Made and Meant for Each Other (an Anne of Green Gables fanfiction)

Miss Lavendar

The letter from Anne was a slim one, and that worried Lavendar Irving. Usually Anne's letters were fat with words—long, newsy, imaginative, dreamy updates for Lavendar and intricate flights of fancy for Paul, with remembrances lavishly given to Stephen and to Charlotta the Fourth and her growing brood of roly-poly babies. This one ... Lavendar studied it suspiciously.

She looked up across the breakfast table to see Stephen's eyes on her, warm and amused. "It won't bite you."

"It might."

"Not all slender letters come with bad news," he pointed out, and smiled. "My laddie's letter was short, hastily dashed off as he went off to school, but it contained the best news I'd heard in many a year."

Lavendar returned the smile, as grateful as Stephen that Paul's hasty letter had included a brief mention of his visit to Echo Lodge. Without that ... well, they might not be here. She looked at Anne's slender envelope again with optimism restored.

Stephen returned to his toast and marmalade, but she could feel him waiting, so she relented and slit the letter open with her butterknife.

Dearest Lavendar—

Of course this comes with all my wishes for happiness in the Irving household, and many kisses for Charlotta the Fourth and her family. Dear thing, I can't even write her name without smiling. Or yours, either. Nothing could have been more perfect than the way your lovely fairy-tale came to a close ... except possibly the way mine seems to have begun. Yes, at long last—and I can hear you, in prose, as Charlotta the Fourth would say, scolding me for not knowing my own mind in your gentle way, as you have done so often—at long last, as I say, I have seen what should have been so obvious all along, that there has never been anyone for me but Gilbert Blythe, and there never will be. Thankfully, he has the patience of a saint and has forgiven me for all my former foolishness ... and we plan to be married. It will be some time yet before we can, as Gilbert has years of schooling yet before he's ready to practice medicine, so I will work and wait and learn some of that patience that has never come naturally to me.

I think you know what I am feeling as I write this, so many emotions that I can't put a name to them all, so I won't even try. Please pass my news along to Paul in whatever way seems best to you and tell him that I am working on a response to his last letter and hope to have it to him soon.

Love to all!

Anne

Lavendar finished the letter with tears in her eyes. She could practically see that earnest face with the bright, dreamy eyes in front of her, hear the new womanly softness that she imagined must have come to Anne's voice with the awakening of love, at last. It had taken a long time, but ... She stole a glance at Stephen's handsome face across the table. She was the last person to chastise someone else for not knowing their own mind, or for acting with foolish haste. She had tried carefully to steer Anne Gilbert-wards in her letters, but without pushing.

"And?" Stephen asked.

"She is marrying Gilbert Blythe."

"Excellent!" Stephen said heartily. "A good choice. She'll wake him up and teach him how to dream dreams." His eyes shone at Lavendar with a light that said he wasn't really talking about Gilbert and Anne.

"And he'll keep her feet somewhere within the vicinity of the ground," she replied, loving the sturdy practicality of him as much as she did the way he allowed himself to take flight in imagination with her.

"Not too close, I hope."

"Close enough to reach."

They gazed at each other across the table, the letter forgotten on Lavendar's plate.