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

to keep people from digging deep, the way Hannah used barbs and prickles to keep people at a distance.

Lark seemed to let things roll off now, to an almost maddening degree. Had gone from screaming over every insult to waving a hand and smiling.

And Hannah had missed the transition between those two versions of her sister.

“Are you happy with your life?” Hannah asked, directing the question at Lark. “I mean, since you’re lecturing me about my happiness and all.”

“No,” Lark said. “I wouldn’t have uprooted everything if I was happy.”

“Why aren’t you happy?” It seemed only fair that Lark should have to share, since Hannah had been forced into talking about Josh.

Maybe this was...building bonds, though Hannah hadn’t imagined it could be so uncomfortable.

“I don’t know. That’s the crazy thing. I don’t feel like I found my place. So, I’m in awe of the two of you and the fact that you’re so certain of yours.”

“I think you have to decide to know where your place is,” Hannah said. “It would have been easy for me to decide to stay here. I loved Josh and all. But I knew logically that it wouldn’t do anything for me, so I decided to break up with him. I had to choose, and I did. There’s no drifting into the place I’m at, Lark.”

Lark looked miffed. “Maybe I’m not drifting. I didn’t drift back here. I drove.”

“It’s not about perfection,” Avery said. “It’s just about commitment.”

Hannah nodded, the truth of her sister’s words sinking in. Maybe she hadn’t spoken marriage vows to her violin or anything half that insane, but it was about the commitment to the dream. To the future. That she knew she had chosen the right life for herself.

“I guess I’ve never felt that committed to anything.”

But there was an odd note in her sister’s voice. Lark, for all her sunny openness, was difficult to pin down. Like trying to put a sunbeam in a jar.

“Do you feel that committed to the Craft Café?” Avery asked.

“Yes,” Lark said. “Yes,” she breathed the word the second time. “This is what I want. And I’m here. I’m home and I... I need to lean into it.” She leveled her gaze at Hannah. “I need some of your certainty.”

Yes. Her certainty. Which often cut like a knife, slashing at anyone who might be in her way. It had certainly done its job disemboweling Josh.

She’d wasted more time questioning that than she cared to admit now.

Crying in her dorm at the University she had dreamed about all of her life. Curled up on the floor, her face wet from tears. Her soul feeling depleted at the cost it had poured out in order to be there.

She’d thought about cutting herself open then. But instead she had lain there and repeated the mantra that had gotten her there in the first place. She was special. She was meant to be there.

She was going to achieve her dreams.

She had paid the price. The cost of admission.

Regrets were for other people, and Hannah wasn’t like other people.

She never had been. Her drive, her feelings, had always mystified her family. Her parents had been utterly bemused by her certainty that violin was all she wanted to do.

She’d had to walk herself to lessons, and when things had gotten too expensive she’d had to take odd jobs to pay for all the lessons she needed. She’d started taking the bus to lessons with Marc Deveraux because he’d been the best. And when it had become clear that the school she wanted to attend would be too expensive for her parents, she’d set her sights on doing whatever she had to in order to get a full ride scholarship.

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Avery asked.

Hannah startled, because for a moment she thought that Avery had been talking to her. And for some reason the idea of trying to answer that question made her uneasy.

“I know what I want to feel,” Lark said.

“You can’t only rely on feelings, Lark,” Avery said, her tone sage.

If it rankled Lark, she didn’t show it. Which Hannah thought was a feat, since it wasn’t even directed at her and she found it maternal and annoying.

“How did you go from vine trysts to domestic life, Avery?” Hannah asked.

Since they were all standing there in a place that very much represented before, standing in a place of tea parties and first times as women and not girls.

“It’s what you do,” Avery said. “Right?”

“Not what I did,” Hannah said.

“Well, no. But you...you have the violin and I don’t have that. I didn’t have art. I wasn’t particularly great at...anything. I did the young and wild thing and now I’m doing real life.”

“Do you really not think you’re talented, Avery?” Lark asked, frowning.

Hannah appraised her older sister, who had always been...contained. It had never occurred to her she’d once done wild things. Had she wanted to do something other than get married and have kids?

“I’m very organized,” she said. “And I use it to my advantage. Anyway, it’s not like any path is a wild, raucous ride. Eventually even dreams are work, right?”

Hannah had to agree with that.

Lark nodded slowly. “Yes and sometimes you outgrow dreams.”

Hannah looked at her sisters and felt the strangest sense of recognition wash over her. The girls they’d been here, the women they were now.

“That’s when you change,” Lark added. “I’m on a quest to happiness. Via quilts and flower crowns. And memories of Gram.”

“It’s as good a path as any,” Hannah said.

This was all well and good. This nostalgia. Even if it was sharp and uncomfortable sometimes for her. But it didn’t change anything.

Because Hannah Ashwood hadn’t done much changing in recent years, and that was by design. She wasn’t that bright burning girl who had destroyed herself here. And she wasn’t that weak, sad creature that had wept on that bathroom floor.

She’d put all that away.

She had emerged from all of it stronger. With some very clear decisions made.

Lark might