I’d told myself it was to keep my privacy, to keep from being found out from those in my old life. Now I wondered if the attempt to change my name, even on my books, hadn’t been just another way to break from my past.
I blinked and gave Luke the bookmark. He looked down, holding it slightly farther from his eyes. I imagined him poring over Lord of the Rings in an easy chair at home, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose.
“Casey Hood . . . I think I’ve heard of you.”
I shrugged, gave him a small smile. “My books are around.”
He leaned against the windowsill, crossed his arms over his broad chest, the Framingham Police initials bold on the front. “So what’s giving you trouble about your story?”
Something in me wanted to put a wall up then. Some sort of barrier. Who was this guy—the maintenance man—to come in and start asking me all these questions? He was being entirely too nosy.
And why didn’t I mind?
I dragged in a deep breath, decided I had nothing to lose. “You want to know what I just told those kids up there?”
He nodded at me, encouraging.
“To be honest in their writing. To feel it, deeply. Only now I don’t think I’m following my own advice.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . I’m here. This place, I grew up here. There’s a lot attached to it. I suppose a lot that I don’t want to feel. I think it’s interfering with the writing.”
“So you have to face it.”
I squinted up at him, shrugged. “Maybe.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“Maybe,” I whispered.
He scratched his cheek, where the shadow of growth started. “Sounds to me like you got two options.”
“Have.”
“What?”
I winced. “Sorry. Bad habit—correcting a stranger’s grammar.”
He smiled, and it was definitely worn around the edges. But there was something solid there, too. Something that spoke of security. “As I was saying . . . sounds to me like you got two options . . .”
I rolled my eyes. “Those being?”
“You can face whatever’s bothering you, whatever scares you about being here.”
Scares me? I hadn’t said that, had I? “I’m really looking forward to hearing what option two is.”
“You could write about it. Work it out in your story. Don’t writers do that sometimes?”
I studied him. “I suppose they do.”
He pushed off the windowsill. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you. Guess you’ll be around for the rest of the week?”
I nodded. “Thanks for your help.”
He raised his bookmark. “Thanks for this.”
“Really, I’m not sure if I can quite compare with Lord of the Rings—you may be better off skipping out.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He winked at me. “Let me know if you need anything. It was nice meeting you, Taylor.”
“Nice meeting you.” I watched as he exited the building, then headed over to the office building.
The school felt suddenly empty. Too quiet. I stared at my computer screen. I’d written twenty-five thousand words—a quarter of the book. Yet I could no longer deny it wasn’t working.
I closed the document and looked out the window. A few feet in front of the sharply inclined slope stood a large pebbled rock. It would be perfect for sitting on a warm and sunny day, and I wondered if Louisa had ever done so.
I hummed quietly, turned back to my computer, and opened up a new Word document. The blank page waited before me, more inviting than intimidating.
“You could write about it. Work it out in your story. Don’t writers do that sometimes?”
New characters, a new setting. Victoria’s long-ago words after our first day at Jo March Writing Camp echoed in my mind.
“Write it. Write your story. Like Louisa did in Little Women. . . . Write your story, and make something good come out of it.”
Maybe I would finally take that advice to heart. Both Victoria’s and the mysterious groundskeeper’s. I would write out my story—or one similar to it—and in it I’d find my solution. Words could be tamed, sorted, controlled.
Surely in this story I could find some semblance of peace over the troubles that had plagued me for the last sixteen years. Maybe I could find myself. If not myself or peace, then maybe I could brave the waters of optimism and at last search out that dangerous, elusive thing I’d feared too long . . . hope.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I felt God as I never did before, and I prayed in my heart that I might keep that happy sense of nearness all my life.
~ LMA
Johanna
I STARED AT THE PRECIOUS PAPER on my lap, the ink on the end of my pen drying as I tried to summon up that tenuous first line. It often only took a couple of words strung together to set off more swirling within me, but today, they did not come.
I raised my head toward the January sun, uncommonly bright and warm. The rock I sat on was a marker of sorts. Mr. Alcott spoke often of his plans to one day build a school on the property. A school of philosophy. I could only fathom how interesting it might be to attend such a school, to share ideas with learned men and perhaps even women.
I breathed deep, pulling air into my lungs, moving my booted feet along the still-hard earth of winter. I stared at the blank page again but couldn’t summon up an ounce of inspiration. Instead, my thoughts turned to Nathan, as they were wont to do of late. He’d traveled home from Boston just yesterday and was to leave again tomorrow, but he hadn’t yet called today.
I had purchased some sugar in town out of my own pay just two days earlier. I planned to make him some of my lemon cookies. He could bring them along—something sweet to remember me by.
Giving the paper one last look of longing, as if words would pop upon them merely by will, I stood. Perhaps some baking would stir my creative muse to life.
Going inside, I hid away my writing supplies before returning downstairs. Orchard House lay quiet, as Mr. and Mrs. Alcott were gone for the day to visit Anna. I set to work making the cookies, then cleaned the kitchen with care while they cooled. I placed them on one of Mrs. Alcott’s plates and walked up the long drive to Nathan’s house, enjoying the sunshine, toying with a jumble of words that had the potential to become the first line of a poem.
Still, nothing came. What would I write of, and why did I feel suddenly drained of words?
I approached Nathan’s grand home and held the plate of cookies against my middle with one hand so I could knock with the other. I waited a minute, but no one answered. Strange, for it looked as if his carriage was in the barn and even if Nathan wasn’t home, usually his butler, Ivan, was puttering around. I knocked again and again waited, then one more time for good measure. I turned away, disappointed that I had used so much sugar for what seemed to be a waste, for if Nathan had already left, the cookies would be hard and stale upon his return.
Behind me, the door creaked open, Nathan’s tall, silver-haired butler eyeing the plate I’d brought. “I’m sorry, Miss Suhre. He is not feeling particularly well. Perhaps you could return tomorrow?”
“He is off for Boston tomorrow, is he not?”
“Yes, but—”
From behind him came a low, unrecognizable growl. “Who is it?”
Ivan stepped into my line of view, closed the door to block me. I couldn’t understand his secrecy and leaned to the side so that I might see inside the home. I heard Ivan’s low voice, then a louder one I recognized as Nathan’s.
Reluctantly, it seemed, Ivan opened the door and allowed me entrance. I stepped inside, clutching the plate tight in my hands, not sure what was about or why I should be nervous over it.
Nathan stood in the hall, his suit a rumpled mess, his blond curls on end, his eyes weepy and bloodshot. I rushed to him, put a hand on the side of his face. “Nathan, are you unwell?”
He pulled from me with a jerk and went unsteadily
into his study. I followed, tried not to be hurt over the slight.
“I made these for you.”
He glanced at the plate, gestured to an empty table by the window.
Not exactly the reaction for which I hoped.
“How was your day?” I asked. I knew he was tired from all this travel.
“Rotten as eggs, if you must know.”
I looked at him, his normally erect posture slouched, his hand a bit shaky as he reached into a cabinet behind his desk and poured himself something. Alcohol? Was this what was wrong, then? Was my Nathan drunk?
I went to him, placed a hand on his arm, and tried to guide him to a chair. “Come, let us talk about our problems instead of drowning them in whiskey.”
He pushed me away again. This time, hard enough to send me bumping into the small table where I had placed the cookies. I saw the table teeter back and forth, knew I must stop it, but was still in such shock over Nathan’s rough treatment of me that I could not gather my wits enough to do so.
As if time paused, I reached a hand out, but too late. Mrs. Alcott’s plate fell to the ground, shattering with a sound that echoed throughout Nathan’s large study. Cookie bits and wholes fell among the shards of porcelain, rendering the entire batch inedible.
“Now, look what you did!” Nathan stood above me, gesturing to the plate, and I could not fathom who this man was. Yes, I knew alcohol could spur men to act in abominable ways, but I never expected Nathan to be one weak enough to entertain it.
I stood, raised my chin to him, looked in his bloodshot eyes with something like a challenge, then removed myself, leaving the mess.
He did not follow me, and once safely in Orchard House, I attacked the kitchen floor with a scrub brush and a vengeance, the tears adding to the suds of my efforts. Without warning, an intense homesickness came over me and I could not imagine bearing another five months in this cold Concord town, the reality of who Nathan was taunting me in my head.
I’d let love rule me, and I had fallen weak. Louisa was right after all. Better to keep one’s liberty—and keep one’s head about love, lest it ruin one’s heart.
After I’d exhausted my muscles on cleaning, I retrieved my inkwell and paper, sought the rock at the back of Orchard House once again.
This time, the words came, as I knew they would, for something about the stir of emotions—hurt and anger and loneliness—fed them.
I am small
But a flood starts with one
Drop of water
And a forest starts with a seed
As does a civilization
Or a disease.
I stopped and read over the words, my heartbeat calmer at the cadence of the lines I’d crafted. Perhaps foolish, they seemed to give me some sort of power—order in my otherwise-orderless world.
Nathan was wrong to act as he did. I might be little more than a servant, not much of anyone according to this world, but I was someone. I deserved to be treated as such.
I remembered riding home from town one day in our carriage alongside my brother John. I’d been no more than twelve, all of us still adjusting to life without Pa. John had popped down from the carriage, given me a small bow, and held his hand out to me.
I had scrunched my nose at him. “What’s that for?”
He’d grinned. “Well, I figure with Pa not being around anymore, I better start being nice to you so’s you know how a man’s supposed to treat a lady.”
“Are you serious?” I’d asked, frightened to take his hand lest he pull me down in the mud or frighten me with a toad in his pocket as he’d been known to do.
“Afraid so, little lady. It’s a tricky job, but someone’s got to do it.”
Tentative at first, I took his hand, trying not to show surprise when he did help me down and even offered his arm for our short walk to the house.
“Now, Johanna, you’re growing up fast and you’re pretty as those there wildflowers in spring. Soon boys will be knockin’, and I might not always be around to tell you which are the good and which are the bad, got it?”
“I suppose . . . ,” I said, though in honesty I couldn’t imagine any boys seriously courting me.
“So it’s up to you. Don’t ever settle for anyone who doesn’t treat you like a lady, you got that?”
I giggled. “But I’m not a lady.”
“Don’t matter. If a boy loves you rightly, he’ll think you are—and he better treat you that way, too.”
I didn’t understand what John had been talking about then. But I did now. And if I were to go by my departed brother’s advice, I should be running long and hard away from Nathan Bancroft.
Despite the ache in my heart.
Though I’d begun to hope I’d found my place here in Concord, first with the Alcotts and then with Nathan, perhaps I’d been wrong. Perhaps I should depart for home after Louisa’s return, be content to scribble my poetry by night and milk cows by day.
Truly, there could be worse things.
I went to bed that night trying to brush the sadness from my spirit. Instead, I wrote by candle- and moonlight, sneaking into Louisa’s abandoned room, for it contained a half-moon desk by the window. There, I finished my poem and felt a strange sort of wholeness in the midst of the dark.
Nathan called the following day. I was feeding the stove with wood when a knock sounded on the kitchen door. I opened it to see the man I knew and loved, despite his horrid actions and secrets. He was back to his well-put-together self, suit crisp and straight, curly hair tamed. And his eyes . . . his eyes were clear and dry. And pleading.
I shut the door upon him.
He knocked and did not stop. “Johanna, I beg of you. Please, dear. Open the door. I must apologize for my actions.”
“I do not wish to speak with you,” I yelled through the closed door. And yet his shadow lingered.
A moment later he was again knocking on the door.
Mr. Alcott appeared from his study, a look of sincere puzzlement on his face, for the Alcotts never refused entrance to anyone—beggar or stranger—and most definitely not neighbor.
“Johanna, is that Mr. Bancroft?”
“It is,” I answered, closing the door of the stove.
“Best you answer it then, dear?” He spoke the words so innocently, I wondered if the man could even understand a sharp disagreement with another human. I decided I must go out and speak to Nathan then, though I had little desire to do so—and the part that did do the desiring, though small, was the part that frightened me most.
“Yes, sir.”
I grabbed my cloak and muff and slipped out the door.
When Nathan saw me, he sucked in a deep breath that looked something like relief. “Johanna,” he breathed.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest.
“I only have a scarce recollection of my abominable behavior yesterday, and even that is enough to scare me witless. Ivan has provided the rest. Please know that is not—that is not who I am. It is not who I long to be.”
I shivered against the cold, tried not to let my heart warm at his sincerity. “Clearly it is who you are when you drink.”
He nodded, looked at the ground. “It is.”
“Then knowing so, why do you continue in it?” I softened my voice, for even though one could not argue the error of his actions, I did not wish to feel haughty.
“I was troubled, and it was a weak moment. I did warn you I had moral shortcomings, did I not?” He attempted to inject jest in his latter sentence, but I did not find it amusing in the least.
“Could you not come to me with your troubles?”
“I did not wish to burden you.”
“Burden away, if it would spare you from that evil!”
He rubbed the back of his neck, nodded. “You are quite right, of course. Is there any way you can forgive me?”
I looked at him, the pitiful expression seeming to hint that my answer would denote whether his life was worth living or not. He was a man of passion. A man
who felt. And I’d known for some months now that I was at the heart of his feelings. But what of that split moment of yesterday? When his feelings were of unbridled anger? When whiskey consumed and blinded and sought for release?
I must be cautious. I was without family, and while Mr. and Mrs. Alcott were certainly my advocates, I did not wish to trouble them with bad news of their neighbor. I visited Anna often, but she was busy with her brood and we hadn’t quite the connection I shared with Louisa. I was sure Nan felt the same, for we were both too reserved, too quiet, whilst Louisa served to unscrew our honest thoughts. I also had an inkling that Nan, with her increasing deafness, got tired of using her ear trumpet when I spoke. And I often tired of yelling.
“While I don’t feel I have a right to impose stipulations upon you—”
He stepped closer, scooped up my hands with his own. “Impose, dear Johanna. Impose away, if it means there’s hope for us.”
I wrenched my hands from his passionate grasp. “I cannot abide men who befriend their liquor. I am unsure if you see a future . . .”
I was being too forward. And yet I had allowed him to kiss me. More than once. Glorious, passionate moments that spoke of elation and promise. He had even spoken words of love. Yes, our relationship was a bit on the outskirts of the norm. I had no father to approve of a courtship, and Mother was too far away. Though I hadn’t a penny to my name, and Nathan was quite well-off, something about me had captured him. But was I enough to keep him from his drink?
He lifted his hand to my face, ran a thumb along my cheek. “I do.”
I swallowed, not pulling away from him this time. “I cannot be with you if you insist on taking to drink when life ails you.”
“I will be an angel, Johanna. I promise it. When I realized all I have to lose . . . it is a small sacrifice for a greater prize.”
I couldn’t help the tiny smile that crept to my face. Forgetting John’s warnings, I thought instead how everyone deserves a second chance, a balm of grace. Was it not a worthy thing to be the one supplying it?
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