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

“Sometime.”

They were desperate to get away from her and up to their rooms and she felt...like she should make them stay downstairs. Like she should make them talk to her.

But she couldn’t make them want to spend time with her. Hayden wanted attention from David, who was too busy to give it.

And none from her, of course.

But she had some disgusting chicken to go make that Peyton would pick at morosely, so who said being a mom was a thankless job?

At least Peyton didn’t leave any debris lying around for Avery to deal with. She should call Hayden back and have him pick up his things.

She knew that she should correct all of the attitude that had just blown through the room.

But sometimes it was just a lot less work to pick up a soccer bag than get into a fight with a fourteen-year-old.

She’d pick it up in a minute. She stared over at where he’d thrown it and noticed that there was a chip on the wall behind the table, where he’d thrown the bag, and she frowned. The house wasn’t that old. But old enough that they were starting to have some patching up to do.

She lost herself in sorting through the fabrics and looking at the copy of the design for the quilt Lark had sent home with her.

She started mentally mapping out her part, which fabrics she would use where to create the intricate design that required thin cut strips of fabric laid together to create a woven look.

It would look rich with the parlor curtains and some of the gold and cream fabrics that were also in her box.

She touched the curtains again and wondered about that woman, because it had to have been a woman who brought her curtains with her.

A woman who did what she and her sisters had just been talking about.

A woman who pulled up and left everything behind for a whole new view.

She heard her kids thumping overhead and suddenly realized that time had passed.

She jumped up and went back into the kitchen, just in time for the smoke alarm to inform her that her chicken had been left in for too long. She let out a sharp curse and jerked the oven open while waving her hand in the direction of the smoke detector.

“Dammit,” she hissed as she grabbed a dish towel and an oven mitt. She cleared the smoke out of the air with the dish towel as she removed the chicken. It wasn’t bad. It was just that the skin was a little bit charred, and some of the juices had come out and burned in the bottom of the pan.

She was still staring down at the chicken when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned, and saw David standing there, holding a bouquet of flowers.

“I burned dinner.”

His expression shifted, and he took a step toward her, those blue eyes, so familiar, intent on hers, the flowers clutched tightly in his hand.

There was no point thinking about new views. She had this view. It was everything she needed.

8

I said no. I want to go to California. Where it’s sunny and warm. I want to go to Hollywood, where they make movies. I talked to a man who passed through town and he said they’re always looking for young women to be in films.

Ava Moore’s diary, August 1923

Hannah

When they all convened at The Dowell House a few days later, Avery turned a focused eye and lifted eyebrow to Hannah.

“I noticed, via the invoice on the counter, that you hired your ex to do the household improvements?”

“You did what?” Lark asked.

Hannah looked at her sisters, discomfort shifting inside her. She hadn’t intended to talk to them about this. For a few reasons. The first being that it shouldn’t matter. The second being...she hadn’t talked about Josh with them.

Not ever, really.

She sighed. “I didn’t know it was his handyman business when I hired him. But his bid was really reasonable, and there’s no reason to not hire him.”

“Sure there is,” Lark said, eyes round and earnest. “He’s your ex.”

“My high school ex,” she pointed out. “It’s not like he’s my ex-husband, or something. It was years ago. Many men have passed through my life since Josh Anderson, and I imagine he’s had a few women himself. No use making a monument out of teenage fondling.”

The only reason he was significant at all was that he was the first. That was unavoidable. Firsts tended to change you. They’d been new and tender at that great mystery between men and women.

She doubted he was new at it now.

Because he had been handsome in high school, then he had grown up to be something else altogether. And that had nothing to do with the conversation at all.

Avery was literally standing on a counter, dusting the top of the cabinets and throwing random things down onto the floor. “Seriously,” she said from where she was standing. “I think there are old pieces of artwork up here that we gave Grandpa when we were kids. It’s ridiculous.”

There were so many unnecessary nooks and crannies in the house. It hid all kinds of things. Dirt. Memories.

She didn’t like it. She preferred the smooth edges and open spaces of her own apartment.

You couldn’t stash anything in there. It had to be neat and organized.

“Hey, you brought this up,” Hannah shouted up toward Avery. “You can’t muster any concern?”

“You said he wasn’t your ex-husband, like that meant it didn’t matter. Is it an actual dilemma?”

Avery dusted her hands on her jeans and hopped down from the counter. Then she winced.

“You know, you’re thirty-eight. Not eighteen,” Hannah pointed out, just being mean because she did not feel seen, and her sister was the one who’d brought it up in the first place and then wasn’t even indulging her. “You can’t go flinging yourself off of countertops.”

“I do yoga,” Avery said.

“And do you do cabinet cleaning pose in yoga?”

“I won’t jump next time,” she said.