The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees

Author:Kelly O'Connor McNees [McNees, Kelly O'Connor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 8217-07-08T23:00:00+00:00

He came back in the afternoon, when Bronson was tucked away in his study and Abba had gone to the orchard to trade her plum jam for summer apples. Louisa was sitting in the dormer near her bed reading and looked up from the page when a movement on the front path caught her eye. Joseph wore a clean shirt, white linen, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A book was tucked between his brown forearm and his ribs. She ducked out of the window and backed onto her bed. Anna sat in her rocker by the other window, plucking at a square of embroidery.

“Anna,” Louisa said as the knock sounded below. “Joseph’s at the door.”

Anna looked up, surprised. “Do you want to see him?”

“No. Tell him . . . tell him I’m ill. Or that I’ve gone out. Yes, tell him I’ve gone out.”

Anna appraised her sister with a sympathetic frown. “Oh, Lou, what he did to you is . . .”

Joseph knocked again.

“Hush about that. Go—before Father hears him and comes out of his study.” Anna hesitated a moment before she draped the embroidery over the arm of the chair and hurried toward the steps. Louisa closed her eyes and listened to Anna’s dress swish across the floorboards.

She heard voices drifting up through the open windows below but couldn’t make out what they said. Soon the heavy door closed. Louisa lowered herself to her knees and peered over the bottom of the window just in time to see Joseph traverse the last few feet of the path and exit the front gate. He looked back at the house and Louisa dropped her head out of sight. She climbed back onto the bed and took up her book.

It took all her strength not to look up when Anna came in.

“Well,” Anna said, standing in the center of the room. “Don’t you want to know what he said?”

“Not particularly,” Louisa said.

Anna rolled her eyes. “I tried to give him a piece of my mind, Louisa.” Anna sat back in her rocker. “But he looked so . . . bereft. I tried to ask him why, why he didn’t tell us about . . . Nora, his plans. But he just shook his head. Said he had to talk to you.”

Louisa finally raised her eyes from the paragraph she’d been scanning for a full minute without comprehension. “We have nothing to say to each other.”

“I know. He wanted me to give you this.” She extended her arm toward Louisa, offering a book with a letter tucked in its front pages.

Louisa didn’t put out her hand. “Burn it.”

“But don’t you at least want to see what it says? Perhaps there is some explanation for what happened.”

“I can imagine no satisfactory explanation for lying. Can you?”

Anna shook her head. “No.”

Louisa crossed her arms. “I think we must see people for who they are, not who we wish they might be. It is hard now, but it will be for the best in the end.

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