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

the vivid memory of Avery babysitting her and Lark on their parents’ date nights. How she’d been cool and calm and mediated all fights. How she’d cooked for them and scolded Hannah for going out in the dark and cold to play violin without properly bundling up.

Hannah had found it annoying then. But she could see now it came from a place of love. Of caring.

And Avery needed Hannah to take care of her now.

“Okay.”

“Are you ready?” Hannah asked.

Avery’s eyes met hers. “No.”

“That’s okay.”

“We have to do it anyway.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said. “Sometimes that’s how it is.”

16

His wife and little girl died of fever. He told me after he took me for a ride to a field where he said we’d find bluebonnets. He gave one to me and told me his story. Right now bluebonnets feel like home.

Anabeth Snow’s diary, 1864

Avery

The last time she was in the police station in Bear Creek, she had been there to help her daughter sell Girl Scout cookies.

She had been walking on her own two feet, letting Peyton move ahead of her. Peyton had been skipping, her ponytail bouncing as she had approached the uniformed officers and asked for their support in helping her earn an owl keychain, for which she had to sell one hundred and fifty boxes.

She had walked out with a full order form and Avery had listened to her chatter the whole way home, her excited voice filling the car.

It had felt perfect.

Not now. It was dark now, and Hannah and Lark were on either side of her, their arms linked through hers, bracing her. It was only their strength that held her up, that propelled her forward. Without them, she didn’t know if she would be able to stay standing.

For two years she’d taken it. More than taken it, she’d hid it for him. And for more years than that she’d pretended their relationship wasn’t corroding.

One day she’d been cleaning the silver glasses they’d used at their wedding and had noticed a black blotch at the center and for some reason, she’d quit polishing it. She’d watched it grow. For years she’d watched the tarnish on that silver spread, grow, and there had been something satisfying in it.

It was them, she realized now.

That silver had been her private homage to their degradation.

So she was here now, making public what had been a shameful secret.

On some level she had known. She had known that it was getting to this point. She had hoped—no, she had prayed. She had prayed that it would be an anomaly. That it would stay that way. That it would happen once. Twice. But it was escalating.

He had cared, at least for a while, about making sure that none of his fits of rage were visible anywhere on her body. That nobody would know that he had vented his frustration, her body a journal of his professional disappointments, his personal inconveniences. Sore muscles and bruises on her arms, impressions of his fingers dug deep into the upper part of her arm. She had learned to carry that over the last couple of years. Had learned to push it down and just not think about it.

She had compartmentalized. Turned him into good David and bad David and made sure they were never the same man in her mind. But now, everything had collided. And as she’d been looking at herself in the mirror and laying on as much concealer as she possibly could, she had to actually look herself in the eyes while she contended with a mark left behind by her husband. And that was so much harder. So much harder than putting on a sweatshirt and covering it up.

And it was a testament to her denial, and perhaps to the kinds of friendship she had or didn’t that she had been convinced all she needed was some makeup and a backup story and nobody would ask questions. And no one had. Not at school. Not in the drop-off or pickup line. Not at coffee, where she had continued to have discussions with a whole group of women about trivia night.

What Hannah had said about her being head cheerleader of town had been echoing in her head. Was that was she was? Just...this sad woman clinging to being popular like she’d been in high school?

And all the good it had done her. She couldn’t talk to any of the people who were part of that piece of her life.

It was her mother, her sisters who had seen. Who had pressed.

She should have known she couldn’t hide it from them.

The next steps of the process went by in a blur. Hannah did most of the talking as she made arrangements for Avery to speak to a police officer. She was taken into a room, and given paperwork. She was questioned, and she was given a form that said Victim Statement on it.

Victim.

It was so difficult to see that word and know that she needed to write below it. Know that she was a victim, and this was a form for her.

“Do you need any help?”

The female police officer with a sympathetic expression and a name tag that read L. Dempsey was staring at her.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and staring at the blank page, doing her best to try to fill out the specifics of everything that had happened. She focused on the other night. Not on the escalation, or on any of the other days.

“We need to take pictures,” the woman said softly. “Of where he left marks.”

She closed her eyes. “Everywhere?”

“Yes.”

Officer Dempsey was gone for a moment, and when she returned she had a mirror, and some facial wipes. Which was when Avery realized, she needed the bruise to show. It certainly didn’t need to be partly covered up. There was a small mirror next to the chair she’d been sitting in, and she looked into it, as she slowly dragged the cloth over her face. As she removed the layers of makeup,