Status Updates From Jo & Laurie

I've read about half and its not looking so good...

starting this with anticipation and trepidation - I am the ultimate Jo + Freiderick shipper, and as much as I love Jo and Laurie, he’s perfectly suited to Amy. Perhaps this book shall change my mind - or seal the ship’s fate

The family broke out in applause, and then Jo and Laurie realized, dazedly, that they were not alone.
They never had been.
They were surrounded by love. Love for each other, love for their family, a love that would sustain and carry them all their lives.
Beginning now.

"It's all right, Jo. I've known it was coming; I've known it longer than either of you, I suppose. It's just-well, some small part of me must mourn it. Just for a moment. I've lost Beth. I nearly lost Amy. Today I'm losing Meg. Now I'll lose you, too."
"Except you haven't, Mama. And you won't. You'll never lose any of us."

"My dear Teddy," she said, pulling him by his waistcoat. "Don't you see? We swore it the day we met."
He touched his forehead to hers. "And every day after."
Jo closed her eyes. "Every moment of every day."
Then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, and she kissed him back, his soft lips warm against hers, as his arms encircled her waist and pulled her ever closer.
It was worth the wait.

And in that moment, Josephine March knew precisely what to do. And even more, she knew she was going to do it.
Risk it. Embrace it. Maybe even, one day, lose it.
Love.
It would be her honor and her pleasure to go down with this particular ship. They could be dashed together upon the rocks, only blurry, ink splotched pages to mark their watery grave.
Because it was always our story.
It just never had the right ending.

He is my person. Everyone needs a person, and he is mine.
Only he isn't mine.
He was, and now he's not.

Her heart was broken. She knew that. What she couldn't have imagined was the part that came after, the vast stretch of it, the way it settled in and took over every element of her life. The way she lived with it. The familiarity of how she knew it. The ease with which she could build a house in it, plant her own little dark garden with it.
She hadn't expected that.
Who knew a heart could break open so expansively?

Jo felt she understood it, even felt it now. She'd glimpsed the heart of things, the why behind every action, every decision.
The world opened itself up to her, and by extension, so did her book.
She went upstairs to the attic and lit the candles. She wrote all night, the words feverish in her mind.

As Laurie watched them, he felt the same wistful pull at his heart that he'd come to expect whenever he saw the March girls together with their mother. A feeling of longing and belonging, all tied together at once, in a way that somehow contradicted and completed itself. It didn't seem real or possible, but there it was, every time he saw the Marches.
What the word for that?
But as soon as he wondered, he knew.
Home.

She had accepted him only because her first choice had been denied. Because when you couldn't have what your heart most desired, what did it matter? After that, everyone else was just another someone to try to love.
Another wrong someone.
On that score, they were alike. *Exactly alike,* Laurie had to admit.

"It doesn't matter. I won't marry someone who's in love with another person. And neither should you."

The truth was that the fictional Theodore Laurence was as much a puzzle as the real one. She couldn't stop thinking of his words at their last parting: *I’ll treasure our friendship, no matter how far away I go.*
Don't go, she wanted to say. Not so far away. Not where I can't reach you.
Don't turn your back on life in Concord, not because of me.
You will always be my dearest friend. No wife can change that.

Jo still had Amy and Meg. She still had Mama and Hannah and her home. And she must learn to be grateful for all she had.
There were others with less, as Mama liked to remind them.
So it didn't matter that Meg would marry and leave home, that Jo could lose her best friend and ruin her career. They still had one another: Meg, Jo, and Amy. They were sisters, and they were still alive, together. It was enough.

"I will not weep, she thought. I will not I will not I will NOT.
I had my chance.
Laurie asked me first.
He loved me first.
But I let him go, and I don't deserve him.
I didn't want him then, and I don't want him now.
Not now. Not ever."
But Jo, of all people, knew a story when she heard one.
Especially when the ending had been gotten so wrong.

The worst hadn't happened after all. The worst had passed them by. The shadows had been chased by the sun.

Jo closed her eyes and prayed for Bethie and Amy.
She opened her heart to the pain and the grief and the darkness, letting herself feel the ache of loss and love. She wept for her little sisters—one gone, one going-the two little souls she cared most for, in the entire world.
And when she could weep no longer, she crawled into bed next to her sister and slept as if she were halfway in the grave herself.

"I am still a poor man," said Brooke. "Poorer than ever. I have nothing but the clothes on my back, in fact."
Meg touched the fabric on his arm. "But they are good clothes," she said in a small voice. "As is the man who wears them."
"Does that mean you have reconsidered?" Brooke asked, not meeting her eyes.
Meg's heart leapt. "I suppose it does." She reached for his hands and held them. "If you'll have me...my John."

*Where there had once been four March sisters, now there were three, and soon perhaps there would be only two.*
It was all too terrible.

No amount of money would ever bring Beth back, but somehow Meg had convinced herself that one was better off rich and miserable than poor and miserable.
And miserable she was, for she ached for John.
Her John, as Jo called him in the book. Her Mr. Brooke, who would never be her John except in fiction.
Meg had done the right thing, she knew, but it didn't hurt any less.

If Jo suffered loudly and for everyone to hear and know, Meg kept her suffering inward. Losing Beth had made Meg all that more determined to make sure her family would want for nothing. No amount of money would ever bring Beth back, but somehow Meg had convinced herself that one was better off rich and miserable than poor and miserable.

But it wasn't up to Amy, or Jo, or Meg, or even Mama. It was caly up to that Friend who listened.
*Please, please,* Jo continued to beg. *Don't let her die. I can't lose another sister. I barely survived Beth's death. Do not take Amy, too.*
But outside, the wind blew, and if that Friend were listening, no one answered.

"I must be," Meg said, tears pricking at her eyes, "but it was the right thing to say, and not you, or Mama, or anyone else can change my mind!"
"But you love him and he loves you!" Jo shouted. "It's enough! It has to be!"
"Is it?" Meg stood taller. "Look in the mirror, Josephine March!"
And she ran up to her room and slammed the door on her sister behind her.