Confessions from the Quilting Circle, Maisey Yates [animal farm read TXT] 📗

“Yes. This part of the project is mostly me. So yes. You’re hired.” There was a budget, part of what Gram had left behind, and Hannah knew this was well within it, and also that her sisters would be fine with her making the decision.

“Great. I guess I’ll be seeing you around, then.”

“Yeah. I guess you will. I guess... We’ll see each other.”

His mouth cocked up to one side in a half smile. “Yeah. I guess so.”

And by the time he left, she was breathless, and reverted in a way that made her want to slap herself. What was the matter with her? She’d gone and backslid into some high school state where half a glimpse of Joshua Anderson sent her into a tailspin.

But you’re not in high school. You are a thirty-six-year-old woman.

A thirty-six-year-old woman who’d felt afraid to pick up a sewing needle last night when her sister had suggested they finish her grandmother’s quilt. And she couldn’t figure out why.

Because it’s part of the Hannah you left behind.

So was Josh Anderson but he was apparently coming to refurbish this house.

And her phobias about the past actually did uncover some insecurity she wasn’t comfortable with. She didn’t want them to exist. Not at all.

She’d been soft then. Had been swayed by the romanticism he’d roused in her. Something she hadn’t realized existed before then. She’d been...made normal by him in some ways. He’d made her want to hang out with friends on Friday nights and sneak off and have sex in cars.

He’d shown her that the soaring feeling in her chest she got from playing music, she could feel when he touched her body.

When he was inside her.

And she hadn’t wanted to think about the reality of the situation, or that she couldn’t be both a normal girl and an exceptional one.

But in the end, she’d had to choose. And that moment in her life when she’d been idealistic, when she’d hoped she didn’t have to...

It had burned to the ground, and she’d emerged harder. Stronger.

She’d learned she couldn’t let herself be pulled in too many directions. She’d learned you couldn’t love too many things.

She’d put the past away, and she didn’t get it out and turn it over, not ever. That was behind her. The past had nothing to do with her future, and her future was what mattered.

Which meant...making the past into something bigger than it was didn’t have any place.

She took her phone out of her pocket and looked at the text box for the group chat called Sisters.

All right, she typed. What night are we quilting?

5

The wagon is reserved for children, and sometimes women, but I prefer to walk. I am not sure what I’ve agreed to or why. Grief makes fools of all of us. Or perhaps it is still love, reaching out from beyond the grave. At least out here it is easy to forget who I am. Abraham Snow’s wife would not have made this journey. But his widow is.

Anabeth Snow’s diary, 1864

Avery

“Grandpa is in his shop if you want to go see him, Hayden.”

When her mom spoke, Avery’s son brightened visibly. Getting her fourteen-year-old to brighten was no easy task these days. Hayden was all height with none of his breadth yet. Taller than she was, but narrow. He could be sweet, but sometimes...sometimes his bursts of testosterone stole the boyish roundness from his personality and replaced them with angry, impatient edges that his maturity level couldn’t quite support yet.

It was such a weird thing, watching this boy you’d created grow into a man. She’d watched her daughter transform from a small rectangular shaped girl into a girl with the shape of a woman, who looked so much like Avery it sometimes caught her off guard.

Even stranger was realizing Peyton looked more like Avery did in her head, than she did in real life, because in her heart she still looked like that sixteen-year-old version of herself. Thirty-eight-year-old her wasn’t fixed in her head yet. And by the time she was, she supposed she’d be forty-five-year-old her and then that would be another thing to get used to.

She could ignore time when it was her. Much harder when she looked at her kids. They were evidence of the passing years in a sometimes harsh way.

Most especially when they made it clear they didn’t need her in the ways they once had.

“Okay,” Hayden said, barely looking at her as he went back out the front door, and headed toward her dad’s shop.

“He was desperate to get away from the women,” her mom said.

“Yeah.”

Hayden was mad, and not at her, at David. She wasn’t supposed to be the one to pick him up from practice today. But David had been busy with paperwork at the hospital, stemming from a surgery that hadn’t gone to plan. But Hayden didn’t care about the reasons. Only that his dad hadn’t been there for him.

Avery really didn’t mind when her plans had to shift because of David’s work. She didn’t. She understood that his work was intense, and she’d chosen to marry him, knowing he’d be a doctor. But Hayden didn’t understand.

She wasn’t what he wanted. Wasn’t the one who could fix it.

That hurt. Made her feel helpless and...

Tired.

“We’re not going to stay long,” Avery said. “I have to fix dinner. But I wanted to talk to you. Because... Lark has an idea.”

“Lark has an idea and you’re here to pitch it to me?” her mother said. “That doesn’t seem like a very good sign.”

“Lark wants to finish Gram’s quilt. And she wants all of us to help.”

She watched her mother’s expression shift into something bland, which meant she was thinking mean things and didn’t want to advertise it.

Avery knew, because she often did the same thing.

“I don’t really want to mess with my mother’s things,” her mom said.

“Mom, I know.” Avery looked at her mother, and she felt... Well, immensely guilty. Because she knew that this was a sore spot for her mom.