The Orchard House

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  “I’m so sorry, Louisa. I think I can understand.”

  “Of course you can. Before I met John, I may have argued over that. There’s something special about a sister, you know?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve only been blessed with brothers.”

  “John . . . he was special, though—I could tell. Perhaps the only man better than a sister.”

  I wondered if she said that to make me feel better. Really, it didn’t matter. I had to agree.

  She continued showing me the rooms downstairs. When we came to her father’s study, she knocked lightly upon the door.

  “Come in!”

  Louisa opened the door and I saw a spry, elderly gentleman lying on his back on the rug. I gasped. “Is he unwell?”

  Louisa laughed. “He’s probably healthier than the lot of us put together! Father, won’t you stand up? Johanna, the girl I spoke to you of, is here.”

  Mr. Alcott stood, his silver hair on end, and held out his hand. “Lovely to meet you, dear girl. We’re so glad you could come to help while Louisa goes off to have her adventure.”

  “The Welds are paying me, Father. I’d rather like to think of it as work.”

  “Most pleasant work, I daresay. And what’s wrong with that?” He winked at me and I wondered not only how we would get along, but if I imagined the peculiar tension between father and daughter.

  “Is Mother resting?” Louisa asked.

  “Yes, thankfully. Now if you’ll forgive me, I am due to visit Mr. Emerson. I will return for dinner.”

  He donned his hat and exited the study. I noted the many books along the room. The paintings and gadgets and contraptions. It seemed to hold a sort of eccentric order about it which fit Mr. Alcott well.

  “Father will keep to himself, and Mother spends most of her days resting, as she should. She’s worked for most of our growing-up years and I always said that I wanted to be the one to make sure she never went without.” Louisa got a faraway look upon her face. “Well, that hasn’t happened quite yet, but there’s still time, yes?”

  She showed me the wood room and the kitchen, then led me back outdoors. Once outside, she stared at the hill beyond. A long driveway led up the hill and I caught the fading scent of lilacs on the breeze. “Who can guess?” she mused aloud. “I may just miss this place when I’m gone. Do you miss your home, dear?”

  “Some, but mostly I miss Mother and George.” I missed them at the same time that I associated them with home. At the same time that I realized home had become a place I associated with boredom and predictability. A place I must run from or else stay bound.

  I felt lighter here, in Concord. Was it the new, the distraction, or a power in this historic New England town? A town that was drenched in the notion of freedom—first in our fight against the Crown, and now in the fight for the equality of the African. Looking at Louisa, thinking of her words of preferring liberty to marriage, and remembering the message of her novel—a novel that I didn’t love but that forced me to think on what the role of being a woman meant.

  I closed my eyes against the warm sun, and Louisa didn’t seem to mind my pause to soak everything in, to saturate myself in the moment. What was it about this place that made me feel alive? Was it the possibilities, the freedom? Or perhaps it was the undeniable hope that maybe this was the place I truly belonged.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I can’t do much with my hands; so I will make a battering-ram of my head and make a way through this rough-and-tumble world.

  ~ LMA

  Taylor

  APRIL 2, 2019

  Dear Taylor,

  It has been some time since I’ve written. I’ve tried not to be bitter about your lack of response, and even wondered if you could respond—if you were on some secret news mission in the Middle East, perhaps, or worse, had fallen sick and weren’t able to write.

  That’s what I’ve wondered, all these years. Until we decided to hire another investigator to find you. Turns out you never moved from California. I can only assume you still want nothing to do with us.

  I’m sorry about that day, Taylor. If I could change it, I most certainly would. Over and over again I’ve replayed it in my head, punished myself for how I hurt you.

  I know what I ask is monumental, and yet for Mom’s sake, I write anyway. Please, Taylor, is there any way we can put this behind us? I truly believe we are sisters, and while friendship might be something that can be cut off, the bond of sisterhood is not. And our mother needs you.

  We found out last month that she has stage three breast cancer. She’s being treated in Boston, and I have no doubt she will beat this thing. But she needs you, Taylor. She needs all of us. Together. You are still a fourth of our family, and we miss you. Mom dreams about you, more since her diagnosis. I feel she has a hole inside of her—we all do—that won’t be filled until you come home.

  I don’t mean to guilt you. For once it seems I’m at a loss for words. I used to know you so well, used to know what would make you feel better—if I’m truthful, I even used to know how to get you to do what I wanted. I realize all that has changed, that we’re near strangers now. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Come home, Taylor. We love you.

  Victoria

  P.S. It may not be my place, but when I saw the investigator’s report that YOU are the person behind one of my favorite authors, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride. Maybe that will offend you, but I hope it doesn’t. I’m cheering you on, Casey Hood. I truly am glad one of us is reaching her castle in the air.

  I was doing it for Lorraine. Well, for Lorraine and my conscience.

  That was it, and nobody—including myself—should expect anything more.

  I brushed my bangs out of my face at the stoplight, caught a quick glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, met my own challenging gaze. I was no longer the awkward, unsure girl I’d been the last time I was in Massachusetts. And while I’d earned a few extra lines around my thirty-seven-year-old smile, I was proud of them and proud of all I’d accomplished since I’d left the Bennetts.

  Being alone had a way of wringing every ounce of life from you. At least it had for me. But it not only wrung me out, it made me stronger. Instead of making me cower in defeat, that last day at the Bennetts’ had bestowed a driving force upon me. A driving force to succeed, to not be stopped no matter the costs. Forget that hazy thing called hope—the only thing I could rely on was myself.

  I’d written my first novel in a beaten-down studio apartment in Cambria, California. I’d gotten a job waitressing at nights—never pondered the journalism job I was supposed to get after finishing college. Instead, I wrote. Like a madwoman.

  And amazingly enough, the words came. The incident in front of the Bennetts’ garage had released a wealth of words. It was as if my life in Concord, my life with the Bennetts, had been the Hoover Dam that was holding the waters back, and now they finally flowed free. I might have been alone, but in some ways I’d found where I belonged. And it wasn’t with people; it was with pages. Pages and pages of fictional people. People I could tame. People I knew would never betray me.

  I wrote beach reads. Literally. Fiction set in small towns along the Pacific coast. I often took a few days off to visit the towns I wrote about for inspiration. In my books, the characters always behaved. They did as I told them. And if they cheated on my heroine with their sisters, it was because there was a plan in mind, a greater good I would work out in their lives by the end.

  I found freedom in this sort of control, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t get enough of it. I didn’t think about Will; I wrote. I didn’t think about Victoria; I wrote. I didn’t think about Will and Victoria; I wrote. And after I was finished writing, still clinging to the crazy thing that had propelled me to drive cross-country and possessed me to write my first novel, I submitted to agents.

  Kathy Sullivan wasn’t an A-list agent back then. But after Monterey Winds came out, that changed. Readers gobbled up my seeming
ly simple story of a summer romance gone wrong against a backdrop of Steinbeck country. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for six months, and I quit my waitressing job, upgraded to an upscale condo overlooking the Pacific.

  The victory was short-lived because I had no one to share it with. So I flung myself into my next novel, then my next. I started saving like crazy, and after careful calculations to add up all the money the Bennetts had spent on me, I sent them a bank check through my lawyer, finally putting aside the heavy guilt—the feeling that I’d stolen from Lorraine and Paul. Stolen their time, their love, their home—even their name.

  I met Kevin while writing novel number six. He threw me for a loop, that’s for sure. A journalist and chaser of stories, I was okay with his low-maintenance, low-commitment attitude. He came and went as he pleased, and I didn’t demand much from him, was always happy to walk into my home after a research trip to see his gym-toned physique standing in my kitchen in nothing but boxer shorts.

  We didn’t go deep. He tried a couple times, but I refused. I was satisfied to simply have a companion, someone to share dinner and a glass of wine with, someone to watch a movie with, spend the night with, and bounce story ideas around with.

  He’d once tried to tell me he loved me, but I would have none of it. He took it okay, actually. Seemed to accept that, although I had feelings for him, I would probably never acknowledge them, much less confess them.

  My Bluetooth sounded out the ringing of my phone. The object of my thoughts popped up on my display.

  “Hey. How’s Washington?” I asked.

  “Don’t know, I’m not there. I’m in Denver, remember?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.”

  “You there yet?”

  “Driving the rental from the airport.”

  “I just wanted to wish you luck, Taylor.” His voice got serious.

  I wasn’t a fan.

  “Thanks. Have fun in Denver.”

  “Call me tonight, okay?”

  I tried not to sigh too loud. He was a decent guy. He was worried about my emotional state. Why did I resist?

  “I will. Thanks, Kevin.”

  We hung up, and I tried not to wonder why he stayed with me all these years. He’d asked me to marry him once, not long after he’d tried to tell me he loved me, after we’d been together about three years. When I’d said no, he hadn’t run away, hadn’t assumed that this was a closed door for us.

  I’d been young back then. Young enough to go to my yearly checkups and not have the doctor give her annual it’s-now-or-likely-never talk about having children. Young enough to not have a few silvery strands of hair at my temples. Young enough to still dare to build those blasted castles in the air, to be naive enough—or maybe stupid enough—to think I had all the time in the world for my life to get back on track.

  I groaned as I took the Concord exit, inhaled a deep breath to calm my quaking nerves. This wouldn’t be easy. Being here, back in Concord, back at the Bennetts’. Seeing Lorraine, sick. Seeing Victoria, period. Seeing the man I knew to be her husband.

  I pulled into the Colonial Inn, just up the street from my destination. I slid my hat low over my head, hoping to avoid any familiar glances.

  After I’d settled into my room, I decided a walk was in order. I wasn’t due at Paul and Lorraine’s until later tonight for dinner. A walk would be a perfect way to still my jittery stomach. And Sleepy Hollow Cemetery would be the perfect destination.

  No note lay at Louisa’s grave, proving that I wasn’t the only one who had changed, who had exchanged new habits for old ones.

  I didn’t feel peace when I walked among the old stones. Instead, it seemed that ghosts haunted and whispered to me, chasing me among the paved paths and through the towering pines, though I couldn’t be sure if they were real ghosts or the ghosts of my past.

  Perhaps I had committed a major grievance against God, or against the dead, in opening Victoria’s letter that day. Perhaps our downfall had begun with me, with imposing myself on some hazy communication between the living and the dead.

  I didn’t stay at the cemetery long. Instead, I walked along Bedford Street and turned toward Lexington Road and Orchard House. The sun shone bright in the sky, but the wind bit my skin just a little, as I was used to the warmer California weather. I zipped up my sweatshirt and within twenty minutes, Orchard House stood before me, looking just as I remembered it.

  Strange to stand there, at what was in many ways the symbol and center of the bond Victoria and I had once shared. Stranger still how I didn’t cringe at the welcome sensation.

  More than once, I thought to write a book set in this town, to pay homage to Louisa Alcott instead of John Steinbeck or Joan Didion. But every time I sat down to create characters, the memories of the Bennetts and of that last day came forth. As time turned and years went by, I realized it wasn’t so much the reason I left that was painful, but the fact that I’d ignored their attempts at reconciliation. That I hadn’t gone back. Hadn’t forgiven.

  What was more, I knew that book—a Louisa book—was the book Victoria had wanted to write. No matter if I had the authority to accomplish it, in many ways, it felt like stealing.

  I imagined such a book on the shelves of the Orchard House gift shop, a deep, dark part of me relishing what that would do to Victoria. How it would be one last blow to her dreams. Just in case the softball bat on her laptop hadn’t accomplished it that day.

  I adjusted my purse over my shoulder, my muscles suddenly tight with the remembrance of my sister’s bat in my hands.

  Truth be told, I’d never understood rage and revenge until that day, and its possession frightened me. In that moment, I was not in control. And every moment after that, these last sixteen years, I fought to make sure I was in control.

  I wondered why Victoria hadn’t mentioned what I’d done in any of her letters—she’d only asked me to forgive her. I wondered if she rewrote her stories or simply started new ones. With the way ideas came to her, it probably hadn’t taken her long to pick herself up and begin again.

  Begin again with Will.

  I walked up the side path to the gift shop, shaking my head at the painful thought, surprised that it still had the power to singe after so many years.

  I noted the banner on the door announcing the 150th anniversary of the publication of Little Women.

  Huh. That’s right. The first part of the successful novel was published in 1868, but the public quickly insisted on a second installment, girls across the country demanding to know if Jo and Laurie would find a happy ending.

  Louisa had refused to let Jo settle for her rich, handsome friend—one she loved like a brother. Instead, she’d introduced Professor Bhaer, along with the many pains of growing up—parting from her sisters, Meg’s domestic troubles, Jo being denied a chance to tour Europe, and the heartrending death of Beth, all introduced the following year, 150 years ago.

  I opened the gift shop door, imagined Bronson Alcott carrying wood into this part of the home—then the woodshed area. I breathed in the scents of books and history, and my stomach relaxed. It might have been hard to be back in Concord, but here, at Orchard House, I could think of only one word and surprisingly, it felt pleasant: home.

  A group clustered in front of the door to what I knew was the Alcott kitchen, a tour guide speaking about the many ways Bronson Alcott sought to improve the house, including the door before them, which swung shut so that he could push it open without hands when carrying wood into the home, allowing it to close behind him.

  The older guide pushed through the door, followed by the group. I glimpsed the soapstone sink below the kitchen window, the walls a deep yellow. Once the door closed, the young woman at the desk smiled at me. “Can I help you find anything?”

  “No thank you, I’m just looking.”

  I meandered through the gift shop, perusing the many books on the shelves. I picked up March by Geraldine Brooks along with a sweet-smelling soy candle that I would give to
Lorraine later.

  I ran my fingers over a copy of Little Women. The book was small and fat, the cover green with what looked like holly vines upon it. Four little women, almost cartoonish, adorned the front, one clearly blonde—Amy. It looked nothing like the copy my birth mother had given me, the copy I’d left behind at the Bennetts’ all those years ago.

  I picked it up, thought a brief second about purchasing it for Victoria, a small token of truce. Surely enough time had passed for us to lay aside old hurts, to at least acknowledge one another if for no other reason than for the sake of Lorraine.

  What happened—the pain—had been real. Maybe it still was. But we’d been so young. Young to love; young to the world; young, and maybe even blinded, to our own selfishness.

  I’d thought many times about how it was that Victoria and Will came to find themselves in one another’s arms that afternoon. I wondered if it was the first time, if the moment had surprised them just as much as it had done me. Or had such an affair been going on for a while? Had they fallen in love, planned to tell me when I came home that day, even?

  I hadn’t stuck around long enough to find answers. And now, sixteen years later, I still didn’t know if I wanted them.

  I’d loved Will. He hadn’t been some silly schoolgirl obsession. He’d been the real thing. A hero born of a bathroom prayer. I thought he’d felt the same way. What had I missed?

  And my best friend. My sister. The person I loved more than anyone else. How could she betray me so completely?

  I walked up to the counter with my items and gave them to the girl. She flipped over the candle and typed the price into the cash register, followed by the novel.