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

be on a quest to find herself. But Hannah already knew who she was. She might have been momentarily diverted by the nostalgia of Josh Anderson. But momentary was all it was.

It was all it could ever be.

9

I don’t have words. I don’t have tears. My whole body is pain, and I don’t think it will ever end. He’s gone. He will not return home. I will not have my love. And our baby will have no father.

Dot’s diary, June 1944

Lark

The café had been bustling all morning, and Lark had been busy, wearing her flower crown, which was now a little bit wilted. Her encounter with Ben had her a little bit...jittery, but her conversation with her sisters yesterday had put something whole and hopeful in place in her heart.

A promise of the healing she’d come here looking for. Avery being a sexual rebel had been something of a shock, and Hannah’s...softness over Josh had fascinated her.

It made her feel a kinship to her sister. Of course, she hadn’t shared about her own heartbreak. She felt a little bit guilty about it, actually.

She’d just found it easier—for years—to let them have their own narrative about her. Lark the youngest, so carefree.

It kept her from having to talk about the things that hurt her. The things that she had cared about desperately.

As if her thoughts had conjured him out of the air, she looked up and out the window and saw him through the wavy, antique glass.

She didn’t even have to see him clearly to know it was him. Her body recognized him. Her heart fully lurched in her chest.

And it took her a moment to realize he was with someone. He bent down and hugged a small, slender figure with blond hair, the same color as his own.

Keira?

No. Keira was a brunette, not that hair color couldn’t change, but she wouldn’t look good as a blonde. Not being rude, it was just true.

They parted and he walked past the shop, toward his garage and out of Lark’s view, and by the time she realized she was staring after him, the door opened, and the person he’d hugged walked in.

She was a teenager. A girl who had been in a couple of times in the last few weeks but suddenly it was like everything crystalized and she could see it.

Oh.

She had his eyes. The same blue, and her hair the same sandy blond. Her nose was like Keira’s, so was her smile.

Seeing Ben’s and Keira’s features blended together was a particular pain she hadn’t been prepared for.

For the first time, she wished her mother were a little bit more of a gossip. But the woman was resolutely closemouthed about the people in the community. Or maybe... Maybe she just knew that the topic of Ben would not be overly welcome.

But oh, Lark wished she would’ve known this.

Right. Ben and Keira have been married for sixteen years, and you figured they wouldn’t have kids?

You went out of your way to not know that. It’s why you don’t talk to anybody. It’s why you’re happy to let them all think you just breeze through life and don’t think about a thing. So they won’t talk to you. So they won’t ask.

“Hi,” Lark said. “I... Hi.”

She suddenly had no idea what to say. This girl had just been a customer—granted she was thankful for every one—a couple of days ago. One she identified by the latte she ordered and the bracelet she was working on.

And now...now she knew that the girl was Ben’s daughter.

Ben’s daughter.

“Hi,” she said, looking at Lark like she was a weirdo.

Well, Lark felt a little like a weirdo at the moment.

“Did you want your honey latte?”

“Yeah,” she said, undoing her backpack and getting out the small kit of beads that she had bought from Lark over a week ago.

Lark had given her and some friends a brief tutorial on how to do beading, and they had all been excited by how easily she picked it up, and had jumped right in.

Of course, her friends weren’t here today.

“Don’t you have school?”

“I guess. I’m skipping.”

“And your...your dad is okay with that?”

The girl shrugged, laying her beads out in front of her, and her work in progress. “I don’t think he loves it. But... You know, he’s one of those parents. He would rather I tell him than have me hiding things from him so he makes a big effort not to freak out when I tell him something. This morning I told him I wasn’t in the mood to go to school.”

She had not imagined Ben would be some new age dad.

“Admirable,” Lark said, ignoring that this was an extremely uncomfortable conversation for her in many ways. “Although my mom would skin me alive.”

“Well, if my mom had bothered to stick around, then she would get to have a say in whether or not I went to school. But she didn’t. So, it’s up to my dad. Who is terrified that I will sink into a life of sex and drugs. He likes rock ’n’ roll, so he doesn’t seem all that worried about that one.”

The girl’s sudden anger was shocking, but not half so much as the revelation that Keira had left. Keira had left Ben. And her daughter.

“Keira.” Lark hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “Your mom, Keira?”

She frowned. “Do you... How did you know that’s my mom’s name?”

“I’m sorry. I... I saw your dad when he dropped you off this morning and I... I know him. I knew him. And your mom. In high school.”

“You don’t seem like you’re my parents’ age,” she said, looking extremely uncomfortable.

Lark didn’t know if she was complimented by that or not. But right now she couldn’t make much sense of anything.

“I don’t want to pry, and I don’t want to push you to talk about something that you don’t want to, but your mom...”

“She left. Like three years ago. She just... Left us. Sometimes she’ll text or something. But not really.