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

Hannah itched, the microscope now on her, making her want to crawl out of her skin.

“Why are we talking about me?”

“Because you think you just... Know what you would do. If you were me. But you don’t. You’re a different person than me.”

“I’m well aware.”

“I don’t think you are. And you know what, it’s not even that we’re different people. It’s just that you don’t know what it’s like to have your life wound around somebody else’s like this.”

Lark was silent.

“What do you think?” Avery asked Lark.

“I don’t know either,” Lark said. “I don’t have anyone.”

“Well, what would you do?”

“I don’t know,” Lark said, looking flustered. “I don’t. I would... I don’t know. Maybe pretend it wasn’t happening for a while.” Lark’s blue eyes filled with tears. “I’m just really sorry, Avery.”

Hannah thought maybe there was something broken inside of her, because she didn’t want to cry. She wanted to break things. Preferably her brother-in-law. And she didn’t know why it was so difficult for her to offer sympathy. Why it was so difficult to be like Lark and sit there and tear up and look sorry, and just say that she didn’t know what she would do.

The idea that you might not know what to do is way too scary.

“Why did you keep it a secret?” Lark asked. “I know you were scared, I know... I just wish you’d told us.”

“You don’t know,” Avery said, choked. “It’s not just not knowing what to do, or loving him still. I’m so... I’m so embarrassed. I didn’t ask to be this woman. I didn’t ask to be her.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Hannah said.

“You know, everybody says... They all say that they would leave him if he hit them. If he cheated. And I used to think the same thing. That if my husband ever did anything like that to me there’s no way I would stay,” Avery’s voice was low, shaky but strong at the same time. “But that was before. Before I’d been with him for so long I couldn’t remember what life was like without him. Before I was... Comfortable, and dependent in so many ways on the way that we structured our lives. Hannah, the violin is your dream. David was mine. You tell me that you could walk away from a dream that easily even if it hurt?”

Her words were sharp, and they stabbed into Hannah’s chest.

They tangled around inside her with all kinds of words she’d called herself. All kinds of fears about dreams and what she might or might not be.

And what it looked like when everything unraveled...

That was what Avery looked like.

Hannah’s worst fear.

Avery leaned forward, clasping her hands in her lap and letting out a slow breath. “He’s so smart,” she said. “And handsome. And he’s funny sometimes. And when he smiles at me I feel like someone turned a light on inside me. And those are the reasons I fell in love with him. Those feelings, those reasons, they didn’t go away the first time he hit me. And since he did I’ve spent the last two years telling myself that he was still the man I loved. Not the man he was when he got angry, when he berated and belittled me... That it wasn’t him. Not my husband. It was someone else who... Made him do those things. He became someone else when he did it. And when he didn’t, he was completely that man I fell in love with in the beginning. But it is him. It’s as much a part of him as his blue eyes and his humor and that smile. Now I think I’m finally not so in love anymore. Or at the very least I realize I can’t keep on loving him like I have.”

A tear fell down her cheek. “I really did it. I left. And now I have to... I have to make more choices.”

“We should go to the police,” Hannah said, her chest feeling sore. “I just think it’s probably the safest thing for you to do.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s going to mean for me.” She crossed her arms, closing her eyes, another tear sliding down her cheek. “Seriously. I think he’s going to lose his medical license.”

“Yeah, and maybe you’re not going to have a lot of money,” Hannah said. “But you’ll be safe.”

“The kids go to private school.”

“And they can go to public school.”

Avery doubled over, and Hannah had never seen anything quite so scary as her most confident sister...undone.

“This is what I was afraid of,” she said, straightening, her fists pushed hard against her eyes. “You guys know and now I have to...oh I have to go to the police. He hit my son.”

“What?” Lark asked.

“Hayden told me that David slapped him.” She wiped her arm under her eyes, sniffing loudly. “I can’t let it go. I can’t hide it. I have to do this. I just... I want to go back and hit Pause. I just want to go back to a week ago. Two years ago. I want to go back to before, and I can’t.” She breathed out, slow and strong. “It’s today. And I wish it weren’t. I want to be in the future or in the past, but I don’t want to be here.”

“We are here for you,” Lark said, leaning forward and putting her hand on Avery.

“Yes,” Hannah said. “Lark can be... Soft and sympathetic, and I can get angry for you, when you can’t. Also, admin.”

Avery opened her eyes, and surprisingly, laughed. “Well, those are your individual strengths.”

“Let’s go to the police station,” Lark said, squeezing Avery’s hand. “We’re here for you. Mom and Dad can come over here so Peyton and Hayden don’t have to shuffle back over there.”

“They don’t need to be watched,” Avery said, but Hannah knew that her sister wouldn’t want the kids to be alone right now.

“Great,” Hannah said. “I’ll call Mom and Dad. Get your coat.”

Hannah suddenly had