Confessions from the Quilting Circle

by Maisey Yates

  But he was bitter now.

  “It just seems like something you might have mentioned.”

  “I haven’t talked to you in sixteen years. I’m not sure why I would mention the state of my marriage to you. You came to me to have me fix your car.”

  “We were friends, Ben.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We were. But we haven’t been. Not for a long time.”

  “Did we... Stop being friends?”

  “Don’t give me that. Don’t play games. You never spoke to me again after that. Never. You left town. You didn’t come to the wedding...”

  “You expected me to come to your wedding?”

  “Why not? We had sex, Lark, and you didn’t call.”

  “Wow. I didn’t call.”

  “I did,” he said.

  “You got back together with her. So. I don’t know what you expected me to say. Ever.”

  “I tried to talk to you first. You avoided me.”

  “I needed some time to think. You didn’t give me any time. That’s... It’s ancient history. It doesn’t matter. That’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to have you fix my car. I am not here to talk to you about the one time we had sex. I’m sure that we’ve both had sex many times since then, and there’s absolutely no reason to have a postmortem about one encounter.”

  “Except you’re still mad.”

  “Yeah. I’m mad. Do you know why I’m mad?” And she could feel her grip on her temper loosening. She could feel herself moving toward a place she hadn’t been in a very long time. Actually, since the last time she was with him. The last time she had been that stupid. The last time she had thrown caution to the wind. And she had learned. She had. All the years since then she had been so... Different. But he took her right back. “You were meant to be. You and her. I loved you both. So much. But I... Then I wanted you. And when she broke up with you I couldn’t... I couldn’t not have you. There’s a reason that I waited. There’s a reason that I gave you my virginity as quickly as I did.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “That’s not important. Let’s not get hung up on that. But I just... I felt so awful after. I felt so guilty. And I saw Keira and she was so... She was so broken up about you, and I couldn’t tell her what I’d done. And it was just that... She wanted to be with you. She did. She was scared of being married, scared of committing so young.”

  “Are you telling me that you told her to get back together with me?”

  “No. I’m not that... I’m not that nice. But I did listen to her while she talked herself into it. And I knew that she was going to tell you she wanted to be together. I couldn’t get in the middle of that. I had tried for a very long time not to be in the middle of the two of you. You just seemed inevitable. And I just never wanted to be in the way of inevitable. But I guess...”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She left me. So, if you’re going to get angry at me, you can’t possibly say anything that I haven’t said to myself.” He sighed heavily. “I thought we were fine. Maybe I was a bad husband, I don’t know. But Taylor is a damn good kid, and she deserves better.”

  Lark let out a slow breath, forcing herself to expand her scope. Here she was, yelling at Ben about the frustrations she felt about his marriage. Maybe she needed a little perspective. And the mention of his daughter did it. “Do you really think you’re a bad husband?”

  He laughed, and it sounded bitter. “No. I was a good husband, actually. I don’t know what happened to her. It’s like... Like she became a completely different person than the one that I knew for more than twenty years. So there. That’s what happened. I don’t have any deep insight for you, and I don’t have anything to say about whether or not we were meant to be, then quit being meant to be, or anything at all, really.”

  “Have you considered therapy?” She tried to ask that in a measured tone, tried to find her way back to that emotionally even space she worked hard to exist in. The look he gave her would have been funny if the situation weren’t so decidedly unamusing.

  “No. I considered continuing to work to support my kid. And just... Dealing with it in the best way I can.” He let out a slow breath and leaned back, gripping the edge of the workbench, the muscles in his arms flexing. And she couldn’t help but notice. “Sometimes I think I didn’t have a thought in my head until I was maybe... Twenty-five years old. And everything before that was just acting and reacting. I was with Keira so I thought that I should be. And I was sure that I was in love, because we slept with each other and had been together since we were fifteen. I thought that I should marry her because of all of that. It seemed like the right thing to do. And then there was you, and the way you were with me when I was heartbroken. And that confused me. Then you were gone, and she wanted me back. And I just reacted.” He shook his head. “People show you who they are, and you ought to pay attention. She left me once, and I think she probably should’ve gone with her gut and stayed gone. But I think like me she was scared. Scared not to take the next step because it was our plan. Because it was what everybody thought we were going to do. And I just... I just thought it was right. I thought it was right because we had done it. We got married. We had Taylor.”

  The speech left her bruised, but it was honest. She could tell that it was honest. And fair, because he was right. About the way expectations from other people made choices for you before you were old enough to figure out what you wanted, and what the whole world was. Who you were in it.

  “Were you happy?”

  He looked up, the lines around his eyes suddenly seeming deeper. “I had everything I thought I should have. I owned my own business, bought a house, a really nice house. I enjoy my job, Lark, even if it’s not a fancy job. I like fixing things. I like working with my hands. And the whole time I didn’t notice my relationship was broken. But when you live with somebody for that long you can forget to talk to each other. And we just didn’t. I mean, we talked. About the day, about how Taylor was doing at school, and Taylor’s friends, and when we would let her get her driver’s license, and if she could get her nose pierced. But we didn’t really talk. And there was a point where I thought we had everything, and she didn’t. I wish like hell that she would’ve just talked to me, but I can’t really blame it all on her.”

  Lark held her breath. “But were you happy?”

  He looked up at her, those familiar eyes burning into hers. “I don’t remember what happy feels like.”

  There was something about that statement, simple and flat that landed hard inside of her. She leaned against her car, with him still leaning against the workbench, a couple feet of empty concrete between them. And a whole lot of years. But he had been her best friend once, and she had been his. And mostly, she just... She felt the same way sometimes. She wanted to tell him about Avery. There were a lot of things that she wanted to tell him. But as they looked at each other, the air between them seemed to shift, and her breath caught.

  And this had nothing to do with emotions. With bad feelings or what had happened with Avery. With the fight they just had, or with what had happened all those years ago.

  It was just still this.

  It was just still there.

  “When will you have the car done?”

  “Tomorrow sometime. Do you need a ride back home?”

  She shook her head. “The walk will be good.”

  He took a step toward her, and she took a step back. “Okay,” he said.

  “Bye.”

  She walked out the door quickly, shoving her hands in her pockets and moving down the street, away from him. Away from... All of that.

  There was too much going on in her life to indulge in any kind of attraction to him. It was too much of a minefield.

  Ben Thompson had only ever been a path to heartbreak. And she was here to heal.

  And now, Avery needed her. It wasn’t the time to be focused o
n herself.

  Too bad her heart was still beating twice as fast as it needed to be. Making a mockery of all of her common sense.

  He always has.

  At least she hadn’t kissed him.

  But oh, how she’d wanted to.

  14

  I lived in the same city all my life. Even moving from my parents’ home to my husband’s was not so different. Here, everything is different. But I am learning to find the familiar in each new place we stop. The grass, the flowers, and John. The sun and his friendship make me feel like less of a stranger in this world.

  Anabeth Snow’s diary, 1864

  Avery

  Avery was up and out early with the kids, on the promise of breakfast at the diner near the school.

  “This is weird.” Hayden didn’t look up from his coffee. He drank coffee, because he felt like it was grown-up, but Avery knew that he would still rather have a hot chocolate. But she never argued with him when he ordered it.

  She ached for both of her kids. And that was her focus right now. Not thinking about what she was doing. Not thinking about herself. Or about what had happened last night with her family. But about them.

  Yes, things weren’t ideal right now between herself and David.

  Her stomach went sour.

  She replayed the reel of not right that had been happening for years now.

  Being pushed against the wall.

  Shoved backward.

  Her head cracking against the side table by the door, sending it hard into the drywall and leaving a gouge in the wall.

  Last night it had felt like the world had unraveled. They knew.

  They knew.

  She had no idea how she’d made it through the night and she’d thanked God that David was out late, because if she’d had to talk to him she didn’t know what she’d do.

  She’d sat in the bottom of the shower, letting the hot water pound on her skin, letting steam fill her nose and lungs.

  And she’d convinced herself that nothing had to change.

  That they could gloss this over.

  She’d carefully taken the whole evening and begun to cut pieces from it like she was dividing up a scrap of fabric for a quilt.

  She could rearrange it then. Leave parts out.

  It’s what she’d been doing for years, she could keep on doing it. When a few years of happily married turned to a strange, passive-aggressive meanness that started eroding Avery’s confidence. When that had shifted to naked insults and two years ago finally...

  Violence.

  It had been a slow shift to get there, but it could change. It could. Anyway it wasn’t always bad.

  Her parents wouldn’t blame her if she stayed, not if they understood.

  David was their son-in-law and had been for so long they’d...if Avery was happy they would have to let it go.

  If Avery was happy.

  “Aren’t you eating, Mom?” Peyton asked.

  Avery had only gotten coffee. She couldn’t stomach anything solid. She shook her head. “No. It’s too early for me.”

  Peyton started in on the pancakes in front of her, Hayden picked at the bacon on his plate.

  If she left David, the kids wouldn’t have their life anymore. If anyone knew that he’d lost his temper with her a few times...

  He could lose his job.

  And then where would the money come from?

  How could they afford the house?

  The kids’ school?

  She was doing this for the kids.

  “You have a bruise on your face, Mom,” Hayden said. Shockingly angry teenage eyes connected with hers. “I know he’s mean to you.”

  “I...”

  “He’s not that good at hiding it. He thinks he is, because he thinks he’s smarter than everybody else.”

  Peyton didn’t say anything. She just sat there, staring straight ahead.

  “Hayden,” Avery said slowly, “it’s complicated.”

  “It’s not complicated. He’s a dick,” Hayden said, his voice shifting from boy to man in that sentence. “He always has been. He doesn’t care about anybody but himself.”

  “That’s not true,” Peyton said, a tear sliding down her cheek. “Don’t say that about Dad.”

  “Yeah well he likes you, Peyton, because you get straight A’s and you don’t talk back to him, and you’ll probably go to medical school. But he doesn’t care what I do, and he doesn’t care about Mom either.”

  “He has a hard job!” Peyton exploded. “He has a lot of stress. If you weren’t such an asshole to him all the time, Hayden, he’d like you better.”

  Avery felt like she’d been stabbed in the chest. Hearing her daughter issue the same sorts of excuses for David’s behavior that Avery herself had repeated over and over again. For every slight. Every hurt.

  How had she not noticed that they were part of this? Peyton’s excusing him. Hayden’s anger. She’d told herself that because they’d never seen any of his violent outbursts they were protected.

  But they weren’t.

  “He’s hit me before,” Hayden said.

  Avery’s stomach lurched. “He what?”

  There weren’t words. Just a deep groaning in her heart, her soul. She nearly doubled over with it.

  He’d hit Hayden.

  You weren’t protecting them.

  You were protecting you.

  Your perfection.

  Your life.

  “Not like he hit you. But he slapped me once. When I got mad at him for not coming to my soccer game.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

  “For the same reason you didn’t tell me.”

  That stabbed her. Right through her heart.

  He’d been protecting her.

  He’d been protecting her. Her son. Her little boy. And he was a boy. Not a man, like David, who should be held responsible for his actions and should not have the people he’d hurt bending over backward to keep him safe.

  Peyton was weeping silently, there in a diner booth. Hayden was looking angry and defiant and she was...

  Defeated.

  Soul deep.

  She’d failed her kids.

  Her family.

  Her husband, the man she’d married was gone. And it was like mourning a death. The man he’d been. The man she thought he was.

  Maybe he’d never been the man she’d thought.

  She didn’t know.

  And then there was her.

  The woman she’d thought she was.

  She hadn’t seen herself as a battered wife. She’d seen herself as a warrior. Fighting to hold her home and family together.

  She was proactive. A fixer. A doer.

  Who’d convinced herself that taking a punch somehow went along with planning the carpool for soccer practice.

  She hadn’t been doing or fixing anything. She’d been desperately bailing water out of a ship with a hole blown through it, fighting a losing battle and refusing to see it.

  “I’m your mom, Hayden, it’s my job to protect you.”

  “I had to protect you. Because nobody else was. And I didn’t know yet that he’d actually... Done more than just yell at you like he does. And when I realized... I want to kill him,” Hayden said.

  The sorrow that broke apart in Avery was debilitating. Because she hadn’t known. She hadn’t realized how much of the toxicity had already gotten onto Hayden. She hadn’t understood that it was already seeping into other parts of her life. She had been convinced that it was only her. That she was standing there, taking it and protecting her children.

  But they weren’t protected.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said, because she really didn’t. Because this all felt awful.

  “Are you going to
go to the police?” Peyton asked. “Are all my... All my friends going to know?”

  “Who cares about your stupid friends?” Hayden asked.

  “I do,” Peyton said.

  Avery’s heart squeezed tight. Because she cared too. She cared about her own friends, the way that this would affect their normal. And she shouldn’t.

  It hurt to remember that moment in The Miner’s House when she’d realized they knew. And not...not just suspected, knew. When she’d realized she was standing there burning alive and claiming she didn’t smell smoke.

  If it wasn’t perfect, it was nothing.

  She was nothing.

  “Let’s skip school today,” she said, her voice rough. “I’m going to take you both to Grandma and Grandpa’s and then...we’ll figure it out.”

  They finished breakfast and then went to the grocery store where she filled her cart with food she didn’t feel like eating. Cereal she never usually let the kids have. Chips. A lot of chips. And then they loaded it all up and drove to her parents’ house.

  She couldn’t say how she got up the walk, or when her dad came out. He carried all the bags, she knew that. Her mom hugged her and sat her on the couch and her dad stood in the living room with his hands curled into fists then finally crossed the space and hugged her.

  Her head was a fuzzy blur.

  “I should pack some things,” she said.

  But her dad wouldn’t hear of her going back to the house, even though David was at work, so he went and collected everything she asked him to.

  “What do you need, honey?” her mom asked, squeezing her hand when she stood there a few hours later, looking at her belongings, shoved into bags and boxes.

  “A sedative?” She tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Mom. For what I said last night I...”

  Her mom squeezing her, touching her...it made her want to break apart. She never showed affection with physical touch so Avery must really look like a mess.

  “No need.”

  Except she felt like there was. Like they needed to talk which...she didn’t even know how to do that with Mary. But she was tired, and grateful for the out.