Meg was horrified. “Jo! No!”
“Is he, Jo?” Now Amy was intrigued.
“Of course not!” Meg looked appalled.
“He is if I say he is.” Jo threw the twig as hard as she could, sending it flying into the trees. “See? This is why I didn’t want to have to write all this girlish nonsense!”
Meg scrambled to her feet. “Those are my twins you’re talking about! That’s not nonsense, Jo!”
“They’re a daisy and a . . .” Jo grabbed a stone from the path. “Rock.”
Meg grabbed the rock from Jo’s hand. “You’re a horrid thing! I don’t want a rock for a son! That’s my Baby Brooke!”
Jo shook her head. “You’re missing the point, Meg. Your family is happy. Daisy and Baby Brooke are the apples of your matronly bosom . . .”
“Eye,” Meg corrected.
“That, too. You live over there . . . in that shoe. Which is a cottage. A dovecote. You love it. You do all sorts of—I don’t know—sweeping and laundry and mending things there.”
Amy watched as her big sisters negotiated Meg’s future family in the middle of the garden bed.
“I see. Not a bad life. But what about you? Don’t you need a suitor?” said Meg.
Jo laughed. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” Meg folded her arms. “Since you have been so bold as to have married me off to a man who doesn’t even know my name, you need a suitor as well.”
“She has a point,” Amy said. “Turnabout is fair play and all that.”
Meg considered their middle sister. “Perhaps a professor.”
“To ensure that I die of boredom?” Jo rolled her eyes. “Fine. Professor Bore.”
Amy folded up her sketch-pad. “Bore isn’t a name. Bayer? Baer?”
“Bhaer. There you go. He’s from Europe. Positively Continental. You’ll love him,” said Meg, pointing to a head of German lettuce. “Wait, not a professor, a prince!”
“A prince? Whatever would I do with a prince?” Jo made a face.
“What about me?” Amy demanded. “Can I at least go on a Grand Tour? I’ll meet the prince, and Jo can have the professor!”
Jo looked at the vegetables. “Hmmm, it might work. Your husband, Prince Arthur?”
Amy folded her arms. “No, I loathe the name Arthur. I’ve an idea! Laurie’s as rich as prince! What if we met over there? While I’m painting the Colosseum!”
“But what about Arthur?” asked Meg.
“Arthur . . . fell in a well . . . and broke his neck.”
“How sad for him,” Jo said. “And for you.”
“It was. I wept piteously and tremendously into my best lace handkerchief until Laurie came to console me in a horse and buggy with chocolates.” Amy stuck out her chin. “I want Laurie.”
“You can’t have Laurie,” Meg said. “It doesn’t work in the narrative. You and Laurie don’t even like each other all that much. Actually, I take it back about the German professor. Obviously, Jo has to marry herself off to Laurie.”
“Obviously?!” Jo sat up, spluttering indignantly. “I do not!”
“Jo does not!” Amy crowed, equally so.
“In point of fact, Jo does.” Meg yanked a worm-ransacked, half-green tomato from the vine. “It’s written in the stars, just as Jo wrote about Roderigo of the North. In Act the Third, our scandalous Laurence Lovers elope, and it breaks Mama’s heart.”
Jo was aghast. “Foul plagiarist! You can’t just steal Roderigo’s Act the Third!”
Amy tossed her head. “I still think my ending is better.”
Meg threw the rather sad-looking vegetable to a still red-faced Jo. “There you go. That’s a Jo March of a tomato if ever I’ve seen one.”
Jo looked like she wanted to hurl the lopsided green orb at her sister’s linen-capped head.
Amy giggled, in spite of her commitment to a good sulk. “You mean Jo Laurence, now that they’ve eloped.”
“Christopher Columbus! Enough!” Jo roared. “No wonder they call you the weaker sex!”
Amy and Meg burst out laughing.
Jo’s pink-spotted cheeks were now bright red. “Fine. Take Laurie. I don’t want him. But you have to live here. I can’t write back and forth across a whole ocean and between two countries. I’ll be describing cities until the cows come home.”
“What about Beth? What happens to Beth? In the book, I mean,” asked Amy. “Since she’s meant to be still alive in your book.”
A momentary silence rose up between them. The elder March sisters looked at each other askance. How could they imagine a future without their sister? What would their lives have been like if she had lived?
“Beth becomes a famous pianist, of course,” said Jo, staunchly.
She tried not to think of Beth’s final days, of the way Laurie had played all her favorite melodies on her little piano, over and over and over—
“A pianist? Of course,” said Amy, approvingly. “Which means she’ll be touring the world over, just like me. I’m a vray artiste, Jo. I’m not meant for Concord.”
“If you stay, I’ll let you babysit the twins,” Meg said, attempting to sound cheerful, even though her face had gone decidedly pale. “Daisy and what’s-his-name. If you’re responsible. Twins are an enormous responsibility. You’d need to be patient, and kind.”
Amy looked stricken.
Meg faltered. “I mean, I’ll have to ask Brooke, but seeing as I’m the mother of his children . . .”
Jo looked at Meg like she was speaking gibberish. “We’re talking about a rock and a daisy. I think Amy will be fine.”
“I’m sure,” Meg said, brightly. “And I’ll show her what to do.”
“Also? You probably die in childbirth, on account of the twins. I haven’t decided. But if that’s the case, Brooke will be eternally grateful for Amy—seeing as she’ll most likely be the only mother your poor children ever know. Perhaps they’ll even marry each other after you die.”
“What?!” Meg and Amy both shouted.
“You’re killing me off?!” Meg looked horrified.
“You’re dooming me to twins?” Amy looked terrified. “Can’t I be the one to die?”