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

the respite. She was having a rare afternoon coffee, after all.

She’d considered going to the Craft Café, but Alyssa had wanted a very specific gluten-free something at the coffee house.

And as happy as she was to have a coffee break, Avery was antsy to get back to the quilting project. There was something about it that soothed her right now.

Maybe it was how it reminded her of Gram. How it connected her to those days she’d been aching for so much lately.

Simpler times.

Just her and her sisters sitting at a tiny table in the back of The Miner’s House, beading and bickering, but united under the watchful eye of Gram, who had a counter full of candy, and an endless stash of gum.

The quilt brought her back to that.

She had gotten quite a bit of the fabric cut, but she wanted to finish. Because then she needed to iron it so that it was precise, so that when they reconvened in a couple of days she would be ready to start sewing the square.

She could already predict that Lark wouldn’t have any of it finished, and whatever fabric she ended up choosing—unsurprising to Avery that she hadn’t committed to anything—would then be fantastic and she’d finish before everyone else, somehow producing something perfectly lovely and more creative than whatever she or Hannah had put together.

Hannah was a dark horse. And it would depend on if she had decided that she cared about the quilt or not. If Hannah wanted to do something, then it was always done. Precise and when she said it would be. But if she didn’t, then... Well, she wouldn’t.

Their mother had been uncertain, though it wasn’t wholly unusual when it came to things with links to Gram. They’d done Sunday dinner once a month for years and Mom still got a little wound up when things weren’t turning out. Like she had to perform for Gram, which had always made Avery feel sad but then...didn’t everyone want their mom to be proud of them?

“How about we have options?” Avery asked, forcing her mind back to Alyssa’s conversation and trying not to roll her eyes.

“I’m not sure we have the budget for options.”

All Avery could think was that if she had to sit in a room with these people, and there was no sugar, she might chew her own arm off.

“Not everybody is on a keto diet.”

“But everyone could benefit from it,” Alyssa said.

Honestly, there was no arguing with her. “All right. You take care of that. I’ll probably bring some cupcakes or something.”

She was a martyr, but there were limits. She wasn’t doing trivia night without cake.

“Will we be able to expect David at the party?”

“It depends. You know how it is.” Alyssa’s husband was also a doctor. Notorious for arriving at school events in his scrubs, which Avery found disgusting, given that oftentimes there was food present, and she didn’t particularly want MRSA getting in her awards banquet dinner.

“I know,” Alyssa said. “Sometimes I feel like a widow. Or a single mom. He’s doing such important work, but still, it’s hard when your husband can’t be at everything because his job is so important.”

She was bragging even while complaining. And what made Avery uncomfortable was it sounded incredibly similar to what she had said to her sisters not that long ago.

He has an important job.

It was strange how much that defined her.

It felt even larger now that she was spending time with Lark and Hannah. Lark and Hannah were themselves first, and what they did came first in the conversation.

Avery thought of how she talked about her life.

My husband is a doctor. I stay home with the kids.

Except her kids were hardly home and when they were they didn’t speak to her.

That girl she’d been, who did crafts and had all kinds of dreams, had never thought she’d define herself by what someone else had accomplished.

And hearing it said back to her only made it that much more clear. A husband with a job like David had gave her a certain amount of cachet with the other moms at school. The other doctor’s wives were often smug in a half circle with each other at school events. It had become an integral piece of her identity. It made her feel...validated.

But right now it just felt small. Petty.

That what he did for a living somehow made her more important.

And at the same time made her less important as well.

She hadn’t seen it until she caught her exact reflection in the woman across from her, who happened to be irritating her, which really made the whole thing a lot more confronting.

“Right,” Avery said, agreeing rather than betraying any of her thoughts, because she didn’t know what to do with them.

She left coffee feeling weird and sad, and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do about it. So she shoved it all to one side as soon as she walked through the door of her house. She went into the kitchen and pulled a package of hamburger out of the freezer. While she was bent over the open drawer, she saw a piece of glass shoved beneath the edge of one of the cabinets. She must’ve missed it when she cleaned up that broken bowl the other night.

There was always something.

And it felt like an endless treadmill. Not an accomplishment that she could stand on. Cleaning just started over the next day. It wasn’t like finishing surgery.

She stuck the hamburger in a bowl of water, and then went into the living room, taking out the bin that had the fabric in it. She got the ironing board down and started to fold each precisely cut swatch. Then she ironed them so that they were perfectly flat, so that her stitches would be straight and even.

At least sewing a quilt had real progress. Real progress she could see. When she finished pressing it, she decided to sit down and begin work on the first square. She had