Page 156 of Twice Chosen

She did not tell anyone what she had found that evening.

Not immediately.

Instead she carried it to the south meadow the following morning.

The hawthorn was gone. Only a low stump remained, softened by moss and years. Margaret knew the little wooden box in the library had been made from it, though no one understood why her grandmother had insisted upon saving a piece of a half-dead tree.

She sat on the bench.

Pemberley spread below her.

The family had changed again since Elizabeth's death. Children grew. Marriages came and went. People disappointed one another and apologized. Some mistakes were corrected. Others remained.

Margaret opened the journal to the final page.

Elizabeth's last entry was brief.

We believed, when it happened, that a second life must have been given so that we might correct the first.

We were wrong.

No life can be corrected into perfection because people are not sums. They do not produce the same answer simply because one changes the figures.

Jane needed confidence, not management.

Charles needed room to choose.

Georgiana needed to know shame was not hers.

Charlotte needed a door.

Lydia needed time.

Kitty needed to be seen.

Mary needed us to stop laughing long enough to listen.

Papa needed to understand that observation is not responsibility.

Mama needed more kindness than I gave her when I was young.

Fitzwilliam needed me.

He has written in the margin that this last statement is conceited.

He is wrong.

I needed him too.

Darcy had indeed added a note in the margin.

Extremely conceited.

Beneath it Elizabeth had written:

Still here?

His final answer: