“Yes,” James says. “Sorry.” He holds out the letter. “Read this. My address is inside. Write me back, and we’ll talk that way. Sohedoesn’t have to know.”
“I can’t write to you.” She checks over her shoulder. “Come here tonight. You have to go now, though, I think he’s coming.”
As James slips away, he turns around. “I’ll see you tonight.”
But the window is closed, the white curtains drawn.
Nelle snatches up the closest book she can find as her door bursts open.
Father’s eyes are woven with red, a strand of sweat-slicked hair dangling over his forehead, a sheet of paper clenched in his fist. She recognizes his neat handwriting on the page: an account of what she will do tomorrow, ripped from one of his journals. No doubt what she will be doing for the following months, even years. All because of her mistake on the Fourth of July. She had one chance to see the outside world, to watch people and fireworks, and she ruined it all by talking to James. A choice she still can’t make herself regret.
“Who were you talking to?”
She thinks about her painting of the caged woman, now shredded up and burned.He’ll never let me out again.
Behind her back, she slides James’s letter into the pages ofLittle Women. The corner of the cover scrapes the raw skin on her palm, still not yet completely healed from the stove two days ago.
Nelle knows better than to lie to him. At least fully.
She unveils the book in her hand. Four floating heads, the March sisters, against an emerald background. Staring at him with eight black dots.
“I was reading aloud.” A hard bubble rises in her throat, her tell that she is lying.
He glares at the book. Nelle swallows.
“Let me see,” he says.
She hands it over.
He runs a hand across the cover.
Nelle can’t hide her pounding heart. Her ache to swallow again. If he finds that letter—if he reads it—what will she do? Whatcanshe do?
But he tosses the book to the hardwood with a thump.
Nelle presents a stoic expression to hide her relief.
“Read in your head from now on,” he says. “Your chatter is distracting me.” He holds the crumpled paper up as evidence of his hard work before storming out of the room.
Nelle waits forty-two seconds before crawling under the bed. The pages ofLittle Womensplit on James’s letter, tucked into the scene where Laurie confesses his love to Jo. She has read it enough times now to know it by heart.
Cramped beneath her bed, next to her five thousand tally marks, Nelle reads James’s letter, each word fuzzy in the dark. She finishes with a sigh. When night comes, she will tell him the truth. He might run off, terrified by what she is, but she doesn’t want to keep lying to him. And even if he doesn’t believe her, she wants him to know. Wants him to see for himself.
Nelle hides the letter between the pages and sits by the window. Maybe Jameswillbelieve her. Maybe he will trust her.
She imagines herself taking off to New York with a finished manuscript and a typewriter case. She’s Jo March, not a girl written into life by a man with ice for a heart. She makes coffee in her apartment. She picks up a paintbrush without it making her nauseous. She walks the streets she wants to walk. She learns to ride a horse.
Time drips slower than honey, and nothing James does seems to speed it up.
He buys coffee from the gas station, finishes his article, emails Nancy to let her know he will drop it off in the morning, and reviewshis schedule for the fall semester. He is taking biology, anatomy, two science labs, and precalculus. The only class on his schedule that doesn’t make him want to vomit is a once-a-week fiction workshop he signed up for electively, not for his major. His to-do list eats up only half the evening, and he promised Nelle he would wait until nightfall to come over, so he grabs his notebook and writes a vignette as the sky turns the color of a nasty bruise.
Only, now that night has come, James wishes he had more time.
His nerves skyrocket. In his letter he asked Nelle why her father acted the way he did, why she ran away on the Fourth, why she is his age and lives in this small town but he has never seen her. He wrote that he is concerned for her well-being, and he wants to make sure she is safe. He told her that he finds her interesting, and that if she wants, he would love to get to know her better. What was hethinkingwriting that?
James has no friends outside of books. Yes, Jessie, but she is only in town once or twice a year, and she is his cousin. Talking to Nelle on the Fourth awakened a part of him that has been hibernating for years. The part thatlikespeople.
Or in this case, a specific person.
