix that later, she thought, and blushed so furiously she gave herself a headache.
“Did you expect anything less?” Laurie’s eyebrow went up.
