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

of The Dowell House doing something old and familiar while she faced a future that was terrifying in its uncertainty.

And she was thankful for a moment that didn’t need words.

Eventually she’d explain.

But for now, they just sat and enjoyed the moment.

15

Sam says we can come to set, and that we’ll have parts in the background of an actual film! He bought us new dresses and they glitter like the lights outside the Vista Theater. Mine is all midnight blue with silver sequins, like the stars at night. This is every bit as magical as I dreamed.

Ava Moore’s diary, 1923

Hannah

Hannah was vile, and had nowhere to channel it. She had been a little bit of a bitch to her sister last a couple nights ago, but she was... She was just so angry. About everything, really.

She was glad that Avery had moved out, glad that she was here, and that the kids had joined her after a couple of nights at Mom and Dad’s.

Hannah and Lark had spent the last two nights mostly not talking about things and pouring wine, letting Avery sit there pale and shell-shocked. They hadn’t really talked about anything. About next steps or what all of this meant.

About the fact Hannah wanted to kill David with a spoon.

She bit off her rage as she put her violin away and picked up her quilting square. Then she carried it downstairs into the kitchen, just as Lark walked through the front door. Her sister was carrying bags of what looked like fake flowers, and several balls of yarn.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“Thinking on some things,” Lark said.

“Are you going to start your square?”

“I need time. I haven’t found the right fabric.”

“You really are ridiculous,” Hannah said.

Hey, she had been the worst that she could possibly have been with Avery last night, she might as well take Lark’s head off too.

“Excuse me?”

“You just expect that everything is going to fall into place for you, don’t you?”

“No I don’t,” Lark said. “This is a quilt, not... I don’t know. Something with a deadline.”

“You don’t even know what it could be.”

“Fine. Illustrations for a book. I’m not doing that anymore. I’m not doing it right now. I’m leaving myself open to creativity. So quit trying to put me in a box.”

“You wrangled all of us into it and now you’re not doing it. That’s just very typical of you.”

“And are you mad that you’re doing it? Or are you enjoying it? Because it seems to me that you’ve made more progress than anyone else.”

“Oh... Bite me,” Hannah said. She stopped into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

“Did you just say bite me? What is it, 1996?”

“You don’t remember 1996.”

“I absolutely do. I have a deep and abiding love of crop tops to prove it.”

That was the problem with Lark. She was irritating, but it was often impossible to be mean to her because she was... She was pleasant even when she was a frustration.

Lark sat opposite her and pulled out one of the balls of yarn, and a pair of knitting needles.

“It’s summer, so you figured you would... Knit something?”

“Well, I’m going to do an introduction to knitting course at the café. And I needed to make some samples.”

She really couldn’t be mad about that, because it was work. So she had to put her bad attitude away. She didn’t want to do it at all. She wanted to let it fly.

“Have you talked to Avery today?” Lark asked.

“She’s here, and the kids are here. But I haven’t really seen much of them. They’ve been straightening up their bedrooms and getting things organized. I got the feeling that they’re not very social.”

“Have we heard anything from David?”

“Are you expecting him to come pound the door down?”

“I don’t know what to expect,” Lark said. “I didn’t think he would ever hurt Avery, but he did, so I guess we can’t exactly rule out him coming here and trying to get to her, can we?”

“Guess not. She needs to go to the police.”

“You can understand why she hasn’t.”

Maybe she could. But she was being stubborn about it. Not on purpose, really. It was just that... Life wasn’t easy. Not for anyone. And sometimes you had to make hard choices.

“Gossiping about me?”

Hannah turned and looked behind them, and saw Avery standing on the staircase.

“Not intentionally,” Lark said.

“How are the kids?” Hannah asked.

“I don’t know,” Avery said. “Weird. I think Hayden is protective and angry with his father. And Peyton is sort of angry with me, but shocked also. And I can’t really blame either of them for their reactions.”

Avery sat down on the couch next to Hannah, a decent amount of space between them. She propped her feet up on the coffee table in front of them, and sank into the white cushions. She closed her eyes, her blond, wavy hair fanning out behind her. “I just keep thinking... This is not what I wanted for them. This isn’t what Mom and Dad did for us. They worked so hard on their marriage. And they gave us... Mom did so much to make sure that we grew up in the kind of household she didn’t get. One with both of her parents together.”

“Your house wasn’t the same,” Hannah said, frustrated that Avery was taking so much blame.

“I know that,” Avery said, sitting up suddenly, her hands clenched into fists. “I do know that. I really do. And it... It kills me. It kills me that I’m going in circles like this. But it’s just not that simple, Hannah. And I know that you think it should be. Because you’re strong in this one really particular way, and you go for the things that you want, but you do it by yourself. And there are less gray areas when it’s just you.”

“I’m not by myself. I have friends.”

“No. Everything you do, you do it... Come on, you were never that close to anyone when we were growing up. I mean, not to us.