In the Woods When First We Met

90. Heard

Jane softly shut her window, leaned back, and breathed.

She stared at herself in her mirror.

She'd been spying, but she didn't know if she understood what she'd just heard.

She was up in her room when she'd overheard Billy yelling across the house about "what did Gilbert want". She didn't expect to hear anything unusual, but she thought she'd listen in. She might find out some interesting tidbit about Gilbert that she could share with Ruby.

Now she was full of questions.

She didn't know how to feel about their conversation about Prissy. She was definitely aware of the rumors Anne had spread. And she thought they weren't true, of course, but now she felt confused. It sounded like Billy had reason to believe they were true and Gilbert was trying to convince him that they weren't.

One thing that stood out to her, though, was that they both seemed to agree that Prissy and Mr. Phillips had been seen kissing each other. That knocked the wind out of her as she crouched down at her window. She'd believed Prissy when Prissy had come home crying to her parents and saying that terrible rumors were being spread about her by the awful new girl. ...Prissy was putting on an act, she realized uncomfortably. All the crying from Prissy, and the anger she'd sparked in their family...all the while Prissy had been keeping secrets from them- it was true? Jane thought she and her big sister were close. Now she had the strange sensation that her sister had been leading a double life.

Billy had called Gilbert "the patron saint of Anne" or something like that, and Gilbert even said to him that "she tells me everything". ...How in the world did Anne and Gilbert grow so close? She thought this point was particularly bizarre, considering Gilbert was handsome and popular, and Anne was...well, Anne was Anne.

One thing was clear: Anne was lying when she told the girls that she and Gilbert weren't spending time together. They obviously were. And what's more, they were hiding it, meeting in secret, maybe sneaking off together.

That startled her enough as it was, but she felt even further confused by the final part of their conversation: Why was Billy so adamant that Anne knew everything about intimate relations, even after Gilbert telling him that she was mistaken? ...What did Gilbert mean when he said that Anne didn't know about intimate relations "but she does now"?

Gilbert said that Billy had done "something wrong" and Billy responded that Anne had "gotten what she deserved". ...Had Billy done something to Anne? It sure sounded like it. She tried to think about if Anne had ever come to school with bruises or anything. She didn't want to think of her brother hitting a girl but she had to admit she couldn't put it past him. ....Anne had sprained her wrist, she remembered. But that couldn't have been caused by her brother, could it? No, she thought, changing her mind- Billy would not fight a girl. And Anne had told everyone she'd tripped over a root.

But she felt an uncomfortable feeling nagging at her...What did Billy mean when he said "she was ruined already"? ...Jane had heard her mother speak of a "ruined woman" once, when she'd had Mrs. Gillis over for tea. She and Ruby had been listening at the stairwell. They wanted to ask what it meant, but their mothers were speaking in hushed tones and seemed dismayed, so they got the hint that being a "ruined woman" was not something to be spoken of in polite society and seemed to mean that you'd done something to mark you as unmarriageable.

...Jane been spying, but she wished she hadn't.