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

All the lights in the house were off. Mary sat on the couch, Joe’s comforting warmth next to her. Like it had been for forty years. And in the middle of all of her sorrow she was grateful. She was grateful for this man. She had thought that she and Avery had a lot in common. But Joe was a good man. Joe had been the best father, always. And an incredible husband. Mary had been so wounded by the abandonment of her mother. Marriage had frightened her. Love had frightened her.

And Joe had made her feel safe. Always.

“If the police don’t do right by her they’re going to be looking for his body.”

Joe’s voice was rough. Emotion like this wasn’t easy for him. He wanted to do things, fix things. He wanted to fight with them, and there was really nothing to be done. Nothing that wouldn’t put Avery in a bad position, because she hadn’t committed to moving out. Nothing that wouldn’t end up with Joe in jail, or potentially harm his relationship with their grandchildren.

“How did this happen?” Mary asked.

“I thought she was too young to get married,” Joe said. “I always thought she was too young.”

“She wasn’t any younger than I was,” Mary said. “I thought it was perfect. I thought David was perfect. I thought... I thought what I did was enough. I was there and I...”

“You are a good mother,” he said. “It’s not you that made the choice to hurt her. It was him.”

Joe had always known how to get right to her heart.

“I know that,” Mary said. “How could I not see it?”

It sat uncomfortably with her. Reminded her too much of the lack of relationship with her own mother. And how could that be? How? When being there for her girls had been everything to her. She had known that she couldn’t always reach Hannah. And she had felt Lark go from being open and honest with her emotions to starting to hide. But Avery... Mary had been so certain she was happy. Was safe and settled. It was terrible to discover that she was wrong. That the son-in-law they had let into their lives, into their homes, the son-in-law that Joe had shared countless beers with, that Mary had grown to love like a son, had been hurting their daughter.

“They’re their own people,” Joe said. “The three of them.”

“I just wish that they were little again. And I could fix everything.” Fix everything in the way that her mother never had. Not for her.

Except it was clear now that whatever those kisses on their bruises had done, it hadn’t fixed everything.

And she had no idea what would begin to mend the cracks running through Avery’s life now.

There was no Band-Aid for this.

And it was the one thing that Mary had a difficult time sitting with. Knowing that there was something she couldn’t make whole. And she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because there was something missing in her. Something her mother should have taught her but didn’t.

Or maybe it was missing in her either way. No matter what.

It was like that sampler all over again. Like waking up and finding out her mother had left and wondering if her mother was wrong...or if she was.

13

I have many regrets. But right now my deepest regret is that this family has not learned to share our secrets.

A letter, unsigned and unsent

Lark

That Ben got the parts for her car and wanted her to come in the day after Avery’s whole situation seemed unfair. It was the tail end of the day, and she had managed to hold it together to work at the Craft Café, but she was pretty much just done. She was raw as it was, still processing everything that had happened. She didn’t know if there was a time frame for that. Her sister was being abused by her husband. By Lark’s brother-in-law, who had been part of their lives for so long it just felt...

Lark wasn’t a stranger to secrets. Her family didn’t know everything about her. And it was by design. But she had no idea that Avery was keeping secrets.

Avery.

So sanguine and calm, and always holding the answers. Avery who had seemed perfectly together to Lark for all this time. Who was always measured and matter-of-fact, and who had fought tooth and nail against last night’s revelations. She didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want to leave the man who was harming her.

But Keira had left Ben.

And here Lark was tangling those things up in her head as she pulled her car up to Ben’s garage.

It was stupid.

She shouldn’t even be worried about him. Not now. Not with everything as it was.

But she was. Her skin felt like it was on fire.

The garage door opened, and then he walked out, wiping his hands on a rag. Those tattoos caught her eye again, and she wondered. If he had gotten them before the divorce or after. What they meant.

He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t even told her that he was divorced.

But then, her own sister hadn’t told her that she was having problems with her husband. And then hadn’t let them help.

You just stood there. You barely said anything.

She felt guilty. Insanely guilty about that. Hannah had launched into Avery, giving no quarter and no mercy, and Lark had sort of just...

She detached. It was what she had years of practice doing. Pulling away. Retreating.

She looked up at Ben. And then she realized that she needed to do something. Get out of the car. Not just sit there.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

She felt shaky. She looked at his hand now, and saw that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. She had noticed that before, casually, but had dismissed it because he was a mechanic, and it made sense that he might not have a ring on. But now she knew it wasn’t because of his job. It was because he was divorced.

From his