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Might-have-beens were a penny a dozen, as far as John was concerned. Still, watching his son await his bride at the foot of the humble old stairs at Green Gables affected John in a way he hadn't imagined. He never regretted a moment of his marriage to his wife, and to the strong, handsome son she gave him, but as he stood on the homespun carpet that September noon, he did think, and he did wonder what would have happened if he and Marilla hadn't quarreled all those years ago.
Lucy's arm was clasped through his, her capable hand squeezing his arm as if she knew what he was thinking. Oh, this might-have-been is something that probably would have died the death of a slow-burning ember if it hadn't been for Gilbert and Anne. The Cuthberts had rarely intersected with his life before Anne, since Matthew had kept to himself and even Marilla socialized in a different Avonlea circle than he and Lucy. Nothing Providence could offer would incite him to socialize with that old gossip Rachel Lynde. One might as well associate with the Pyes.
In those twenty years between argument and Anne, he and Lucy grew into their love and produced a proud, capable boy that John admitted was the light of his eyes. Lucy, gay and light-hearted and laughing, had seemed to be the exact opposite of austere and proud Marilla. While he was well aware that Marilla could laugh, jolly and from the belly when she wanted, he also knew how deep her pride went, and her stubborn streak. Her people had been good people, solid citizens of Avonlea, but everyone knew how stubborn and set in their own ways the Cuthberts were. Old Mr. Cuthbert, for all the shyness Matthew had inherited, would not move that house closer to the road, for all that Mrs. Cuthbert had insisted.
Lucy, not surprisingly, had adored Anne from the start, when their fourteen year old son had brought tales of the new girl at school home, and how she had broken her very own slate over his head. John had never heard of this Shirley girl, but it didn't take long to put the pieces of the puzzle together: Matthew, who had always treated John with a stiff sort of kindness, had admitted to adopting an orphan from the asylum one night at the feed store. Marilla, and a child? Marilla, who had so scorned the birth of Rachel's sixth – without knowing that there would be four more! – and sparked the argument that had torn their relationship asunder? Never mind the fact that the boy turned out to be a girl. Never mind the joy that everyone in Avonlea slowly saw come back to Marilla's eyes. Marilla adopting twins years later paled in comparison to the thought of two unmarried siblings trying to raise a single orphan alone, especially so far out as Green Gables.
It seemed an odd sort of confession, but that had been Matthew's way, treating John with a kindness that wasn't quite that of kin, but not quite that of neighbor either. Though John had married just two years after the disaster that had been his and Marilla's courtship, he had still looked and wondered, once in a while, for all that he and Marilla would never be... how did Anne put it? "Bosom" friends again.
Yet, here he stood in the parlor at Green Gables, waiting for the first bride to trip down the very same stairs that he had stormed past, that fateful night, under the watchful eye of Marilla's parents. Here he waited, arm in arm with his bride of thirty years, wondering what it would have been like to wait for Marilla to float down those very same stairs. He had to laugh at that, at the idea of Marilla floating. Anne, dreamy-eyed Anne of Green Gables floated. Marilla's feet were firmly planted on the ground as she scowled at the world like a protective mother cat. Oh, there was humor in those dark eyes that hadn't been there before, and a certain quirk of the lips in fond exasperation that added depth to Marilla's severe beauty, but John thought he knew how hard-won that humor was, and how much Marilla herself had fought against the ties that granted it to her.
Gilbert began to tremble, his shoulder vibrating against John's as he all but bounced on the ball of his feet, just as he had fourteen years ago, when he described this new red-haired girl at school, flaming eyes and scarlet cheeks, full of righteous anger. The tall, slender young woman who came down those stairs was anything but angry now, but even stoic John could see the same passion in his new daughter-in-law as she clutched Gilbert's hand in hers.
His eyes met Marilla's over the bowed heads of Anne and Gilbert, and he could see the same might-have-beens there. It might have been them trooping out to the garden to be married among the trees. Highly unlikely, when John thought about it, and he had to suppress a smile at the thought of Marilla Cuthbert, clothed in gauzy white, and staring up at him so adoringly as they married under the sky. Marilla belonged to the old-fashioned parlor of Green Gables, and would have had Matthew and Rachel at her elbows as attendants. While the same passion that Anne exuded was still there in Marilla, it was buried deep in those eyes and confined as tightly as that gray-streaked dark hair. He'd seen that passion and knew it existed, and he counted himself lucky as someone who had known what he had of the heart of Marilla Cuthbert – who had almost been Marilla Blythe.
Lucy's hand anchored John in place at the ceremony, as well as his sister Mary Maria's occasional sniff which, for another couple, might have ruined the day. Gilbert and Anne knew nothing of earthly goings-on, though, that much was evident from the joy in their faces. John knew how long the road had been from friends to lovers; from a slate over the head and through typhoid fever and years apart, to standing together in front of Reverend Alden to say that, yes, they finally did. Sometimes it seemed longer than both the road he had walked, and the one he nearly did. John knew that Gilbert and Anne would never feel the weight of what might have been, though.
The reception was a simple lunch, lovingly-prepared fare to be expected from the folk at Green Gables. Laughter surrounded John as it hadn't in several years, Lucy's own gay laugh ringing in chorus with the others. How proud she was of their only son, though he knew she, too, was thinking of the ones they'd lost and the weddings that would never be
"He's my boy now," Marilla said as she slid another piece of cake onto his plate. Her eyes never left the cake, though he could hear the emotion, clear as day, in her voice. "It isn't quite what I expected, but somehow, it feels right that I can call him son now."
And she did look up, and he could see everything that she had kept quiet all those years.
"Do you regret it?" The words spilled out, leaving John feeling like a shy, tongue-tied lover of twenty all over again.
Marilla smiled a mysterious smile, one John had seen Lucy direct often toward Gilbert – a mother's smile.
"For the light that she brought into my life, not for a moment." Again, that look of ancient feminine wisdom that John could never hope to understand. "I think Anne's arrival was Providence's way of fixing past mistakes, a way of righting the wrongs. She always speaks of bends in the road being the most romantic notion. We can never see around those bends, but somehow, they take us where we need to go."
Seeing the brown head bent toward the red in a kiss under the trees, and what could only be whispered words of love, John couldn't help agreeing.
"To our children," he said, putting his plate down and taking Marilla's hand in his, as he once had.
"To our children," she echoed, and wasn't there a quiver in her voice? Then, in a voice so quiet he almost didn't hear, as her hand squeezed his, "To what might have been."