Beth and Amy Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Meg & Jo

  “This family drama offers sharp insights into the tough choices women make.”

  —People

  “I don’t know of another author who could do justice to Little Women. In a warm, realistic, and humorous voice, Virginia Kantra knocks it out of the park with Meg & Jo in this rich retelling of the beloved classic.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins

  “Kantra blends just enough of Alcott’s story of four close-knit sisters and their myriad tribulations with clever and timely new elements. . . . The imaginative storytelling and sparkling prose make this a winner.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Those who gravitate toward family-centric novels with twists along the way will enjoy this novel, and fans of Alcott’s original will appreciate this modern take on the beloved classic.”

  —Booklist

  “A thought-provoking adaptation of a beloved classic.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A fun and lighthearted read.”

  —Mindbodygreen

  “Meg & Jo is a must-read for anyone who grew up with Little Women, and is a complex exploration of the power of time, place, and identity.”

  —Deep South Magazine

  “A great novel to pair with hot cider and to whet your appetite for the Little Women film.”

  —The Augusta Chronicle

  “A beautiful continuation of the original classic.”

  —Seattle Book Review

  PRAISE FOR VIRGINIA KANTRA AND HER NOVELS

  “Virginia Kantra delivers.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

  “It’s always a joy to read Virginia Kantra.”

  —New York Times bestselling author JoAnn Ross

  “Hums with the rhythm of life. . . . I loved it.”

  —Mariah Stewart, New York Times bestselling author of At the River’s Edge

  “Intimate and inviting. . . . Contemporary romance at its most gratifying.”

  —USA Today

  “If you have not yet visited Virginia Kantra’s Dare Island, I enthusiastically encourage you to do so. . . . Learn why many readers, myself included, have fallen in love with these wonderful characters and the island they call home.”

  —The Romance Dish

  “A wonderful love story.”

  —Fiction Vixen

  “Her wonderful characters . . . engage and inspire me. . . . I love this series, and if you’re looking for solid romance with a generous helping of steam, Dare Island is a great place to get lost in.”

  —The Bookish Babes

  “A sizzling good time. Kantra’s story building is excellent.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Kantra is a sensitive writer with a warm sense of humor, a fine sense of sexual tension, and an unerring sense of place.”

  —BookPage

  Berkley titles by Virginia Kantra

  Home Before Midnight

  Close-Up

  Meg & Jo

  Beth & Amy

  The Children of the Sea Novels

  Sea Witch

  Sea Fever

  Sea Lord

  Immortal Sea

  Forgotten Sea

  The Dare Island Novels

  Carolina Home

  Carolina Girl

  Carolina Man

  Carolina Blues

  Carolina Dreaming

  NOVELLAS

  Midsummer Night’s Magic

  Carolina Heart

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Over the Moon

  (with MaryJanice Davidson and Angela Knight)

  Shifter

  (with Alyssa Day, Angela Knight, and Lora Leigh)

  Burning Up

  (with Angela Knight and Nalini Singh)

  Tied with a Bow

  (with Kimberly Frost and Lora Leigh)

  Ask Me Why

  (with Marie Force, Shirley Kawa-Jump, and Jodi Thomas)

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Virginia Kantra

  Readers Guide copyright © 2021 by Virginia Kantra

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kantra, Virginia, author.

  Title: Beth & Amy / Virginia Kantra.

  Other titles: Beth and Amy

  Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020050421 (print) | LCCN 2020050422 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593100363 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593100370 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3561.A518 B34 2021 (print) | LCC PS3561.A518 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050421

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050422

  First Edition: May 2021

  Cover design and illustration by Colleen Reinhart

  Book design by Laura K. Corless, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  For the daughters, especially Jean Elizabeth.

  And to Michael. Most of what I know about love I learned from you.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise for Virginia Kantra

  Titles by Virginia Kantra

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Bunyan, North Carolina, Then

  The screen door slammed.

  Amy ran down the back porch steps clutching
her sketchbook. “Wait for me!”

  Her sisters were already loading the car. Meg carried a beach mat. Jo lugged the cooler. Beth toted an old plastic pail and shovel—as if they all weren’t too old for sand castles now.

  “What took you so long?” Jo asked.

  “I had to wash my hair.”

  “Why? We’re going to the beach,” Jo said. “You’ll just get it wet again.”

  Jo never cared how she looked. Or what other people thought of her. Amy stuck her nose in the air. “Aunt Phee says appearances are important.”

  Jo grinned. “Too bad about your face, then.”

  “Jo, don’t be mean,” Meg said.

  Their mother emerged from the barn, two of the baby goats—Hector and Hermione—trotting at her heels like puppies. “All set?”

  Meg nodded.

  “Good. Drive safely,” Momma said.

  Not, I love you. Not, I’ll miss you. Not, Have a good time. But there was a note in her voice—wistfulness?—that caught at Amy’s heart.

  Come with us, she almost said.

  But she didn’t. Momma wouldn’t. Their mother never took a day off. Not since the girls were small. Besides, the trip wouldn’t be the same if their mother came along. Amy was practically a teenager and she was tired of being treated like the baby. She couldn’t go to the beach with her friends like Meg did. But going with Meg felt special. Grown-up.

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” Meg said. Responsible, as always. “I’ll be careful.”

  She was driving the old Ford Taurus that belonged to their father. Daddy was away serving in Iraq, on his second tour as an army chaplain.

  “I’m your mother. It’s my job to worry.” Momma’s smile flitted across her face. “I expect you all home for supper. Don’t be late.”

  “Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am,” they all said, and Bethie kissed her.

  “Right,” Jo said when their mother went back to her goats and her chores. “Let’s go!”

  Giddy with freedom, they loaded the car.

  “Hey, March girls.”

  Amy turned, clasping her sketchpad to her chest. It was Trey—Theodore James Laurence III, who lived in the big house a mile down the road from their farm. He sauntered up their drive, his dark, curly hair matted with sweat, his lean chest bare and faintly golden. His running shorts drooped from his hips, exposing his striped boxers.

  “Hey, Laurence boy,” Jo said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Thought I’d get my run in early.” He and Jo were on the cross-country team together. “Want to come?”

  “Sorry. Can’t,” Jo said with brief regret.

  “We’re packing,” Beth said.

  “So I see. Got your sketchbook,” Trey said to Amy.

  She glowed at his attention. “Mrs. Wilson said I should work on my portfolio this summer.”

  Jo snorted. “Who wants to draw at the beach?”

  “You’re going to the beach?” Trey asked.

  “We’re on our vacation,” Beth explained.

  Not a real vacation. Not like other families who went to Disney World. “Just for the day,” Amy said.

  “Momma said we all deserved a day off,” Beth said.

  “She wanted us out of the house,” said Meg.

  “Out of her hair,” Jo said.

  Amy didn’t say anything. She heard Meg and Jo talking to each other in low tones late at night, when they thought she was sleeping. Since Daddy’s deployment, Bethie’s stomachaches were back. Momma thought this trip to the beach would make her feel better.

  Trey leaned against the side of the car. “Sounds like fun. Maybe I could come, too.”

  Totally casual. Cool. That was Trey. But something in his eyes reminded Amy of their mother. Like he was on the outside, looking in.

  She glanced at her sisters. It sucked that their father was away again. And Momma, since moving them all out to the farm, seemed to be busy all the time. But at least both their parents were still alive. It couldn’t be easy for Trey, living alone with his grandfather.

  “Of course you can come!” Jo said. Meg raised her eyebrows. “What? We packed enough food.”

  “He doesn’t have a swimsuit,” Amy said.

  Trey grinned. “We can go skinny-dipping.”

  Jo socked him in the arm.

  He held up his hands in an I-come-in-peace gesture. “Kidding. I’ll swim in my shorts.”

  “You can share my towel,” Beth said.

  “Don’t you have to tell your grandfather where you’re going?” Meg asked.

  “He won’t care.”

  Meg, looking remarkably like Momma, leveled a look at him.

  “Fine.” Amy watched as Trey fished his phone—the new flip kind—from his pocket. Even Meg wasn’t getting her own phone yet. Not until she went away to college next month. “Why should I pay for another line when we live under the same roof?” their mother said.

  Trey left a message for his grandfather and tucked the phone away. “All set.” He reached for the front door on the passenger side.

  “Shotgun,” Jo called.

  “You can sit in back with us,” Beth said to Trey. “I’ll take the middle.”

  “I’ll sit in the middle,” Amy said. “You get carsick.” Besides, that way she could sit next to Trey.

  In the car, their legs almost touched. Trey’s knees were big and knobby, his thighs dusted with dark hair. He smelled different from her sisters. Good different. On the hour-long drive, she let herself imagine what it would be like if it were just the two of them going to the beach together; if she were older, sixteen or seventeen, and he was her boyfriend.

  “Your face is red,” Meg said to Amy as they unloaded the car. “Do you feel all right?”

  Amy nodded. The sun beat down on the parking lot, baking the asphalt and the top of her head. Cars shimmered in the heat. But beyond the short line of beachgoers at the public restroom, past the puddles on the concrete by the outdoor showers, a splintery walkway cut over the dunes. Sea oats bowed and waved their plumes in the breeze from the water. The wind lifted Amy’s hair, cooling her hot cheeks.

  Beth sighed. “Smell the ocean!”

  “Don’t forget your things,” Meg said.

  “Oh, hurry!” said Jo.

  They bumped and shuffled along the weathered walkway, Meg with her mat, Trey and Jo carrying the cooler between them. And then the dunes crested and fell away. The sand tumbled to the shining sea, stretching to the curving horizon. White foam curled and sparkled on the waves. Happy little clouds floated across the sky. Amy caught her breath, wishing she had the talent to paint it all.

  “Come on!” Jo said.

  They trudged over the hot sand past the lifeguard station, setting up camp on a broad, nearly empty stretch of sand near the water’s edge.

  Meg promptly oiled herself and spread out on her bamboo mat to get the full effect of the sun. Beth tucked the corners of the big beach blanket in the sand to secure them against the wind. Jo and Trey ran, whooping, to the water, plunging through the surf into the waves. Amy followed them. But the water was cold. The tide was too rough. She was not that strong a swimmer.

  After being pummeled, dragged, and dunked by the waves, she retreated to the blanket and her sketchbook, her hair a salty wet tangle. Beth wandered the shoreline, collecting shells as Jo and Trey played in the water, sleek as otters. Amy pushed her hair from her eyes, determined to capture the scene in front of her, everything alive with color, light, and movement.

  But it was no good. She was no good. After a few attempts, she stopped, frustrated by her failure to draw what she saw. What she felt. Maybe if she’d brought watercolors with her, or chalk . . . She was sure she could do better. If only she were old enough for oil paints!

  She doodled in the margins—a silly crab with elongated eyestalks, a cart
oon gull in a sunbonnet. But Mrs. Wilson said she would never be a real artist if she didn’t take her art seriously. Mrs. Wilson said that the study of the human form was the best way to learn how to draw.

  Amy flipped a page and started to sketch Meg, motionless on her mat. Meg had curves. Real breasts, instead of mosquito bumps. Amy stuck her tongue between her teeth, dividing her sister into lines and shapes as if she were assembling a quilt.

  Jo staggered from the surf and collapsed, dripping, on the blanket, reaching with one arm for the cooler.

  Amy shrieked, covering her sketchbook. “You’re getting my paper wet!”

  “Relax. I just want food. I’m starving.”

  “Why don’t we all eat lunch?” Meg suggested. She stood and called down the beach. “Beth! Bethie! Lunchtime!”

  “Whatcha drawing?” Trey asked, leaning close to see. A single drop of water slid from his nose and plopped onto the page. “Is that Meg? Nice.”

  Amy brushed the drop away, angling her paper so he could see. “Do you really think so?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Yeah. Looks just like her.” He smiled, and her heart melted like chocolate in the sun.

  Beth returned with her treasures. The four sisters and Trey sat around the cooler, eating gritty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, balancing their drinks in the sand.

  “Everything tastes better at the beach,” Beth said with a contented sigh.

  Jo stuffed a cookie into her mouth. “Because we worked up an appetite.”

  Amy licked Cheetos crumbs from her fingertips, hoping she wouldn’t leave orange smudges on her paper.

  Trey tossed a chip to a hovering gull.

  “Don’t feed it,” Meg warned. “You’ll only attract more.”

  “Too late,” Jo said as four more gulls swooped on the scene. She stood, scattering birds and sand. “Who wants to go swimming?”

  “You should wait an hour before you go into the water,” Meg said.

  “Fine.” She flopped back down on her stomach, rummaging in the beach bag for her book.

  Trey angled his head to peer at the cover. “Frankenstein,” he read aloud.

  “It’s on our summer reading list,” Jo said. She and Trey were in AP English together. “Haven’t you started it yet?”