Confessions from the Quilting Circle by Maisey Yates (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

It was also why she thought she should be the one to talk to her about it. “I understand that your relationship with Gram was complicated.”

“It wasn’t complicated,” Mary said, her tone firm. “She had a relationship with the three of you and there was no cost to being civil. If your grandpa could be civil, always, in spite of his hurt, I could be too.”

Her grandpa had been extremely upright. He’d had a classic view on manners and the treatment of others.

He’d passed it on to his daughter, who took his way of things as gospel.

Her mother was old-fashioned in her values, but without being overtly feminine. She’d learned to cook of a necessity, but she’d never been one to sit and have girl talk. She wasn’t a big toucher, and she didn’t show her emotions easily.

The admission that she’d had to work to be civil was a pretty big admission, actually.

“I know. You let Gram back in for us.” She took a breath. “I know that you made as much of a relationship as you had because you wanted the three of us to know her. And I think that was incredibly kind.”

“It is what it is,” she said. “And now she’s gone. It’s going to take a while to figure out exactly how I feel about all of this.”

That was as close to a heart-to-heart as her mom got.

“I know,” Avery said. “And I’m sorry. But I do think that Lark is right. We can do this together. Finish the quilt together. We can teach you how. I can’t fix what Gram did, that she wasn’t in your life. But we can make something new together, out of all these old things. That feels a lot like fixing something.” She blinked. “Or at least repairing it.”

“I’ll never forget it,” Mary said. “When Mom came back, and wanted to see you. You were two years old. I could hardly believe she had the nerve to do that. But she...taught you things I couldn’t. Things she didn’t teach me, and I was never going to keep that from you.”

“Mom, we love you so much. Nobody wants you to be hurt by this. But we would like you to do this with us.”

“It’s no fuss, Avery,” she said, her manner getting brusque and making Avery think it was at least a little bit of fuss.

But she wouldn’t say that, of course.

Avery looked at the time. She really had to go get moving on dinner.

Suddenly, Avery wanted to sit down. At her mom’s kitchen table. And just stay. In this place where someone felt like it was easy to do things for her. Where somebody might fix her dinner. She had the strongest, strangest urge to go to her childhood bedroom and curl up in the bed in there.

“Thanks, Mom. I have to go.” She took a step away from the kitchen, rather than moving toward it like she had just wanted to do. “I’m glad that you’re going to do the quilt with us.”

“Me too,” Mary said. But her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. And Avery knew that like everything else, it was complicated.

But complicated was just the way life was.

You didn’t get to go hide in your parents’ house just because you were tired.

And you just said that you never felt tempted to run away.

All right, maybe sometimes she wanted a break. That wasn’t the same thing. And she wasn’t taking one. That was what really mattered. What you actually did.

And Avery always did what she was supposed to.

Mary

Mary walked up the front steps of The Miner’s House with a bright ball of emotion burning inside her. She avoided this place. It had been her mom’s candy store, and except for dropping off and picking up the girls, she didn’t set foot in it. And, hadn’t had occasion to in more than twenty years.

She could still remember her mom coming back. Mary had been pregnant and Avery had been a toddler.

Addie had rolled in, in that convertible of hers at nine at night.

Mary hadn’t seen her mother since her wedding five years earlier. She’d been mad Addie had shown up for that when Mary had not sent her an invitation and she’d known it would be a problem for her dad.

But she’d come all the same, and just like now, on a breeze of spearmint, perfume and cigarettes.

She didn’t invite her in. She stepped outside instead, wrapping her robe more tightly around her body. “Mom. What are you doing here?”

“I’m moving back. I’m... I’m moving home.”

She hadn’t noticed how old her mom looked five years earlier. How deep the lines by her mouth were. Her red hair was the same, and she was still trim and full of energy.

Her hair never changed. Mary had already vowed to gray gracefully instead of insisting on candy-apple red into eternity.

“I want to know my grandchildren.”

The words stabbed through her chest. “Why? And why now? Why mine? Why not move to Newport to get to know Bill’s kids?”

“You have a daughter. I... I made a mistake, Mary. I made a lot of mistakes. Would you really keep me from knowing your kids?”

She thought of everything she’d missed not having her mother in her life. Could she keep her kids from having a grandmother when she wanted to be there for them?

Joe’s mother had passed when he was in high school and Addie was the only grandma. Their only chance at that.

“I’ll think about it. Come back tomorrow.”

It was her dad who’d told her grudges didn’t heal wounds. And she was sure he was right. But...either way she didn’t feel all that healed.

It was nostalgic and terrible, a feeling of sadness and wistfulness rolled into one as she walked up the white steps and through the front door. She hated this. Hated all this grief. She couldn’t control it or compartmentalize it. It just sat there.

The changes in the space shocked her enough to take over the feelings. “Lark,” she said. “Did