The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees

and the pages clung to her damp fingertips. She had read the volume straight through once and had begun again that morning. Now she reached the end of the first poem: Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search another, /I stop somewhere waiting for you.
    Suddenly she heard a soft tapping on the first-floor window. She had every intention of pretending not to hear, so she rose and moved carefully toward the window, shifting the new drapery to the side ever so slightly. It was Joseph Singer.
    Louisa froze, her hand still on the fabric. Should she answer the door? No one else was home, and surely he wanted to see Anna. Just as she’d resolved to slink back to her desk and wait for him to go away, he looked up and grinned at her figure in the window.
    She reluctantly descended the stairs, drawing her sleeve across her damp forehead before opening the door.
    “Good afternoon, Miss Louisa.”
    “Hello, Joseph. We weren’t expecting you.”
    “I hope you don’t mind.”
    She clutched the door with both hands, willing her nerves away from her tongue and into her fingers. “Oh, of course not. But everyone is out. Anna is with my mother and sisters at our cousin’s for lunch. I know she will be disappointed that she missed your visit.”
    Joseph smiled, amused by how flustered she was. “It’s always a pleasure to see your sister, and I hope you’ll tell her I said so. But I didn’t come to see Anna. I came to see you.”
    Louisa processed this information through her sluggish brain. Perhaps he was coming to inquire after her sister’s feelings. Should she tell him that Anna seemed to favor Nicholas Sutton, at least for the moment?
    “Would it be all right if I came inside? I’m likely to melt out here.”
    “Of course! Oh, forgive me,” she said, throwing open the door. “Please, come in.”
    The skin of his temples was pink and his eyes were bright. The heat from outside wafted in after him. Louisa tried to think of what she was supposed to do next.
    “If you don’t mind,” Joseph began, “I would love something cold to drink.”
    “Of course!” Louisa knew she was going to have to calm down if she had any hope of carrying on a conversation with him. She felt at any moment she might take wing and crash right through the glass of the front window. What has come over me? she thought, angry at herself. Over the years she’d received plenty of her father’s friends, and Abba had trained her well on the duties of a hostess. Perhaps she had felt shy in the presence of some of these men, like Mr. Emerson, who seemed to her like royalty. But never before had she found herself so . . . flustered by anyone.
    She handed him the cold tea and they sat down on opposite ends of the horsehair sofa. His cheeky self-assurance seemed to have dissolved. He drank a few nervous sips and they sat in silence.
    Joseph cleared his throat. “Do I remember your saying you will be leaving for Boston soon? We’ll all be awfully sorry to see you go.”
    Louisa sat up straighter, folding her hands in her lap. “Yes, that’s right. Probably just another few weeks and I’ll be on my way.”
    “And you’ll go . . . all on your own?”
    She disliked his tone; it seemed to question her willingness or determination to follow through with her plan. “Yes, alone. Freedom and independence—that is my aim. Nothing else means anything to me.”
    He clamped his lips closed and nodded, chastened. She checked the pride in her voice and decided to change the subject. Louisa had watched Anna fill awkward social pauses with tidbits of gossip. “My mother told me this morning that Samuel Parker has proposed to our friend Margaret and she has accepted,” she said.
    Joseph brightened. “Ah, that’s wonderful news! You know that whole swimming party was an elaborate ruse designed to give him an afternoon with her. I don’t mind admitting I was a co-conspirator. All for a good cause, I can now say.”
    Louisa