To be honest, Carl had nothing against Ken, except that he’d always relied more on charm than Carl thought fair. Fair and not reasonable, not honorable, because Jem cared about reason and Jerry cared about honor and Carl cared about the queen in her hive and how a cold winter might make for a slow spring. He’d always had a friend named Rilla Blythe and he’d thought of her that way, not as Walter’s little sister or Ken’s sweetheart or even Jims’s foster mother, though the last one was the most accurate.

She was also Una’s friend and Carl would be lying if he didn’t admit to himself that rescuing Rilla meant rescuing his sister who herself was in a fair way to being Walter Blythe’s unofficial widow, buried alive in the Glen with his father and Rilla’s mother both perfectly happy to see Una throw away all her remaining years as some sort of vestal virgin pledged to Walter’s tomb.

It wasn’t the best metaphor but then he was better with calculations and measurements of wing span, his good eye pressed to a microscope’s monocle, his good ear (because no one had asked but a shell had landed far too close the week before he’d lost the sight in his eye and now there was silence that would be terrifying if it was one he could not turn away from) cued to a cricket’s legs. 

Carl might have expected help to come from some quarter, from Jem, who’d been a prisoner and escaped, from Jerry, who’d had to face the prospect of a life spent in a chair, from either of Rilla’s older sisters, Di with her ambitions and Nan who could best see the shadow in Rilla’s hazel eyes when Ken was spoken of, but no one seemed willing or able. Shirley had penned a brief note that said he didn’t know when he’d be back to the Glen and Carl had hoped Rilla would use it as an excuse, that she couldn’t get married without her brother present, but it was as it had always been with the Blythes, that curious lack of concern for Shirley other than from Susan Baker, who only set to making another batch of Shirley’s favorite sweets for the family to eat, as if the perfectly baked biscuits would coax Shirley back to Ingleside like some sort of irresistible magic.

(If Carl had hoped there might be some last letter of Walter’s, some poem or diary entry to be found that would set Rilla free, he was sadly disappointed. There was no secret trove, only a few half-written pages that largely seemed to be about Faith and were thus tucked away nearly as soon as they’d been discovered by Mary Vance, who’d somehow taken Faith’s old place at Jem’s side. “Can’t get out of their own way, the Blythes, but she won’t listen to a word I say and I’ve my hands full with Jem,” Mary had said to him one afternoon as they were both leaving Ingleside, a confidence that was shocking in its source and tone, the affection she had for Jem undeniable, the encouragement she offered Carl encompassed by that one solitary word, I, such a small sound, almost as small as the curve of her lip as she spoke.)

Carl was on his own.

Fortunately, despite having four siblings (though he could hardly count on Bruce to do much of anything given his age and temperament and regarded him as something like a nephew), Carl was used to being left to his own devices. Said devices had largely involved insects and arachnids, which tended to leave his friends and neighbors either trembling or disgusted, but Carl wasn’t worried about that.

It was Rilla’s sense of honor that bedeviled him. She and Ken had become engaged during the War, although Ken hadn’t left her with a ring or an announcement made to their families, let alone the Glen or the Toronto papers, and Carl knew she would not ask to be released from the agreement, however ill it now suited them both. Ken had arrived at her doorstep after she’d given up on him, and neither of them would abandon the other to the gossip; it was too late to call it a hasty decision during the War, and the Blythe family’s grief over Walter’s death had gone through a strange metamorphosis into an idealism that seemed to forget everything practical. Rilla, who spent the most time with her mother, seemed most caught up, but she was her father’s daughter as much as her mother’s and Carl resolved to use the most pragmatic interventions to set her free.

He invited her to their old favorite spot in Rainbow Valley, set out a modest picnic he’d asked Una to help him prepare, and after she’d taken the first bite of bread and butter, had simply launched into it.

“Rilla, you can’t marry Ken Ford. You don’t love him,” Carl declared. He’d waffled a bit about pointing out that Ken didn’t love Rilla either, not truly, but felt there was a good chance they’d get bogged down in an argument about how Carl could tell Ken didn’t love Rilla when the real issue was that even if Ken did, Rilla didn’t and that was what Carl cared about.

“I don’t love Ken Ford?” she said, her hazel eyes wide. 

“I mean to get you from asking a question to making a statement,” Carl replied. “But yes, you don’t. And you can’t marry him without loving him.”

“How on earth can you say that, Carl?” She was flushed, her stubborn temper turning her rosy, a most becoming blush and she was lucky in that. He’d seen men turn ugly with anger, pale, grimacing, the most monstrous version of themselves. She looked a little more like a spring blossom than usual.

“Because it’s the truth, though I know that’s not what you’re asking,” he said.

“I want to be Ken Ford’s wife,” Rilla said.

“No, you don’t. But it sounds good. It sounds like what you’re supposed to want and that’s comforting, I guess,” Carl said.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rilla retorted.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. What does being Ken Ford’s wife even mean? What does she do?”

“I love him,” she said. 

“Rilla, you don’t know him and he doesn’t know you,” Carl said.

“How can you say that? I’ve had letters from him, I’ve known him since I was a little girl—”

“I can say it because I was at the front. Whatever he wrote to you wasn’t everything. And he’ll be different now, in ways even he doesn’t understand,” Carl replied. Carl had heard Ken had a scar on his cheek now and there’d been some mild clucking about it, whether or not it made Ken more handsome, but he knew, as Jem and Jerry and Miller did, that the scar on Ken’s cheek was nothing.

“So your letters were the same? You left things out to protect us?” Rilla asked.

“And to protect myself,” he said. He shook his head, made a fist of one hand and then released it. He hadn’t come to talk about his war and it wouldn’t persuade her of anything; it would only be a distraction.

“I know he’ll take you to Toronto and he’s got money, you might get a maid,” Carl began.

“I’m perfectly capable of keeping house,” Rilla interrupted.

“But that isn’t all you want to do,” he said.

“I do,” she said stoutly.

“No, you don’t. If you did, you’d sound like Mary, with all her plans for how to manage the house and Jem’s practice, you’d have her same smile when she talks about it, her eagerness,” Carl said.

“What do I look like then?” Rilla said. She was goading him to an insult, so she could flounce away. Only honesty might help in a moment like this.

“You look resigned. Tired. You look like a soldier who wants to sleep and is forcing himself to stay awake to be there for his fellows,” Carl said. “Mary looks delighted, greedy. You look determined to keep a promise you wish you hadn’t made.”

“That’s too demoralizing to be anything else but the truth,” she said, rueful when he might have expected an argument, some reference to his interest in insects preventing him from understanding young love or a woman’s heart.

“Are you ready for more?”

“I suppose I must be,” she said. Carl allowed himself to hope that he’d succeed, that Rilla would accept what he said and act on it. If a small part of him, the size of a fly’s eye or a cricket’s mandible, yearned for something more, for Rilla to see not only what was, but what could be, well, that wasn’t anything he had to mind much at the moment.

“You’ll have to break it off. Ken will never do it. He won’t jilt you, he wouldn’t have done it before the War and he certainly won’t do it now. Not after you’ve waited for him and kept faith. And I don’t know who he’s got who’d speak to him like I’m speaking to you. Someone he’d listen to,” Carl said.

“He might listen to Persis,” Rilla replied and Carl could hear the wish in her voice, the acknowledgement that he’d been right and right to speak.

“That’s good, but not good enough for you,” he said.

“Won’t he be terribly unhappy?” she said. Carl rummaged about in the basket and fished out a packet of shortbread, handing Rilla a thick square before taking a bite of his own.

“I don’t mean to hurt you, but I don’t think so. I think he cares but not enough, not in the right way. If he can think of a way to do it without offending you, he’ll likely thank you,” Carl said.

“I ought to be in a perfect rage at you, but I’m not. Which I expect means you’re right and I know it. And that I’m actually glad you said something, when no one else would,” Rilla said.

“Thank God,” Carl said. He hadn’t meant the phrase in such a long time and now he did. It was the relief of thirst quenched with sweet, cold water, handed to him by a girl with hazel eyes and ruddy hair and shortbread crumbs in her lap.

“What a muddle it’s going to be,” Rilla sighed.

Did he long to take her into his arms? To press his mouth to her parted lips, to swallow the sound she’d made and the tension and the warmth? 

Did he long for his next breath without thinking of it?

“You needn’t worry that much. Your mother’s not over-fond of Mary Vance and not for Jem and Jerry has an offer for a church in Souris and Shirley wrote me he’s thinking of moving to Victoria for good, he’s got a friend from his squadron who lives there, who want him to come,” Carl said. 

“Victoria—that’s so far away!” Rilla exclaimed.

“A brother’s a good reason to visit. Or you might think about Redmond,” Carl said.

“I don’t know what I’ll do with myself,” she said.

“Good. Then you’ll begin to figure it out,” he replied.

“And if I should need help?” Rilla said, something shy and dear in her eyes, something tender and delicate and small, that would need coaxing and patience and curiosity.

“You’ve got friends,” he said, very carefully.

“Have I?”

“You know you have, Rilla. And if you need me to say it, I will. You’ve got me, half-blind and a little unsteady, but I do have other interests besides bugs. I always have,” he said, the confession a risk he couldn’t wish he hadn’t taken. They’d made a solemn vow when they were young, but he was already telling her to break one promise.