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

“Did he?” Mary pressed.

“Don’t ask me about my marriage,” Avery bit out finally. “It’s mine. And it’s none of your business, not any of you, what happens in it.”

“Dammit, Avery,” Hannah shouted. “He hit you.”

“Leave it alone!”

“Why did you come here if you didn’t want us to know?” Hannah asked. “If you wanted us to leave it alone you should have stayed home sick.”

Avery looked back and forth, like a hunted animal calculating her next move. And Mary wasn’t sure if she was going to fight or run.

“I went to school today,” she said. “Had coffee with my friends. No one asked me.”

“Well your friends suck,” Hannah said, fractured emotion showing through in her tone, even as her words sharpened them into a finely pointed anger.

“Why do you suddenly get to pass judgment on my whole life?”

“Since your life looks like this.”

“It’s my business. My life is perfect! I am married to a doctor and we have a boy and a girl and they get amazing grades and I plan the gala every year!” she shouted, her voice rough and frayed.

“Who. Cares. About. A small town school gala?” Hannah shouted back. “You act like you’re head cheerleader of town, and it’s so damn weird. Your life isn’t perfect. You’re a battered wife!”

Avery stood, her breath coming out in a rush. “No, I’m not. I’m Avery Grant. I’m Doctor David Grant’s wife. I’m not...I’m not a battered wife.”

“What do you call it then?”

“Nothing you would understand, Hannah. You don’t love anyone but yourself. You barely know my kids, you barely know me. How dare you come in here and start labeling me? Telling me about my life? You think I’m hurting myself in some way? I think living in Boston, sleeping with half the men there and not having any sort of real relationship is self-destructive but you don’t see me in your face.”

“I didn’t say I was perfect, Avery, I said what’s happening to you is unacceptable.” Hannah’s expression got darker. “Is he hurting the kids?”

“I would die for my children,” Avery shot back. “And I’d kill anyone who touched them. If he touched the kids I’d be gone. He’s a good father. He is.”

I’d die for my children.

Kill anyone who touched them.

Mary knew that truth. She felt it now.

“Avery,” Mary started.

Avery whipped around to her mother. “Don’t start, Mom. I don’t need your opinion on this. I’m not like you were. You didn’t do things you didn’t get or make friends with any of the parents or...or do anything to help me make friends and be involved in school. I don’t just...garden and make halfway homemade meals while my husband works a nine to five. David is a doctor and I have to go to events and I look a certain way and act a certain way. The kids go to an amazing school and we both have to do work to support their position there. I work for what I have, for the life I have. You just put me in thrift store clothes, not because we couldn’t afford them, but because you didn’t care about what was important to me and you never even tried.”

Her words were bitter and acid and they hit Mary with unexpected force.

“Honey,” she tried again.

“No,” Avery said. “No. You wanted...a family that was together and just...not like yours and you did that. Fine. But I did better. I’m doing better.” She moved closer to Hannah. “You can’t look at one issue in a seventeen year marriage and think you know...think you know the whole relationship. I love him. I gave things up for him. You don’t know anything about that. You had Josh and what did you do? You dumped him. So you could go off and live your life by yourself, but that’s not what loving someone is, Hannah. You give to the people you love and you don’t run when things are hard. You wouldn’t know anything about that. Neither of you would.” She rounded on Lark then. “You’re barely ever here. All you do is run. Good for both of you that you have nice jobs, but who’s here supporting Mom and Dad? Who’s here being a good daughter? A good wife. A good mother. All things to all people instead of a...trash heap of an island unto myself. Don’t tell me how to live my life when you’re both such disasters.”

She turned, holding her bag tight against her body, then walking out the door. Mary went after her, stumbling out onto the porch.

“Avery, don’t go home,” she said.

“I go home to him every night, Mom,” she said. “I’m not...I am not leaving my husband.”

“Avery, your dad...”

“Do not get Dad involved,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t. Just stop. I know you need to be involved in my life to feel like yours matters, but this is my life. It’s mine. I want... I don’t want to leave.” The last word broke, and she turned on her heel and stomped down the sidewalk. And Mary watched, as she passed beneath pools of golden light, getting farther and farther away.

And she’d never felt so helpless.

She couldn’t fix it. Couldn’t pick her up and kiss her bruise and make it better. And she’d never wished more that she knew what to say. But she hadn’t ever known exactly what to say in all of history and now when she needed to most...

She didn’t have it.

Hannah and Lark were by her side, Hannah putting her arm tightly around her shoulder. “She’s being an idiot,” Hannah bit out.

“She’s scared,” Lark said softly. “And you didn’t help.”

“I’m not going to be the person who enabled her,” Hannah shot back. “She’s in denial, and someone has to just say it so that she sees it.”

But what Mary really couldn’t believe was that she hadn’t seen it.

That her daughter had been quietly falling apart, and Mary hadn’t known.

And even if she had seen it...

She wouldn’t have known how to talk to