by Maisey Yates
She didn’t want her girls to be different.
So her resentment always felt hollow, small and mean. And there was no use dwelling on it now. So she turned her focus back to the room she was in.
The place was cluttered, but in a very careful way. Everything designed to be beautiful.
But that was exactly how everything Lark touched turned out.
Another reason Mary felt reluctant to do any work on the quilt.
Mary didn’t feel confident in any of the work she had done on her square, not even with the help that Avery had given her earlier in the week. Lark had told her that everything was fine, and that if she followed the guidelines carefully everything would turn out. But she was reluctant to make stitches, because even though they could be torn out, she was concerned about the fabric of the wedding dress, which seemed so antique and dear.
Even though she didn’t know whose wedding dress it was, she still felt the connection to that fabric, and its time in history. A wedding dress was such a personal, important thing. Her own had cost a hundred and fifty dollars, and had been made by a friend, who had put together the fabric of her dreams into something that suited her perfectly.
Expensive or not, wedding dresses were so sentimental, and cutting up a gown with that much significance was horrifying enough, but attempting to turn it into something beautiful was quite another.
She wasn’t a frilly type of woman. But her wedding dress had been. Getting ready for her wedding without her mother had been a deep, terrible wound. So many hurts had come up during that time. But Joe had been...
Joe had been the right kind of rock for her, as he always was. Strong and steady, but with a softness to him that her own father hadn’t possessed.
She’d said she’d marry him in blue jeans. He’d said he’d marry her that way too, but if she wanted a wedding dress she should have one.
She’d gone shopping for it with her groom. Breaking all manner of tradition. But immersing herself in something so...girlie had been a whole different thing to what she was used to, and watching Joe’s face as she’d come out in each one had done something to repair the cracks in her heart.
Her wedding day had been the most special, incredible day of her life and she’d felt like the princess she’d never imagined she could be.
Wedding dresses, for her, were sacred.
Just like weddings.
Just like the way she loved Joe.
But when it came to the quilt, all she had managed to do was cutting and temporary tacking. Anything else had her feeling far too...it was like anger, but it trembled inside her.
The fabric squares she would be sewing the dress pieces onto were a lovely wine color that complemented the parlor curtains Avery was using on hers. It was also a nice contrast to the midnight blue that Hannah was working with.
For all her fussing and instruction, as far as Mary knew, Lark hadn’t chosen anything yet. But once she did, she knew that whatever her youngest daughter produced would be perfect. When inspiration struck her, just like lightning, she could create. It always amazed Mary, because she didn’t have that ability inside of her.
And sometimes... Sometimes, a very small part of her that she felt ashamed of found it unfair.
Because it was something that Lark had gotten from Mary’s mother. When Mary felt as if she had gotten nothing from Addie herself.
And she couldn’t see much of herself in Lark at all.
For all that she’d been her little sunshine fairy, Lark hadn’t admired enough of anything in Mary to take on any of her hobbies.
No gardening or baking for Lark.
“How is your progress?” Lark appeared from the back, her honey blond hair piled on her head in a large, messy bun. She was wearing a long white dress, her shoulders bare, a silver band painted onto her upper arm.
“It’s not a tattoo,” she said, poking at it.
“I know that,” Mary said.
“But you looked very concerned.”
“Well, I do know what a tattoo looks like.”
“That’s good.”
“You don’t have any. Do you?” That was another thing she didn’t know about her daughter.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” Lark said, winking.
“Have you heard from Hannah?”
Lark frowned. “No. Not today.”
Hannah was distant in a way that seemed deliberate. Mary made sure she stopped by to check in on her middle daughter most days, but she always had the sense Hannah was busy. She didn’t say that, but her manner was brusque and she would stand rather than sitting, like she had half her body in the next room.
“Is Avery coming? She said that she was feeling a little bit under the weather the last few days. I haven’t seen her.” It was unusual. She saw Avery most days, even if was just to share a half a large carton of eggs or some other farmers market find, plant starts or just a quick visit with her and the kids.
“She said she was. She texted me earlier.”
“Well. I barely made any progress.”
“I’m sure it looks great, Mom.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Let’s see.”
Lark leaned over the bar, and Mary reluctantly put her squares on the counter. “I don’t want to sew them on. I’m afraid I’m going to ruin the fabric.”
“You won’t. And anyway, there’s plenty of it.”
The door pushed in, and Hannah breezed into the room, holding a stack of squares in her hand. “I sat down today and finished a couple of them,” she said. “For your inspection.”
She set them on the counter, right next to Mary’s.
Hannah’s were precise and perfect, the blue fabric, and the beautiful, glittering beads looked wonderful on the cream colored fabric. Each neatly sewn diamond looked brilliant, next to some of the accents that she had done in triangular shapes right next to it.
“Wow,” Lark said. “I didn’t expect you to come with that much done.”
“Well, I had some time today.”
“You did all this today?” Mary asked.
“Yep. Hey, do you have some wine, or something?” Hannah asked Lark.
Mary did her best not to take a lot of notice of the smell of nicotine on her daughter. It reminded her of her mother, a piece of her that Mary would have rather Hannah hadn’t picked up. The artistic gene was preferable. But that smell of cigarettes with a slight sweet scent layered over the top of it was stronger than usual. Hannah was dressed in all black, a stark contrast to her sister’s ethereal white dress. In spite of the heat outside, she was wearing formfitting leggings and a tight top.
Of her three daughters, Hannah was the slimmest, and Mary sometimes worried that she replaced meals with cigarettes and coffee.
Mary was too like Hannah to pry, and they were both like oysters that were sealed shut tight and couldn’t find a way to connect. Joe could. But then, Joe could reach Mary too. He was the only one.
It made her feel better for Hannah, that she had Joe at least.
“Yes. What do you want?” Lark asked.
“I dunno. What’s open?”
“I have a rosé.”
“Basic. Sounds great.”
There was an edge to Hannah tonight, that was always present, but it was definitely a little bit more out in force than usual.
If Lark noticed, she didn’t acknowledge it, and instead produced a wineglass, and then poured some rosy liquid inside of it. “Some for me too?” Mary asked.
“Of course,” Lark said, waving her hand and pouring a measure for Mary too. “Shall we retire to the circle?”
Lark went through a door behind the counter, while Hannah and Mary walked around, to the little sitting room. Lark had lit candles at varying heights, and instead of flower crowns, there were flower decorations,
garlands hanging from the wall, and some blossoms hanging from the doorway that connected the sitting room they were in with the next.
“There’s a local artist who does these dried flower decorations,” Lark said. “I absolutely fell in love with them.”
“Very cheerful,” Hannah said, though her tone was slightly scathing.
“Very,” Mary said, only she made sure to keep her voice sincere.
“I’ve actually had customers this week,” Lark said, taking her seat in the chair and fussing with things. “I might have some profits to split sooner than anticipated!”
“Well, that’s good,” Mary said.
Hannah snorted. “You don’t need to share your profits, Lark.”
Lark ignored Hannah’s scathing tone. “I had done a lot of research on all of this but...you never really know. You can’t really expect to make a profit for a while in a town like this—everyone says. But I’m surprised by how excited people are to have something new to do here.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “In my opinion, there is nothing to do here. No offense. But if I’m going to go out, it’s not going to be to craft.” She stabbed at her quilt square with no irony.
“Except you did come out to craft.”
“Because you’re my sister and you’re making me.”
“I,” Lark said, eyes wide, “cannot make any of you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“You used to scream until you turned blue and got your way.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“You did,” Mary confirmed.
Lark was a sunshine girl. Unless she’d been a thunderstorm. And when her mood had turned, heaven help everyone. She’d worn her every emotion out in the open for the world to see.
“Well, I guess when I was little,” she said, grumpily.
“Pretty much until you were fourteen,” Hannah said.
“I am not fourteen now, Hannah. And have had nary a tantrum in your presence in the last week. Anyway, you used to lock me out of our room and not talk to me.”
“Also not true. Sometimes I locked myself outside.”
“Unless you were too lazy to go outside and then you smoked cigarettes hanging halfway out the window.”
A reflexive pang reverberated in Mary’s chest. “You did not smoke in my house.”
“No,” Hannah said, measured. “I did not smoke in your house. I smoked with my ass in your house and my head hanging out the window.”
Mary frowned. “Can you not swear?”
Lark grinned. “Yeah. Don’t swear, Hannah.”
“This is not me swearing,” Hannah said. “Trust me.”
It was strange to see them like this. So like they had been, and so different too. Because they were beyond her reach now. She couldn’t actually get mad at Hannah for smoking. Well, she could, but she had no jurisdiction in her life. She couldn’t really yell at her for swearing either.
Or at Lark for having a tattoo.
Just another way she both ached at the distance and felt pride that they were more adventurous than she would ever be.
“So have you chosen your fabric?”
“Not yet,” Lark said. “Nothing is speaking to me.”
“Do you need the fabric to speak to you?” Hannah asked.
“I would like it to.” Lark sighed. “It was my idea to start the project and I want to be in love with what I choose. I’m fast at sewing so once I find it I’ll catch up.”
“I found a...” Hannah sighed, and fussed with the square on her lap. “I found a photo of a woman wearing the dress. I was wondering if it was someone from the Dowell family. The picture isn’t labeled. And the ones of the family all are, so I’m not sure. And I didn’t see this woman in any of the other pictures. But, it was all men and dead animals, so it’s really hard to say.”
Mary frowned. “I don’t know.” She didn’t know in part because her mother hadn’t shared stories about her family. Not personal stories. What she knew, she knew from plaques around town.
More that she’d missed. Not just the keys to connecting with her girls, or mother-daughter wedding dress shopping. The layers of family. Of what made them...them.
“I should’ve brought it,” Hannah said. “I took it to my room. But I didn’t think...”
“I probably wouldn’t recognize her anyway,” Mary said. It made her feel sad. That she couldn’t ask her mother now. That she probably wouldn’t have if she had been here.
She looked down at her unfinished squares. And she wondered what her mother would say about that. She would probably wave her hands and tell her not to take everything so seriously.
That made anger burn in her chest. Because it was exactly what her mother would’ve said. And Mary would have wanted to ask her if she had any idea why Mary took things so seriously. Since clearly her husband had been fine to live with, her sons had been fine to live with, but once she had her daughter, she had no choice but to leave.
So how could a person not take things seriously, when they knew that something they’d done had been part of their mother walking away from them?
She’d done what she could with the girls. She’d been there.
She hadn’t done everything perfectly. Her biggest regret was probably the lack of support they’d given Hannah. But music had seemed like such a farfetched goal and Mary had focused on drilling the concept of hard work into Hannah, had made it so Hannah had to be self-sufficient with it because Mary felt like if that was too much for Hannah she wouldn’t be able to make a career from it anyway. Then she’d worked to pay for lessons, earned herself a scholarship, and when Lark had said she’d wanted to go to school for art...
Well they’d been different parents. Who saw things differently. Because of a trail Hannah had blazed.
Sometimes she wondered if Hannah was angry about that. But Hannah, being Hannah, would never share.
“What time is Avery arriving?” Mary asked.
She would take comfort in her oldest daughter’s presence. Because yes, having children hadn’t actually taken away her pain. But having Avery had gone a certain ways in making her begin to feel complete. And she had done... She had done right by her daughters. And maybe she wouldn’t have chosen all of the same things that they had, but they were all right.
They were all right.
“She’s probably baking a four layer cake for a school fundraiser and sewing costumes from scratch for a school play with nothing but a pack of mice and birds and her own martyrdom for help,” Hannah said.
“Hannah Elizabeth,” Mary said.
She didn’t have to say anything else. Her daughter looked reflexively chastised, and she knew that Hannah hated to be chastised. But she also knew that first name middle name was an undeniable whip to crack, even over her spiky middle child.
“Sorry. But if she walks in with frosting on her face, you owe me an apology.”
Except Avery would never look disheveled. Even if she had been baking right up until she had arrived. That was when the door opened again, and Avery came in. She had her blond hair in a bun, similar to Lark, except it was much neater, and any disarray was artful in its arrangement.
She was wearing her standard uniform of leggings and a flowing top, but there was something about her that didn’t look right. And it wasn’t until she got closer, and came into the sitting room, that Mary saw the large, purple bruise showing up as a ghost of itself beneath layers of foundation, just beneath her daughter’s eye, running the length of her whole cheekbone.
Mary felt pain radiate in her head, down her neck and in her teeth. To her chest. As if she was feeling that bruise. As if the impact it had taken to leave a bruise like that echoed in her own body.
“What happened?” Mary asked.
Avery stopped in her tracks. “What?”
“Your face,” Hannah said.
“Nothing,” Avery said, frowning at Hannah like her sister was crazy.
“You have...a bruise,” Hannah said.
Avery blinked, then squeezed her eyes shut for a second, like she was remembering. “Oh,” she said, touching the affected spot. “My makeup must’ve faded. I... I did something really stupid last night. I tripped and I basically fell down the stairs carrying a laundry basket. And fortunately the basket saved my arms. I was cushioned by a whole bunch of clothes. But I knocked my face against the banister.”
It didn’t matter that her daughter was thirty-eight. That her youngest was thirty-four. Mary could still imagine a freak disaster around every corner, like she’d been able to do when they were children. The dark, careening panic in her chest was an homage to motherhood past.
“Avery,” Mary said. “You have to be more careful. That’s how... I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“Yeah,” she said, slinging her oversize bag down off of her shoulder and setting it down next to her chair. Then she began to dig through it, producing her quilting squares, and a small bag filled with fabric scraps. “I got all the quilting done that I wanted to, though. And I still managed to make all the protein bars that I said I would make for Hayden’s practice. It’s crazy how much falling like that scares you. You know, when you’re old.”
“You’re not old,” Mary said. “You make it sound like I should worry about fracturing a hip if I bump up against the door frame.”
“I’m just saying. I don’t have time to have a broken arm or anything.”
Lark looked concerned, but had gone back to a beading craft that she’d had sitting on a small end table behind the chairs. Hannah, meanwhile, was looking at Avery with intense focus.
“What?” Avery asked Hannah.
“You fell walking down the stairs?”
A shiver of unease began to grow in Mary’s chest, widening with each passing moment until she found it difficult to breathe.
“Yes.”
“And hit your face on the banister, which would have been on your left-hand side. But bruised your right side.”
Avery’s face took on an air of flat judgment. “Yes, CSI Boston, that’s exactly what happened.”