(Author’s Note: I am currently writing a fan-fiction of the popular classic Little Women. This is my opening to the novel.)
Dear Miss Josephine March,
I regret to inform you that Mr. Zacharias is dead. Well, not dead in the usual sense of the word, but rather dead in the sense that he is non-existent. In fact, I must admit he never existed in the first place. For you this will matter immensely. As for me, I’m rather relieved. By this you must think me cruel, but as I invented him, I have every right to dispose of him at my leisure. I must remind you I had very benign intentions in creating him, only wishing to see your rise to fame and my role in it.
You see, once those who know me discover my identity, they forget everything else. And though we were once quite close, time may have forced you into the same mold. Little Women has long since been a treasure of mine, yet it is difficult to navigate a world where everyone believes you to be an exact replica of the character on the page. It therefore is always a gamble as to whether I will be loved, or despised. I know you at least hate me, Jo. I don’t think it to be unreasonable, but misguided. You simply hate me for the wrong reasons. It’s not what you know that matters, but what you don’t.
I’ve hoped that you’d look past your hate, and find that the poor boy who left you is now a good man. One with a level of sincerity and self-awareness he didn’t have before. Because I’ve had a long time to think about it, Jo. And as much as I tried to shrug off my boyish affections, it only hardened into a persistent love. I waited to tell you until you might accept me. I’ve hoped that you’d love me if I changed, I truly did. And maybe that is fantasy, as I’m still not half good enough, but I can’t help it. My eye is on you, Jo, it always will be. I’ll keep staring you down until you look up, and see what’s right in front of you. Because I’m not ready to give you up. Not yet.
Love,
Teddy
Beth Laurence dropped the letter quickly as if it had burned her delicate fingers. For a moment she thought it might have, but realized her hand was not blackened from heat but from ink. Fresh ink. Collapsing onto the desk chair, she stared at her father’s words expecting it to explode. Was it truly him who had written those words? Her father, who had insisted that her mother was his one and only love? The tears she had been blinking away finally cascaded down her face, from anger or sadness she couldn’t tell. Her entire life seemed to be melting away, while hot rivers scorched her pink cheeks. Father, unstable but firm. Mother, faded memories only existing in stories others told her. And Jo, someone she had always fostered a secret admiration for, but never in her wildest fantasies did she imagine her father was doing the same.