by Maisey Yates
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 already assembled the backing, and was ready to begin the design.
She threaded the needle slowly, and lost herself in the simple, rhythmic work. She had never loved sewing machines. She used them for ease, but what she really loved was sewing in the silence like this. It reminded her of sitting next to her grandmother and sisters on the porch at The Miner’s House on warm summer evenings. They would snap green beans, and when they were finished, they would sew. Sometimes quilting like this. Sometimes needlepoint.
And all of it did something to quiet that gnawing sense of never quite accomplishing enough inside of Avery.
Every stitch made its mark. Every stitch added beauty.
She took a strip of the parlor curtains, all velvet burgundy and floral. A series of triangles and stripes would create a classic heritage quilt design. The rich color of the curtains contrasted with the ivory backing beautifully, and she shrank her world down to the needle entering the fabric. To each stitch. As neat and tiny as possible.
And she smiled, imagining Lark working on her square, and Hannah. She wished she were sitting with them now.
Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them back. She didn’t know why she was being so ridiculous.
She heard the sound of a car door, and she stilled.
Then she looked down at her phone, and saw the time. She had lost herself completely in quilting, and she hadn’t done anything with the hamburger that she’d gotten out. She hurriedly put the quilting square away, and stashed the bin behind the couch where it wasn’t visible, then went into the kitchen.
Her brain was turning on a loop. She didn’t know how she could have lost track of the time. There was really only one thing that David asked her to do for when he was home from work. He was always hungry. She needed to have dinner finished. And it wasn’t like she had a job.
And she had been distracted lately. She had burned dinner just last week, and now she had forgotten it altogether. Which was probably better than burning it, because at least when it was finished it wouldn’t be terrible.
She heard the front door, and then his footsteps heading to the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” she said, before he could say anything, moving to the kitchen doorway. “I had coffee with Alyssa today, and then I came home and lost track of time. I just need maybe forty-five minutes and I’ll have spaghetti.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She recognized the look on his face. But for some reason, she didn’t have time to brace herself.
Pain burst over her cheekbone, and her head hit the door frame, sending off a shower of stars in her head that glittered like broken glass.
And that glitter shifted and turned into images. A young woman in a wedding dress and a young man in a tux. Babies and a new house and stress from work.
Being kissed. Being hurt. Shattered bowls. Chipped door frames and dented walls.
A perfect house that was crumbling slowly.
Flowers and fists and those blue eyes she’d loved for more than seventeen years.
11
Sam, the man I met at the diner in Bear Creek, helped me find a small apartment to share with three other girls. It’s so different here. Vibrant and the buildings light up at night and the air is warm, even in late winter. Sam says he can get us jobs on a set. Even if it’s just fetching coffee. The prospect of it is thrilling.
Ava Moore’s diary, September 1923
Hannah
Hannah leaned over the wooden countertop at her sister’s Craft Café and stared at the shot of espresso coming out of the manual machine. Dark brown with a caramel crema over the top. She could have made a pot of coffee back at The Dowell House but she wanted the real deal.
“You can’t rush perfection, Hannah,” Lark said, her tone sage.
“I’m dying.”
“Maybe you should go to sleep earlier instead of staying up all night playing your violin?”
“I wasn’t up all night.”
“Late enough. It reminded me of sharing a room with you.”
“Sorry.” She wasn’t really that sorry.
“No,” Lark said, steaming a pitcher of milk, her concentration focused on the white froth. “I like listening to you.”
Emotion turned in Hannah’s chest like a key. She didn’t particularly like it. But it forced her to look around her sister’s café. At the scarred wooden floors that were still so familiar. The same as when Gram had run the candy store here. The counter, which was different, and the Edison bulbs that hung from the ceiling like pendants. Also different. Her sister’s quirky brand of art mingled with some of the classic paintings that Gram had always had on the walls.
“Do you remember how Gram would set a table in the back and give us paints or crochet hooks or needlepoint samplers?” She didn’t know what had brought that on. But with the memory came a wave of nostalgia.
“Yes,” Lark said. “I do. It was about the only time I felt settled. Calm. Otherwise it was just always like there were a million ants marching underneath my skin, so many feelings I couldn’t get them out. It was when I realized what making things did for me.”
“I used to think it was a distraction. But, it was about the only time I ever sat with you and Avery.” She frowned. There was so much self-isolation involved in the life that she lived. She’d been doing it for so long that it was a habit she wasn’t even aware of.
It was a strange thought on the heels of her realization that maybe she wasn’t as different from her sisters as she thought.
And she could remember, sitting in this space, while they all sat quietly and worked on different things, but next to each other.
The quilt would be like that.
And that made her chest feel slightly bruised, and made her wonder if it was one reason she’d been avoiding it.
Suddenly, she missed Addie. She had missed her, the entire time. A sadness that settled into everything she did. A sense of loss. But this was keen and sharp, different in that way.
Lark set the coffee up on the counter in a reusable travel mug. “Are you okay?”
Hannah frowned. “Yeah. I was just thinking about Gram.” And that floor caught her eye again. The floor with the scars in the exact same places they’d been when she was a child. This place was so full of memories. And Lark making this Craft Café was keeping them alive. Keeping them here for the entire community.
It made Hannah feel connected in the strangest way. To this place that she had separated from so many years ago. Before she’d even left.
But you’re back. And you’re rehabbing the old house...
To turn it into something that would keep existing, yes, but she wouldn’t have to be here every day.
“I’m glad that you opened this,” Hannah said, feeling uncharacteristically soft and vulnerable. “I mean, I’m glad that more people will have the chance to come here. Use it.”
“She was so special to me,” Lark said, the smile on her face getting sad. “Sometimes I would just sit with her, and we wouldn’t talk. But I felt like she understood me.”
Another memory that Hannah had suppressed. “Me too. I felt like she was maybe the unacceptable part of me. The part that wanted to leave.” She blinked, her eyes feeling dry. “She’d gone on all those adventures, and she told me about them. All the places she’d seen in her convertible. And I just let myself forget that in all those stories Mom was sitting at home without her mother. Because I liked the image of a woman with red hair and a red car cutting a swath of terror through the countryside.”
Her eyes met Lark’s. “I guess we both kind of did that,” Lark said.
“I guess.”
She’d always felt like she and her sister were a world apart. But standing there in this space she wasn’t sure it was true.
“I have to go. I... You know, renovations and things.”
“You should play,” Lark said. “I mean, while you’re here.”
Hannah shifted uncomfortably. A long time ago she’d enjoyed messing around and playing folk music at bars with friends, but she didn’t really do that anymore. It was all work now, and she could never quite justify wasted time spent...messing around.
“The Gold Pan has an open mic night on Fridays,” Lark pointed out.
“Yeah. Not sure that I’m going to get in on open mic night at the Gold Pan.” She wrinkled her nose. “But, thanks for letting me know.”
“You should play here. I’d love to have some live music here.”
She let out a short breath. “Sure. Maybe. Just let me know.”
“I will. I want to have some fun evening things. I think it would be great. Music and crafting and wine.”
Hannah had to admit it didn’t sound terrible. But that was as far as she was willing to go.
“I’ll see you later,” Hannah said, taking her coffee and walking out of the Craft Café. She paused at the porch. Another spot filled with memories. Where they had snapped peas with Gram, another group activity. Gram had forced them to play together. To be nice to each other. In a way their mom and dad didn’t.
Hannah’s dad had always been indulgent of her specifically. For the first time she wondered...
She wondered if it was because she was like her mom.
He was good with Mom, too. Who didn’t like fuss or muss, and who’d always preferred action over talk.
She smiled as she turned and began to walk down the street, heading back toward The Dowell House.
It was made of bright, cheerful yellow brick. Large green trees covered part of the facade, swaying gently in the breeze. The stark, white balcony that led out to a widow’s walk, as well as the gleaming columns that stood sentry by the crisp door gave it the look of a Jane Austen fantasy. At least, it always had to Hannah. Whether it was an accurate fantasy or not was another matter. But it had always made her think that dukes and ladies might not be terribly far away.
But she had always dreamed of bigger things.
She walked up the sidewalk, and paused, planting both feet firmly on the marble heart that was laid into the pathway. She had always been curious about that. Because while her grandmother was eccentric, as far as she knew, she came from very practical people.
The Dowell family was well regarded, and had been for years. Their family history was written on many a plaque about town. The first Dowell in town had not only built the largest house the community of Beak Creek had ever seen, they’d bought a newspaper, built up the school system and been active in the politics of the town. Of course her grandmother’s behavior had put a slight dent in the family history.
But then, Addie had more than made up for it in her later years. As far as the community was concerned.
Not as far as Hannah’s mother was concerned.
And Hannah understood. She did. But then, her mother didn’t make mistakes. So maybe she didn’t understand that sometimes people do desperate things in low moments.
Hannah did.
She began to walk forward, moving slowly up the stairs, and pausing when she saw that familiar truck parked against the side of the house. Right up against the picket fence, a mockery of sorts. Of something, though Hannah didn’t particularly want to think of what.
She paused for a moment and let out a slow breath, then pushed open the front door. “If I would’ve known you’d be here already I would have brought you a coffee.”
She didn’t hear anything in response except for the sound of a hammer against drywall. “Are you breaking my house?” she asked.
“Sometimes you have to break it to fix it,” came the reply.
She rolled her eyes, then followed the sound of the hammer into the parlor. “That’s cute. Did you get it in a fortune cookie?”
“No. I learned it. From life. Also, your drywall here is moldy. And it’s beyond saving. So I have to put in a couple new panels and I have to break them out to get new ones in.” He shrugged. “So it’s not a saying so much as just the situation here in your house.”
“Great. Good to know.”
He was sharper now than he’d been.
She crossed her arms, resting her latte against her elbow and leaning against the doorway. She stared at his profile, at the solid motion of his shoulders, his arms, as he swung the hammer. He was... Well, he was good at this.
Practiced. His every movement was forceful, but economical. He didn’t waste energy or movement. He found the most direct path and took it. And she could tell herself that she enjoyed that because what she appreciated was professionals. In any capacity. People who worked hard at what they did, and found a way to excel at it, whatever it was.
She was not looking at him because the way his muscles shifted beneath his skin fascinated her. No. Not at all.