The Orchard House

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  My own heart ached for small Louisa, for I could understand her plight, as it seemed a much older Louisa could as well, for below the entry was written: (Poor little sinner! She says the same at fifty—LMA.)

  I marveled then at the plight of the human heart, the condition that none of us could escape, no matter how far we flew or no matter which ocean we sought.

  What was the answer to our burden?

  Another thirty minutes passed before Victoria grabbed my arm. “Wait. Here!”

  I peered over her shoulder. The letter was addressed “Dear Johanna.” I stood up, adrenaline rushing to my limbs. “This is it.”

  Victoria read out loud. “‘Dear Johanna, I was not certain whether I would hear back from you, and I am so very glad I did. . . . Presumptuous as it may be, I confess that your John had become very dear to me in the short time I knew him. I still think of him often. His strength of character and bravery in the midst of the impossible will, I am quite certain, stay with me forever.’”

  I pointed to John’s name. “It’s him. And from the sound of it this isn’t their first letter. They must have been in communication about Johanna’s brother.”

  Victoria read on, and it was like finding treasure—to an Alcott fan, at least. Louisa wrote of her time with John at the army hospital. She encouraged Johanna to write more of John, saying stories had a way of healing grief.

  “They grew close through their letters.”

  We ended that letter only to find another and another. As we had inferred earlier, Johanna would travel to Concord to stay with Louisa’s parents while she went to Europe. There was one letter while she was away, but it sounded as if there were many missing. Still, we got the gist of their relationship—one that seemed to be more than simply that of employer and employee. They were friends, and though it appeared theirs was a harmonious friendship, there was one point they most definitely disagreed upon—at least in 1865, while Louisa was overseas and Johanna was taking care of the house and her parents: Nathan Bancroft.

  There was not much about him in the letters until Louisa mentioned the wedding in a letter to her sister, Anna.

  Attended Johanna’s wedding. Cannot say I’ve been saddened by the experience of nuptials this much since your own wedding—and that for selfish reasons. This time, my concern is purely altruistic. Though Johanna seems set. I have been wrong before. I pray their marriage proves a blessed one.

  We searched awhile longer after that but found no more word about Johanna, either good or bad.

  Victoria folded the papers back into their folder.

  “Do you really think that’s it? No more?”

  “It seems to be. Maybe they grew distant after Johanna married Nathan.”

  “But that doesn’t explain the poems. It’s like we’re missing a big piece of what happened.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure where else to search.”

  She looked tired, defeated, as if she was about to throw in the towel on this or maybe just life itself. Without thinking, I grabbed up her hand in mine. “There’s more, and we’re going to find it.”

  I couldn’t help but be disheartened by the weak smile she gave me. “Sure.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Please tell me how I can help you.”

  She dragged in a wobbly, ragged breath. “I know you can’t tell, but you being here has made all the difference. It’s going to be a while before I can pick myself up from this. I don’t know who I am without Will. I’m not even sure I want to find out.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek, holding in any lecture or scorn that would make her feel worse. “I can help you. I remember who you were—who you are. Write again, Victoria. What better sort of outlet than that right now? You should have never given it up—not out of guilt, not for Will. It’s a part of you, and you can’t just throw it away.”

  “I’m numb. I don’t want to feel.”

  An idea came to me then, and it was so absurd, I questioned its validity for at least a solid minute in my mind. There were about a thousand different reasons I shouldn’t pave this path. Most professionals, my agent and editor included, would probably discourage such a distraction. But in many ways, Victoria was at the heart of my story already. Why not give her a say in it?

  “What if we wrote together?”

  “We already tried that, remember? Our Pickwick meeting the other night.”

  “No. Write one story together. Our story. The one I’m on deadline for.”

  I could see right away that she was tempted. That, in some ways, I offered her a childhood dream on a gold-trimmed platter. But she shook her head. “I can’t intrude on your deadline, Taylor. And I never understood how people write books together anyway. I mean, what does that even look like?”

  “It looks like working together. You’ve always been brilliant with a story, and right now I need help. And I know you can contribute so much more than if I were on my own. Or what if you wrote in some of the historical letters my main character is finding? It would be fitting to have a different voice with those. Please, help me.”

  She looked at the folder before her. “I can try. But I’m not making any promises—”

  Something in my heart lightened, and I hardly recognized it. “I’m not expecting anything. I promise. Whatever you have to give I’ll be grateful for. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” She slid off the stool. “Now how about you helping me with something a little more concrete? Supper.”

  Two days passed. Victoria went to work and read my story at night, catching up on what I’d written so far. The kids went to school. Dad took Mom to chemo.

  We got a good start on the story, and Victoria did write a few letters between our historical heroine and Louisa May Alcott, similar to the ones we found. But the connection between the present-day story and the historical letters didn’t quite jibe.

  Thursday night, my sister took off her reading glasses and put them on the dining room table to rub her eyes. “I miss him,” she said.

  I closed my eyes, didn’t have any wisdom to handle such emotions. I wanted to remind her of the words he’d called her, of her beloved books hurled at her, intended to hurt. But really I wasn’t certain if any of that would serve her well either.

  I thought of Will. Of how life had changed him or rather wrung him out into a different person. Was it life, war, or was it something he was predisposed to already? Something I hadn’t seen all those years ago when he told me he loved me in Boston’s Public Garden?

  “I’ve been thinking. About Johanna.”

  “What about her?” I tried to sound nonchalant, though secretly I counted it a victory that she’d been thinking about our story and Johanna, that we could move past her acknowledgment that she missed her husband.

  “I think there’s one avenue we haven’t explored, and it might be worth looking into.”

  I straightened, leaned toward her a bit.

  “She probably has family. Maybe even direct descendants. We know enough to find out pretty quickly on ancestry.com. A lot like I had done when I was searching for John and Anna Pratt’s family.”

  “Of course,” I whispered. “Now that we know her husband’s name.”

  “It doesn’t mean they know anything,” Victoria cautioned. “But there’s a good chance they could at least know the basics—that she worked for the Alcotts and all that.”

  I thought of Johanna’s poem on marriage. “And yet if there was some history that they didn’t want discovered, or that maybe even Johanna didn’t want discovered, perhaps they’ve kept it hidden.”

  Victoria’s lips thinned. “You might be right. She wrote about her troubles in the poems it seems, but then they were hidden away in Bronson’s school. Someone—whether it be Johanna or Louisa or someone else in their circle—didn’t want them found. It’s bad enough my kids have an idea what Will and I are going through. I’d hate for that to be passed down our family line.”

  I opened my mouth to force some positive
words into the conversation. Perhaps tell her that good or bad, it was part of the story. The journey. That perhaps good could come from the bad.

  But I stopped myself. It might be too early for such pep talks. Besides, did I really believe those words? It was a recent thought, one I hadn’t dwelled on to much extent until coming to Concord, until singing a song in my mother’s church about such things. Did I really believe it?

  “Let’s look into it,” I said instead.

  We logged on to the website and got to work. Within an hour and a half, we had Johanna Bancroft’s family tree. At least one arm of it. She and Nathan had only one child, born in Philadelphia. Cora Bancroft. According to the site, Cora had had four children.

  “Look!” I pointed at the screen. Cora’s first child was named Louisa. “There is no way that is a coincidence.”

  Victoria shook her head. “If Louisa was such a big part of Johanna’s life—maybe even so much that her daughter named her firstborn after her—then why isn’t more mentioned about Johanna in Louisa’s journals and letters? I’m voting on the name being coincidence.”

  I mumbled something about her raining on my parade but brushed it off quick, kept following the line which eventually led us to two sisters—an Amber born in 1986 and a Nicole born in 1988. They both had marriage records in Maine and they both had two children each, all under the age of ten.

  “So we find them, right? It should be easy enough using social media.”

  Victoria nodded. “Even if they didn’t do the research themselves, they can hopefully point us in a better direction than we have now.”

  I opened another tab to my Facebook account. I only had an author page, but it would have to do. I plugged in the name Amber Macedo. A page of results came up, and after searching through the first few for clues of the Amber from the Northeast that we were looking for, I instead typed in Nicole’s name. Nicole Carotenuto. Only one came up, and I clicked on it to see a profile picture of a pretty young woman with a blond man, both tan with blue ocean behind them.

  I worked on composing a message that explained our predicament and what we were looking for. After Victoria read it over and approved, I sent it and closed the laptop. “I’d say that’s good progress for the day. And this letter you wrote for our story—it’s beautiful. Better than any of your others so far. It’s coming back to you, isn’t it?”

  A small smile lifted one corner of her mouth. “I felt . . . freer in that one.”

  “I could tell.”

  The doorbell rang and I went to answer it. Something akin to disgust climbed up my insides at the sight of Will just over the threshold.

  I stepped out onto the porch, closed the screen door behind me. “What do you want?” I snapped. I didn’t care what that website said, in this moment I felt my sister needed all the protection I could give her.

  Will stood, straight and sure as ever. “I want to see my wife.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t let her get to you too, Taylor. I’m sure she told a crock of lies about me, didn’t she? Yes, I may have been a little out of line this past week. My deadline at work, things have been stress—”

  “That is no excuse to throw books at your wife. To call her a . . . Get out of here or I’m calling the police.”

  “Taylor—”

  “I mean it, Will. Leave.”

  “Taylor.” The voice came from behind me and it sounded smaller than it had when I’d just been talking to her. Then, she’d been animated trying to figure out the mystery of Johanna Bancroft. She’d been without chains, like her old self. Now I clearly saw what Will did to her. I saw, and I hated him for it. “It’s okay. We should talk.”

  I wanted to disagree, but no matter how much I wanted to at that moment, I could not be Victoria’s keeper. “Fine.” I opened the screen door for her to come out, gestured to the porch chairs for her to sit in one. I took the other. “Say what you need to say,” I said to Will, who was still standing near the steps.

  Victoria crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Taylor. Please.” The words were like a slap. Hadn’t she just been saying how grateful she was that I was here, how grateful she was for my help? I thought I was to be part of the solution.

  And yet, like it or not, Victoria was a grown woman. She could decide to walk right back into Will’s arms and there wasn’t one thing I could do about it.

  I stood. “Fine. I’ll be right inside if you need me.” I went into the house, closed the screen door, but left the solid door open so I could hear if anything got out of hand.

  I heard a swear cross Will’s lips. “You don’t belong here, Victoria. You belong with me. Come home—now.”

  I thought of his words about Victoria lying to me, and I hated myself for entertaining it. This was what he did apparently, who he was now. Getting inside the head of his wife with poison, manipulating, trying to seed suspicion within me as well. Still, it plucked familiar chords of betrayal across my heart. I couldn’t trust Will. But did that mean I could trust my sister?

  “I’m not ready to come home yet, Will.”

  More muffled words. Then, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . .” He was crying. I couldn’t believe it. The lowlife was legit sobbing.

  I backed away from the door. As much as I wanted to hear my sister’s response, I didn’t want to impose on Victoria’s privacy. We’d grown closer this last week—maybe even closer than we’d ever been. She’d tell me what happened when Will was gone. She’d tell me the truth. I was certain of it.

  I went back to the dining room table, opened my laptop, and clicked onto my Facebook account. The red bubble indicated I had a message.

  Hey, Taylor! I don’t know a lot about my ancestors, but my mom is the one who does all that ancestry stuff. I read her your message. She encouraged me to give you her phone number. Hope that helps!

  I wrote back my thanks, plugged Nicole’s mom’s number into my phone next to the name Marjorie and leaned back in my chair, straining to hear voices outside.

  Mom and Dad would be home soon. I didn’t know how they’d respond to Will’s presence on their porch—probably much like I’d done, if I had to hazard a guess.

  A couple minutes later, I heard the screen door settle in its casing. Victoria’s footsteps echoed down the hall. She stood at the threshold, her arms once again crossed over her chest.

  “He said he’s sorry,” she said.

  I pressed my lips together.

  “I know what you’re thinking. And I know you’re probably right. But I can’t help but . . . hope. Is that so wrong?”

  I closed my eyes. That blasted hope again. It had disappointed one too many times for my liking. “He said you lied to me about what happened.”

  I let my words sit between us, not wanting to ask her outright but needing reassurance.

  “Taylor, how could you think . . . ? No, no, of course I didn’t.” She paced the floor in front of me. “He said that?”

  I nodded.

  She put her hands on her face, rubbed them down her cheeks. “This is what he excels at. Planting doubt. He had me doubting myself more than once after we’d gotten in bad arguments.”

  “And you think going back to him is a good idea right now?”

  “He said he’d get help. Really this time.”

  “Then let him. Great. But he has a lot of proving himself to do before you accept him back into your life.” I winced. There I went again. “I’m sorry. It’s your life. You have a right to live it how you want—not how Will wants you to or Mom and Dad want you to or I want you to.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  I gestured to the computer. “Nicole got back to me.”

  She sat down. “That was fast.” But her excitement was frayed, torn.

  I told her what Nicole had said.

  “You going to call her?” Victoria asked.

  “Yes. I was just about to.” Though somewhere in the space of the last half hour, my excitement had dwindled too. I looked at Johanna’s
book of poems, sitting on the table. At the file of letters we’d obtained from Orchard House, the books that recorded Louisa Alcott’s journals. I’d put so much stock into what this search meant for us. For the book we now wrote together, yes, but also for what it meant for us as sisters. Somehow Johanna had reunited us, and I felt we had a duty to her memory to find her history.

  I picked up my phone. Dialed Marjorie Pelletier’s number.

  She answered on the third ring. “Hello?” It was a breezy greeting, and it put me at ease.

  I explained who I was and that Nicole had passed along her number. Then I launched into a shortened version of our story regarding Johanna. “So I know this might be kind of a shot in the dark, but I was wondering if you knew anything more about her. Specifically regarding her friendship with Louisa Alcott.”

  “My grandmother’s namesake,” she said quietly.

  I perked up. “We saw that but we didn’t want to surmise something that wasn’t there.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, it’s there all right. Gram told me many a tale while I was a toddler at her feet. It wasn’t until I was older that she opened up about the entire history, though.”

  “We’d love to hear it if you’re willing to share.”

  She sighed. “I suppose everyone’s family has a dark spot or two they’d rather not expose. I haven’t even told my daughters yet, convinced myself it didn’t matter much to them what happened a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  I licked my lips. “I’m pretty fond of stories, and I believe they’re all worth telling. The bad ones and the good. I’ve even been wondering if they all might have a way of birthing new life.”

  “Beauty from ashes,” Marjorie whispered.

  “Yes,” I said, something light in my heart for the first time in days.

  “My daughter said you contacted her by way of Casey Hood’s author page. You don’t know her, do you?” She sounded as if she already knew my secret.

  “Casey’s my pen name.”

  “Well, my, oh, my. You said you’re in Concord, is that right? We’re about a two-hour drive north of there. I’d love to tell you Johanna’s history in exchange for your autograph on some of my favorite books. What do you think?”