The Orchard House

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  “Twenty-six fifty.”

  I handed her my debit card. “Do you still do Jo March Writing Camps?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. It’s one of our most popular camps. Would you like a flyer?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t have any children. I was just curious. My sister and I used to come.”

  She smiled at me and gave me back my card. “Me too. I loved it.”

  The door behind her opened, and I glimpsed the foyer and front door of Orchard House as a group funneled through, ending their tour.

  “Would you like to take a tour?” the girl asked, handing me my bag.

  “Oh no, I don’t have time today, but maybe I’ll be back soon.”

  The last of the group filed into the gift shop and a familiar-looking woman with a name badge stopped at the desk. “You have everything under control, Nicole? I’m going to be heading out.” She smiled at me, and I froze, feeling my mouth fall open even as I tried to stop it.

  My gaze flew to her name badge and then back to those blue eyes.

  She was just as pretty at thirty-seven as she had been at twenty-one. Her dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, accentuating high cheekbones and a mature beauty that echoed her mother’s.

  My mother’s.

  She gripped the edge of the counter. “Taylor . . . I—I didn’t expect you here.”

  I dragged in a shaky breath, tried to stay strong beneath my sister’s gaze, but found myself shrinking instead. “No, I—I didn’t expect you here, either.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others who do have to wait and hope till they have earned it. That is the best sort and the most enduring.

  ~ LMA

  Taylor

  VICTORIA THREW HER ARMS around my neck, and I stood, my feet cemented to the floor, my arms braced at my sides, one hand clutching my purchases.

  When she finally released me—well, no, she didn’t really release me because she still lightly held my arms in her hands—she started talking a mile a minute, just like I remembered.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come. I really can’t believe you’re here, actually. Wait until Mom and Dad see you—I didn’t tell them that you were coming, you know.”

  “Y-you didn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted to surprise them . . . and to make sure you were going to show up.” She winked, then gestured for me to follow her through the door she just came from. “I just have to grab my purse.”

  I followed her, speechless, as if in a trance. I tried to shake myself out of this state. This was the old me. The timid, frightened Taylor. Not the strong, self-assured Taylor I knew myself to be. “You work here?”

  She smiled back at me, and I thought she should have been focusing on honing her acting instead of her writing all these years. To so easily pretend to pick up where we left off required a certain gift of theater I hadn’t known she possessed. “I’m the director. Never did publish a book, but I decided to go after my next favorite—all things Louisa May Alcott and Orchard House. I can’t imagine doing anything better. I love it here.”

  She glowed. She did seem happy, though I wondered if my presence didn’t have something to do with the joy written on every square inch of her face just then.

  “I’m glad for you.” I pushed out the words, even as I noted the sparkling diamonds on the ring finger of her left hand and tried to come to terms with all the emotion they suddenly stirred within me. I hadn’t been able to resist a quick search of her name on Facebook. The profile picture had told me all I’d needed to know—Will had been the one to give her those diamonds. Will had been the one to get down on one knee and present her with that shimmering setting of shining perfection. To push the ribbed band onto her finger at a wedding ceremony some time later.

  I wondered who Victoria had as her maid of honor, if despite the tangle of circumstances she would have asked me if I hadn’t run away.

  “How did you know I was here?” She opened a small cupboard in the hall and reached for her purse.

  “I—I didn’t.”

  She stopped short. “Oh. I thought—” She waved a hand through the air. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

  “I was taking a walk and ended up here.”

  She smiled. “Of course.”

  I couldn’t hold her gaze. “Of course.”

  “I could give you a ride to Mom and Dad’s.”

  “I think . . . well, you think you and I should catch up first?”

  She blinked. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

  I shook my head, not wanting her to get the wrong impression. “I mean, so you can fill me in on Lorraine. How’s she doing?”

  “Mom, Taylor. Please don’t call her Lorraine. She won’t take it well.”

  I swallowed, knowing she was right but hating to be chastised by Victoria all the same.

  She bade the young clerk, Nicole, goodbye and we walked past Bronson Alcott’s School of Philosophy to the steps at the base of a hill that led to a separate building. I knew the Orchard House offices and classrooms were kept there. Victoria waved to a man with a baseball cap who was trimming the hedges around Bronson’s school, and he returned the gesture.

  She mounted the stairs. “Mom’s had her first two rounds of chemo so far and is keeping her energy level up. She’s doing better than I expected, quite honestly.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” This was stable, even safe ground. Our common concern for the woman we both loved. “How is she emotionally? Mentally?”

  Victoria finished climbing the last stair to the office building and stopped, scrunched up her face. “You know what? She’s good. At first, not so much, but one of her friends invited her and Dad to church and . . . well, they’ve always been so skeptical of organized religion, but I think it’s helping her through this time. I say, whatever works.”

  I agreed, even as I thought of Victoria’s letters I’d found at Sleepy Hollow. Had writing to a long-dead woman worked for her? And what of her long-ago claim that she believed in a God she could call a friend? That He had given her the desire and creative ability to write? Were those beliefs challenged with age and circumstances? Worse, had I contributed to knocking down any faith she’d once had?

  She pressed a button on her key chain and a shiny gray Honda Pilot beeped. She dumped her things—a purse and a lunch box—in the backseat. “You want to take a quick walk before heading over?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  I placed my things beside hers, noted a pink soccer ball and a Nintendo Switch case lying carelessly on the backseats.

  Yes, I’d seen photos of kids when I looked up Victoria and Will online. But something about seeing that pink soccer ball set reality firmly before me. My sister had a life all her own now—one apart from me, one I had chosen not to be a part of. The thought caught me off guard and an ache of something that felt an awful lot like loss niggled its way into my chest. But loss over what? Over the fact that I would likely never have my own children—or any family where I truly belonged? That while I’d fooled myself into thinking I was the victor with the New York Times bestsellers and the coastal beach property and sexy boyfriend, I hadn’t really won at all? Victoria had.

  How a soccer ball and video game case could elicit all these feelings within me, I wasn’t quite sure. I was thirty-seven years old. My own woman. I needed to stop being jealous of my sister. My friend. Whatever she was these days.

  We walked down the hill, but I couldn’t get the family car and soccer ball and video game case out of my head. Maybe it wasn’t so much that I was jealous of Victoria. Maybe what I felt was more like sorrow that I didn’t know these children—the closest thing I would ever have to a niece and nephew.

  I opened my mouth to outright ask about her kids but stopped myself. I didn’t want to know just yet. I didn’t want to know if her son’s smile mirrored Will’s in its crookedness. I didn’t want to know if he was her daughte
r’s soccer coach or liked to rough out a few video games with his son on the weekends. I didn’t want to know. Ever.

  Victoria widened her gait to a peppy step. “So what have you been up to? You know, besides writing all those runaway bestsellers?” When I took a second too long to answer, she grabbed my arm. “Oh! Do you want to know which one was my absolute favorite?”

  I smiled, but it felt ten kinds of awkward. “Sure.”

  “Long Beach Nights.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Really? I hated writing that one, thought it would never make it to print even after I edited it a gazillion times.”

  “Are you serious? The mother/daughter relationship you portrayed . . . the hurt, the hero . . .” She sighed. “It was beautiful. Will found me sobbing over it one night.”

  My breath hitched.

  She couldn’t miss my thoughts, suddenly heavy with the realization that she and Will shared an actual life together, that their betrayal had not only culminated in a complete, three-hundred-sixty-degree circle of perfection, but that it had sparked something real, something authentic—something more lasting than anything I’d ever known.

  I cleared my throat, knowing I needed to speak, sensing that Victoria wouldn’t be the first to do so, to acknowledge that four-letter word that had first come between us more than sixteen years ago.

  “So . . . how’s he doing?”

  I’d come here vowing to be strong, and yet I’d ruined whatever fortress I intended to erect with that single sentence, for it stank of old hurts and vulnerability, of past regrets and second-place ribbons.

  “I’m so sorry, Taylor,” she whispered. “What happened back then was . . . I mean, it was a complete mistake, a fluke thing, but then . . . after you were gone for so long . . . I just wish we could have handled it all better.”

  Yeah, a whole lot better. Like not falling for one another at all, for starters. Like not giving whatever feelings they had for one another a chance to grow. Like stifling and stomping it out before it had a chance to fan into flame and keeping one’s lips to one’s self.

  I bit off the bitter words that wanted to pour forth from my mouth, tamed them instead. I’d learned to keep my acrimonious words to the page—my stories were often more interesting because of them.

  I started slow. “I suppose . . .” I began again. “I guess I can understand how it would happen . . . I mean, he was Will.” Perfect, handsome, smart, funny Will. “And you were you.” Perfect, beautiful, petite, brilliant. Really, a much better match for him from the get-go. “I guess I just don’t understand how you could let it happen.”

  About a thousand things were wrong with this conversation, but that I couldn’t keep those bitter feelings over my sister’s marriage to myself stuck the deepest. I shook my head. “You know what? Forget it. It’s water under the bridge, really. All for the best. Tell me about your kids.”

  “No, it bothers you. We should talk this out. Taylor, I know you didn’t come here for us. I know you came for Mom, but when you sent word you were coming back home, I couldn’t help but hope that we might make amends. That we could be . . . you know, sisters again.”

  I couldn’t speak, couldn’t formulate thoughts or coherent words that I could trust enough to thrust between us.

  She continued. “I wouldn’t expect it to be the same relationship we had when we were teens or even in college. I wouldn’t expect anything, Taylor, except what you wanted to give. I just . . . I want you in our lives again. I miss you.” We walked for a minute, and when I didn’t respond, she dragged in a deep breath. “I suppose I also realize we have to wade through some of the ugly past to get there. Would you—well, don’t you think you could wade with me?”

  I stopped walking. This was too much, too fast. I came here for Lorraine. She and Paul had treated me as their own child the best they could, giving me food and my own room and braces and an education and as much of their love as they could manage. And when I left, in some ways, it felt as if I’d stolen it all from them, as if I’d taken what they’d done for me and treated it like it didn’t matter. Like they didn’t matter.

  But they did. And now I wanted to show them.

  But none of that had to do with Victoria. Not really. And making amends with her wasn’t on my list of things to do now and maybe not ever.

  I glanced back the direction we came, leaving her vulnerable question to hang in the air between us. “I think . . . I think I’d like to go see Mom now.”

  Defeat darkened her pretty features, but she nodded, gave me a tight smile. “Sure, Taylor, sure. She’ll be happy to see you.”

  We walked toward Orchard House and then up the hill to her car in silence, a mountain of unspoken regret between us. For me, at least, it was too much to climb.

  CHAPTER NINE

  All the philosophy in our house is not in the study; a good deal is in the kitchen, where a fine old lady thinks high thoughts and does good deeds while she cooks and scrubs.

  ~ LMA

  Johanna

  “BLAST THIS WRETCHED WIND!” I shoved a clothespin on the line, ordered it to stay put upon the handkerchief I was attempting to wrangle into submission beneath the afternoon gale.

  I heard a laugh behind me and turned to see Mrs. Alcott at the door of the kitchen. “She won’t listen, you know. Is known to have a mind of her own, that wind.”

  My face colored at the thought of the elderly woman hearing me use such poor language. “Forgive me, Mrs. Alcott. Is it always so blustery in Massachusetts?”

  “Not at all, dear. And don’t worry too much about apologizing—both Lou and I are no strangers to an occasional tantrum, though we’re trying to improve upon ourselves.”

  I nodded. “Are you feeling well today?”

  “Very, dear. I was going to help with dinner as well. Anna’s bringing the babies over. There’s nothing like some grandchildren to lighten the heart.”

  “I’ll be in soon as I finish hanging the rest.”

  She closed the door and I went back to my laundry. I had taken a special liking to Mrs. Alcott. While at times she seemed confused, there was something that sat in her spirit—something that old age or hard times or war hadn’t been able to snuff out. I saw the same thing in Louisa, and though I couldn’t quite grasp it, I knew it wasn’t something that possessed my own mother. Not that I wanted it to possess her—or me for that matter.

  The Alcotts were a different sort. A week with them was more than enough time for me to understand as much. I gathered Mr. Alcott did not have steady work, and besides teaching and giving what he called Conversations—lectures on his ideas about education and philosophy, which I understood were highly unorthodox—he did not bring any income. Mrs. Alcott had been the one to go to work when Louisa was younger, helping the poor of Boston. They had been a wandering family, moving often until eight years ago when they finally settled on this piece of earth not far from their dear friend Ralph Emerson. Now Louisa had taken her place as the provider of the family, largely through her writing, which seemed to be slowly gaining success.

  “The trouble is that I don’t know enough of life to write,” she’d told me the night before as we both sat doing handwork in the parlor by the waning summer sun streaming through the windows.

  “Don’t you? What of your experience in the war? Of staring death in the face and coming out victorious?” If this lady had nothing to write about, how was I to ever hope to pen something of meaning myself?

  “I suppose . . .” Her fingers never stopped moving, weaving needle in and out of cloth with grace. “Though I think Europe will be just the inspiration I need. It must be a capital place to let a story simmer.”

  “You will have a marvelous time. What do you think you will write upon your return?”

  “Certainly something grander than a ‘book for girls,’ which is all my publisher can talk of me writing.”

  “How lovely! Why don’t you give it a go?”

  “I refuse to spend my time writing moral pap for the yo
ung. Such drivel.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. If I had a publisher asking me for a story, I’d see to its writing even if it did contain some pap.

  I’d never known anyone quite like this woman, and though sometimes I found myself appalled at her outlandish behavior, at the same time I couldn’t wait to know what notion she would turn on its head next.

  “And how do you think you will manage here? Are you satisfied with your work?” she asked.

  “Most definitely.” And I was. It was good work, yet it left me with some time for myself—to walk into town or read one of Louisa’s many Dickens books or fiddle around with a poem or two of my own.

  “I feel better leaving Father and Marmee knowing you are here.”

  “I will do my best by them, and you.”

  She placed her handwork on her lap. “I am truly glad you’ve come here, Johanna. And if it’s not too presumptuous of me to say—I believe that if John were alive, he would be right proud of his sister for having an adventure of her own.”

  Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. Though I knew it behooved her for me to be here, I also knew the genuineness of her words—couldn’t imagine a false bone in her body, in fact. “Thank you.”

  “Now, don’t you think it’s time we spoke of the problem you had with my novel?”

  “Louisa!”

  “I’m in earnest, dear. Kindly criticism never offends but to me is often more flattering than praise, for if anyone takes the trouble to criticize, it seems to prove that the thing is worth mending.”

  I thought on that for a moment before I spoke. “The story was very interesting. Bold, which I liked, though I didn’t find comfort in it.”

  She waited.

  I sighed, figuring I had best be out with it. “At some points it felt as if you were writing the story as a means to express disapproval of marriage . . . or worse, condone a free sort of love.”

  Her mouth tightened, and she nodded. “I have heard that criticism, though that was not my intent. My intent was to show the moral shortcomings of a moody nature—one guided by impulse—and their disastrous results. The end result was not what I meant to have it, for I now believe I followed bad advice and took out many things which explained my idea and made the characters more natural and consistent.”