Page 22 of Rejected
She dipped her quill again and again until the words flowed.
…
She barely looked up from her writing for a second; when she did, there was a ghostly sort of movement beyond her window, down by the water. She sat up abruptly and flung the glass open.
The minute she realized what she was looking at, her heart stopped.
Dear Beth,
Our sister got married three days ago. You should have been here. You should have seen the way her chiffon dress flowed over the carpet as she walked. You should have seen her satin slippers, the flowers in her hair. You should have seen the kind face of her bridegroom, shining with the deepest love and adoration for her.
You should have been here.
You should have stood as close to the wallpaper as humanly possible with me at the balls that followed the next two days. You should be here in my room right now, after midnight, so we could whisper our plans for the rest of our lives, now that she’s gone.
Instead, you are gone more irrevocably than her and Amy.
I hate that you’re gone. I will never make my peace with it, no matter what the vicar says, but I will keep writing to you.
We played the ‘memories game’ before Meg and Amy left. You don’t know it, of course, we started it after you died. We needed to share our best, fondest memories of you, not so that we would not forget—that would never happen. But so that the good, bright memories wouldn’t get sullied by the pain of loss.
I won’t write to you the memories we shared as we sat close to the fire, our knees touching like little girls, for the last time. You haven’t lived most ofthese moments anyway, so they wouldn’t mean anything to you. Instead, I’ll share with you the best memory of my life. You were there for that one.
It was the first time Teddy laughed. When he’d moved in that huge manor house next to our Orchard Hall, a mere baby, it was strange, because he never even smiled. Mama used to tell me that when we were little.
He was the most serious child we had ever seen. And even as he got to know us girls and started playing with us, sharing our mealtimes and sometimes outings, he never once smiled. He only began talking with ease after he was eight years old, do you remember? You were already sick by then, but you were still alive, and that was all that mattered.
And then, one day when he was nine and I was eight, it happened. He smiled. His smile was the most glorious thing I’d ever seen, and I vowed to myself there and then that I would do anything in my power to keep it on his face for as long as I lived.
I don’t even remember why he smiled. It must have been because of something incredibly stupid I did or wrote, I’m sure of it. One of my ridiculous plays probably. Or even worse, my poems. Those were always worth a good laugh they were so terrible—especially at that age. But he smiled once, that dazzling thing of light, and then he laughed, and he never ever stopped.
Until tonight.
I wiped the smile off his face in one fell swoop, Beth, and I don’t know if I will ever see it back there again.
Maybe another woman will make him smile. Probably. Maybe she already has; I’m sure he’ll have no scarcity of ladies vying for his attention. But I will never see him smile like that to me, ever again. I’ve killed that.
I think I may have killed him too. At least that’s how it feels right now.
Oh, how I wish you were here to tell me what to do. You would probably tell me to stop being an absolute idiot. But I have no idea how to exist, what to ‘be’. I have no idea how to be myself in a world that keeps denying me entry.
Eternally,
Your sister
nine
Someone was rowing a boat out in the deep, black water. That was no servant; the lake belonged to the private property.Who on earth would be stupid or crazy enough to—?
Oh no.
Something in the agile way the silhouette moved as the oars slid into the inky-dark water made Jo nearly jump out of her skin.
Laurie.
She did not know how she knew it, but it was him. The foolish boy was rowing a tiny boat in the middle of a deep lake, into the black night. That sounded like something he would have done back when he was fifteen, not now, but he was probably intoxicated out of his mind.Did I really hurt him this much? Is he this crazed with pain at my rejection that he does not see that he is about to capsize and drown?
It still felt strange even to think about. ‘Rejection’. She had rejected him. A man. She had rejected a man—and not just any man, her best friend. He had told her he loved her and she had rejected him.
