Confessions from the Quilting Circle

by Maisey Yates

  It took a moment for Mary to get exactly what Hannah was digging at, but once she understood, a strange sense of disquiet rolled over her. She pictured Avery’s stairs, the banister on the left-hand side, the wall on the right, just like Hannah said.

  “Did you do a somersault?” Hannah asked, her words flat and dogged, like a police officer conducting an interrogation.

  “I’m not actually sure. I don’t really remember it.”

  “You don’t?”

  Mary felt frozen, and she could see from the look on Lark’s face her youngest daughter was just as stunned. But Hannah was pushing. Acting. Demanding. While Mary sat tongue-tied, afraid to connect the dots.

  “What is the matter with you?” Avery asked. “Why does my injury demand a full-scale investigation?”

  “Because I think it’s weird,” Hannah said. “I’m sorry. It’s a weird story.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, people get weird injuries.”

  “And lie about them if they’re trying to hide how it happened. Like if they were having sex in a shower or...”

  “Yeah. I was having sex in the shower,” Avery said, her tone dripping with enough scorn to make it impossible to tell if she was agreeing with Hannah or mocking her.

  It was the anger in her tone, though, that seemed off. Hannah, for all she was edges, sarcasm and elusive emotion, was concerned, and her concern was making Avery mad.

  “What happened?” Mary asked, her tone level.

  It wasn’t so much the story that was bothering her at this point, but the way Avery was reacting to being questioned.

  “Nothing. Or I fell. I told you already. I’m not sure why you’re all acting like this.”

  “I’m worried,” Lark said, the words choked.

  “I wasn’t day drinking, for all your soccer mom jokes, Lark,” Avery said, her tone acid. “You don’t need to have an intervention.”

  “That’s not what I was saying,” Lark said. “I’ve never seen you drunk. I would never assume that’s what happened.”

  “So what are you saying?” Avery met Lark’s eyes directly. “Because it seems to me that you’re skirting around something offensive and ridiculous, and I’d rather you just said it.”

  “Did he hit you?” Hannah asked, the words hard and sharp, her eyes glittering with sadness, anger and the intensity of a person ready to march into battle.

  “How dare you?” Avery asked, her words carrying no less intensity, and a dose of venom. “Hannah, you don’t live here. You barely know him. You barely know my kids or even me at this point. You breeze into town when you feel like it and act above everyone else while you sit outside smoking, just like you did when we were kids and you went and played violin instead of talking to anyone because you thought you were so much better than the rest of us.”

  Color had flooded Hannah’s face, but she didn’t break eye contact with Avery. Mary was shaking and she’d never felt like more of a coward. More ineffective.

  She felt like she was drowning, right there in the middle of the shop.

  Because there were things that needed saying and she’d had so many years of not talking about real, serious things with her daughter that now she needed to she couldn’t find the words.

  Avery took a shaking breath and continued. “You don’t know me at all and you think you can accuse my husband of something like that?”

  Mary’s breath suddenly exited her lungs in a gust and she stood. She couldn’t just sit there. Not while her daughter was there, wounded.

  She was shell-shocked, and she was hurt, but it was Avery who needed support.

  She wasn’t a mother to run when things were hard. Not like her own.

  She was here. She would be here. No matter what.

  It didn’t matter if she knew what to do. It didn’t matter if she was perfect, she just had to do something.

  Mary got off of her chair and walked over to where her daughter sat. She sank to her knees and took hold of Avery’s hands, and looked her daughter square in the face. Avery had never been able to lie. She’d been terrible at it. She knew that Avery didn’t know that. That Avery was still convinced Mary had no idea she’d been fooling around with Danny Highmore—now Pastor Daniel Highmore, who Mary could not look in the eye—in the ivy at her grandfather’s house. That she still thought she had gotten away with having a beer at a friend’s house when she was fifteen.

  “Avery,” she said. “I want you to look me in the face and tell me that David didn’t do this to you.”

  “Are you kidding me, Mom?” she asked. “David. David who I’ve been with for seventeen years. Your son-in-law and the father of your grandchildren.”

  She was daring her to push. Daring her to prove her wrong.

  Mary had never pushed, not when Avery was sixteen and not in the years since but she would do it now.

  “Did he?” Mary pressed.

  “Don’t ask me about my marriage,” Avery bit out finally. “It’s mine. And it’s none of your business, not any of you, what happens in it.”

  “Dammit, Avery,” Hannah shouted. “He hit you.”

  “Leave it alone!”

  “Why did you come here if you didn’t want us to know?” Hannah asked. “If you wanted us to leave it alone you should have stayed home sick.”

  Avery looked back and forth, like a hunted animal calculating her next move. And Mary wasn’t sure if she was going to fight or run.

  “I went to school today,” she said. “Had coffee with my friends. No one asked me.”

  “Well your friends suck,” Hannah said, fractured emotion showing through in her tone, even as her words sharpened them into a finely pointed anger.

  “Why do you suddenly get to pass judgment on my whole life?”

  “Since your life looks like this.”

  “It’s my business. My life is perfect! I am married to a doctor and we have a boy and a girl and they get amazing grades and I plan the gala every year!” she shouted, her voice rough and frayed.

  “Who. Cares. About. A small town school gala?” Hannah shouted back. “You act like you’re head cheerleader of town, and it’s so damn weird. Your life isn’t perfect. You’re a battered wife!”

  Avery stood, her breath coming out in a rush. “No, I’m not. I’m Avery Grant. I’m Doctor David Grant’s wife. I’m not...I’m not a battered wife.”

  “What do you call it then?”

  “Nothing you would understand, Hannah. You don’t love anyone but yourself. You barely know my kids, you barely know me. How dare you come in here and start labeling me? Telling me about my life? You think I’m hurting myself in some way? I think living in Boston, sleeping with half the men there and not having any sort of real relationship is self-destructive but you don’t see me in your face.”

  “I didn’t say I was perfect, Avery, I said what’s happening to you is unacceptable.” Hannah’s expression got darker. “Is he hurting the kids?”

  “I would die for my children,” Avery shot back. “And I’d kill anyone who touched them. If he touched the kids I’d be gone. He’s a good father. He is.”

  I’d die for my children.

  Kill anyone who touched them.

  Mary knew that truth. She felt it now.

  “Avery,” Mary started.

  Avery whipped around to her mother. “Don’t start, Mom. I don’t need your opinion on this. I’m not like you were. You didn’t do things you didn’t get or make friends with any of the parents or...or do anything to help me make friends and be involved in school. I don’t just...garden and make halfway homemade meals while my husband works a nine to five. David is a doctor and I have to go to events and I look a certain way and act a certain way. The kids go to an amazing school and we both have to do work to support their position there. I work for what I have, for the life I have. You just put me in
thrift store clothes, not because we couldn’t afford them, but because you didn’t care about what was important to me and you never even tried.”

  Her words were bitter and acid and they hit Mary with unexpected force.

  “Honey,” she tried again.

  “No,” Avery said. “No. You wanted...a family that was together and just...not like yours and you did that. Fine. But I did better. I’m doing better.” She moved closer to Hannah. “You can’t look at one issue in a seventeen year marriage and think you know...think you know the whole relationship. I love him. I gave things up for him. You don’t know anything about that. You had Josh and what did you do? You dumped him. So you could go off and live your life by yourself, but that’s not what loving someone is, Hannah. You give to the people you love and you don’t run when things are hard. You wouldn’t know anything about that. Neither of you would.” She rounded on Lark then. “You’re barely ever here. All you do is run. Good for both of you that you have nice jobs, but who’s here supporting Mom and Dad? Who’s here being a good daughter? A good wife. A good mother. All things to all people instead of a...trash heap of an island unto myself. Don’t tell me how to live my life when you’re both such disasters.”

  She turned, holding her bag tight against her body, then walking out the door. Mary went after her, stumbling out onto the porch.

  “Avery, don’t go home,” she said.

  “I go home to him every night, Mom,” she said. “I’m not...I am not leaving my husband.”

  “Avery, your dad...”

  “Do not get Dad involved,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t. Just stop. I know you need to be involved in my life to feel like yours matters, but this is my life. It’s mine. I want... I don’t want to leave.” The last word broke, and she turned on her heel and stomped down the sidewalk. And Mary watched, as she passed beneath pools of golden light, getting farther and farther away.

  And she’d never felt so helpless.

  She couldn’t fix it. Couldn’t pick her up and kiss her bruise and make it better. And she’d never wished more that she knew what to say. But she hadn’t ever known exactly what to say in all of history and now when she needed to most...

  She didn’t have it.

  Hannah and Lark were by her side, Hannah putting her arm tightly around her shoulder. “She’s being an idiot,” Hannah bit out.

  “She’s scared,” Lark said softly. “And you didn’t help.”

  “I’m not going to be the person who enabled her,” Hannah shot back. “She’s in denial, and someone has to just say it so that she sees it.”

  But what Mary really couldn’t believe was that she hadn’t seen it.

  That her daughter had been quietly falling apart, and Mary hadn’t known.

  And even if she had seen it...

  She wouldn’t have known how to talk to her about it.

  * * *

  All the lights in the house were off. Mary sat on the couch, Joe’s comforting warmth next to her. Like it had been for forty years. And in the middle of all of her sorrow she was grateful. She was grateful for this man. She had thought that she and Avery had a lot in common. But Joe was a good man. Joe had been the best father, always. And an incredible husband. Mary had been so wounded by the abandonment of her mother. Marriage had frightened her. Love had frightened her.

  And Joe had made her feel safe. Always.

  “If the police don’t do right by her they’re going to be looking for his body.”

  Joe’s voice was rough. Emotion like this wasn’t easy for him. He wanted to do things, fix things. He wanted to fight with them, and there was really nothing to be done. Nothing that wouldn’t put Avery in a bad position, because she hadn’t committed to moving out. Nothing that wouldn’t end up with Joe in jail, or potentially harm his relationship with their grandchildren.

  “How did this happen?” Mary asked.

  “I thought she was too young to get married,” Joe said. “I always thought she was too young.”

  “She wasn’t any younger than I was,” Mary said. “I thought it was perfect. I thought David was perfect. I thought... I thought what I did was enough. I was there and I...”

  “You are a good mother,” he said. “It’s not you that made the choice to hurt her. It was him.”

  Joe had always known how to get right to her heart.

  “I know that,” Mary said. “How could I not see it?”

  It sat uncomfortably with her. Reminded her too much of the lack of relationship with her own mother. And how could that be? How? When being there for her girls had been everything to her. She had known that she couldn’t always reach Hannah. And she had felt Lark go from being open and honest with her emotions to starting to hide. But Avery... Mary had been so certain she was happy. Was safe and settled. It was terrible to discover that she was wrong. That the son-in-law they had let into their lives, into their homes, the son-in-law that Joe had shared countless beers with, that Mary had grown to love like a son, had been hurting their daughter.

  “They’re their own people,” Joe said. “The three of them.”

  “I just wish that they were little again. And I could fix everything.” Fix everything in the way that her mother never had. Not for her.

  Except it was clear now that whatever those kisses on their bruises had done, it hadn’t fixed everything.

  And she had no idea what would begin to mend the cracks running through Avery’s life now.

  There was no Band-Aid for this.

  And it was the one thing that Mary had a difficult time sitting with. Knowing that there was something she couldn’t make whole. And she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because there was something missing in her. Something her mother should have taught her but didn’t.

  Or maybe it was missing in her either way. No matter what.

  It was like that sampler all over again. Like waking up and finding out her mother had left and wondering if her mother was wrong...or if she was.

  13

  I have many regrets. But right now my deepest regret is that this family has not learned to share our secrets.

  A letter, unsigned and unsent

  Lark

  That Ben got the parts for her car and wanted her to come in the day after Avery’s whole situation seemed unfair. It was the tail end of the day, and she had managed to hold it together to work at the Craft Café, but she was pretty much just done. She was raw as it was, still processing everything that had happened. She didn’t know if there was a time frame for that. Her sister was being abused by her husband. By Lark’s brother-in-law, who had been part of their lives for so long it just felt...

  Lark wasn’t a stranger to secrets. Her family didn’t know everything about her. And it was by design. But she had no idea that Avery was keeping secrets.

  Avery.

  So sanguine and calm, and always holding the answers. Avery who had seemed perfectly together to Lark for all this time. Who was always measured and matter-of-fact, and who had fought tooth and nail against last night’s revelations. She didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want to leave the man who was harming her.

  But Keira had left Ben.

  And here Lark was tangling those things up in her head as she pulled her car up to Ben’s garage.

  It was stupid.

  She shouldn’t even be worried about him. Not now. Not with everything as it was.

  But she was. Her skin felt like it was on fire.

  The garage door opened, and then he walked out, wiping his hands on a rag. Those tattoos caught her eye again, and she wondered. If he had gotten them before the divorce or after. What they meant.

  He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t even told her that he was divorced.

  But then, her own sister hadn’t told her that she was having problems with her husband. And then hadn’t let them help.
/>   You just stood there. You barely said anything.

  She felt guilty. Insanely guilty about that. Hannah had launched into Avery, giving no quarter and no mercy, and Lark had sort of just...

  She detached. It was what she had years of practice doing. Pulling away. Retreating.

  She looked up at Ben. And then she realized that she needed to do something. Get out of the car. Not just sit there.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  She felt shaky. She looked at his hand now, and saw that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. She had noticed that before, casually, but had dismissed it because he was a mechanic, and it made sense that he might not have a ring on. But now she knew it wasn’t because of his job. It was because he was divorced.

  From his soul mate.

  Great.

  She was not in the kind of emotional space to handle this. It made her feel like young Lark. That girl who didn’t know how to control her emotions. Who had been impulsive and reckless. And not the bohemian queen she had trained herself to be. The woman who let things roll off her back. Who pretended that nothing wounded her too deeply.

  But she was wounded. She was wounded from last night, and she still had no idea what to do with the whole Keira thing.

  Not to mention finding out he had a daughter in the first place.

  “It won’t take me very long.”

  “I hope that your daughter isn’t sitting at home by herself.”

  He paused. “She’s fine.”

  “I met her the other day.”

  “Well, I figured you might. Since she’s been going to the café.”

  “Yeah, you just didn’t mention that when we talked the other night. You didn’t mention that you’re divorced either.”

  His hands stilled, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “It didn’t come up.”

  “I asked you to say hi to Keira. You said you would.”

  “And I will. If she gets in touch. She probably won’t.” His voice was hard. Bitter. It bore no resemblance to the Ben that she used to know. She could remember that night he and Keira had broken up clearly. Not just because of what had happened after, but because of how sad he’d been. Not bitter. Just broken.