by Maisey Yates
“The kids can sleep here,” her mom said. “And we can get the air mattress out if you want. Hayden can have it and you can have the bed in your old room.”
She nodded. “Thanks. I...”
“You should go stay at The Dowell House,” her mom said. “You know we’ll take care of the kids. And Lark and Hannah can help with...whatever you need.”
“The kids might need me.”
“You need to sleep. And worry about yourself for a little bit.”
“I might go over there for a while.”
“Go,” her mom said. “We’ve got this.”
Avery found herself back on the road, and then somehow inside The Dowell House, not wholly conscious of how she got there.
She just needed to sit. She was relieved that Lark and Hannah weren’t here. Glad for a chance to sit by herself for a while. To let the reality of the last few hours wash over her. Without omitting anything. Without rearranging or cutting or making a new story.
And as she sat, she looked out the window, at the new view.
And she thought of her quilt square. Something strange echoed inside of her then, something deep and resonant that she couldn’t put words to. Like a melody without lyrics.
It was familiar, and warm. It made her think of something, the edge of a memory that she couldn’t quite grasp onto.
She felt broken. She felt battered, but she remembered thinking about that woman, who had brought her curtains with her, who had left home and had brought her possessions with her. Who had made an entirely new life in a strange, foreign land.
And she was suddenly desperate to know more.
She got up from the chair, and walked up the stairs, heading up to the attic. There was an eclectic pile of boxes, but there was one that caught her eye in particular. It didn’t have fabric in it, but an assortment of things. And she just wondered. Because there had to be information somewhere, more information about the fabric. About the people who’d owned it. Because why would there be any information at all, if the rest of it wasn’t...
And maybe it was just her desire to be distracted for now. Maybe it was just a desperate attempt at making herself feel better. But she wanted to believe that there was something up there. Something in here that might give her more answers than she already had.
The boxes mostly contained junk. Weird junk, too. She went through one that had mostly candlesticks, but also Pez dispensers. And then another one that had old candy jars. But then finally she stumbled on one that had some silver in it that looked old. What era were the curtains from? It was 1864. During the Oregon Trail. The rush of it, if she remembered correctly, and anyone who had been through elementary school in Oregon knew their Oregon Trail history.
So maybe this was her bin. Or, just a collection of things from that time.
There, in the bottom of the box, was a small leather book. A Bible, maybe. Though, family Bibles were usually massive. Small Bibles like this she more associated with preachers who had to travel around the countryside.
But when she opened it up, she saw that it wasn’t a Bible. Rather the words inside were handwritten. The first entry was from 1863. And was signed Anabeth Snow.
“Anabeth,” she said, touching the book.
Maybe it was hers. Maybe not. But she would read it, and she would find out.
Lord knew she didn’t have much else to do.
Because when word got out of her new situation, everything was going to fall apart.
Everything was going to fall apart.
There was nothing she could do about that. It was the baseline truth of the place she found herself in.
She wouldn’t be a doctor’s wife anymore.
That made her feel like she was drifting off in space, wholly untethered from the woman she’d fashioned herself into for the last seventeen years.
Disconnected.
Afraid.
Then she saw herself, a little girl snapping peas on her grandmother’s porch. Dreaming of the life she could have.
Maybe it’s time to make a new place.
Maybe it’s time to make a new view.
Just then the front door opened and Lark came in holding a white canvas bag. Hannah followed in after her and the three of them just looked at each other in silence for a moment.
“We were grocery shopping,” Lark said, holding the bag up.
Hannah looked away.
Avery realized she should explain why she was here, but the words stuck in her throat.
“I got green beans,” Lark said. “Why don’t we go sit on the back porch and snap some.”
Pressure built behind Avery’s eyes and she could only manage to nod. And that was how she ended up sitting down on the worn wood in the back of The Dowell House doing something old and familiar while she faced a future that was terrifying in its uncertainty.
And she was thankful for a moment that didn’t need words.
Eventually she’d explain.
But for now, they just sat and enjoyed the moment.
15
Sam says we can come to set, and that we’ll have parts in the background of an actual film! He bought us new dresses and they glitter like the lights outside the Vista Theater. Mine is all midnight blue with silver sequins, like the stars at night. This is every bit as magical as I dreamed.
Ava Moore’s diary, 1923
Hannah
Hannah was vile, and had nowhere to channel it. She had been a little bit of a bitch to her sister last a couple nights ago, but she was... She was just so angry. About everything, really.
She was glad that Avery had moved out, glad that she was here, and that the kids had joined her after a couple of nights at Mom and Dad’s.
Hannah and Lark had spent the last two nights mostly not talking about things and pouring wine, letting Avery sit there pale and shell-shocked. They hadn’t really talked about anything. About next steps or what all of this meant.
About the fact Hannah wanted to kill David with a spoon.
She bit off her rage as she put her violin away and picked up her quilting square. Then she carried it downstairs into the kitchen, just as Lark walked through the front door. Her sister was carrying bags of what looked like fake flowers, and several balls of yarn.
“What exactly are you doing?”
“Thinking on some things,” Lark said.
“Are you going to start your square?”
“I need time. I haven’t found the right fabric.”
“You really are ridiculous,” Hannah said.
Hey, she had been the worst that she could possibly have been with Avery last night, she might as well take Lark’s head off too.
“Excuse me?”
“You just expect that everything is going to fall into place for you, don’t you?”
“No I don’t,” Lark said. “This is a quilt, not... I don’t know. Something with a deadline.”
“You don’t even know what it could be.”
“Fine. Illustrations for a book. I’m not doing that anymore. I’m not doing it right now. I’m leaving myself open to creativity. So quit trying to put me in a box.”
“You wrangled all of us into it and now you’re not doing it. That’s just very typical of you.”
“And are you mad that you’re doing it? Or are you enjoying it? Because it seems to me that you’ve made more progress than anyone else.”
“Oh... Bite me,” Hannah said. She stopped into the kitchen and sat down at the table.
“Did you just say bite me? What is it, 1996?”
“You don’t remember 1996.”
“I absolutely do. I have a deep and abiding love of crop tops to prove it.”
That was the problem with Lark. She was irritating, but it was often impossible to be mean to her because she was... She was pleasant even when she w
as a frustration.
Lark sat opposite her and pulled out one of the balls of yarn, and a pair of knitting needles.
“It’s summer, so you figured you would... Knit something?”
“Well, I’m going to do an introduction to knitting course at the café. And I needed to make some samples.”
She really couldn’t be mad about that, because it was work. So she had to put her bad attitude away. She didn’t want to do it at all. She wanted to let it fly.
“Have you talked to Avery today?” Lark asked.
“She’s here, and the kids are here. But I haven’t really seen much of them. They’ve been straightening up their bedrooms and getting things organized. I got the feeling that they’re not very social.”
“Have we heard anything from David?”
“Are you expecting him to come pound the door down?”
“I don’t know what to expect,” Lark said. “I didn’t think he would ever hurt Avery, but he did, so I guess we can’t exactly rule out him coming here and trying to get to her, can we?”
“Guess not. She needs to go to the police.”
“You can understand why she hasn’t.”
Maybe she could. But she was being stubborn about it. Not on purpose, really. It was just that... Life wasn’t easy. Not for anyone. And sometimes you had to make hard choices.
“Gossiping about me?”
Hannah turned and looked behind them, and saw Avery standing on the staircase.
“Not intentionally,” Lark said.
“How are the kids?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know,” Avery said. “Weird. I think Hayden is protective and angry with his father. And Peyton is sort of angry with me, but shocked also. And I can’t really blame either of them for their reactions.”
Avery sat down on the couch next to Hannah, a decent amount of space between them. She propped her feet up on the coffee table in front of them, and sank into the white cushions. She closed her eyes, her blond, wavy hair fanning out behind her. “I just keep thinking... This is not what I wanted for them. This isn’t what Mom and Dad did for us. They worked so hard on their marriage. And they gave us... Mom did so much to make sure that we grew up in the kind of household she didn’t get. One with both of her parents together.”
“Your house wasn’t the same,” Hannah said, frustrated that Avery was taking so much blame.
“I know that,” Avery said, sitting up suddenly, her hands clenched into fists. “I do know that. I really do. And it... It kills me. It kills me that I’m going in circles like this. But it’s just not that simple, Hannah. And I know that you think it should be. Because you’re strong in this one really particular way, and you go for the things that you want, but you do it by yourself. And there are less gray areas when it’s just you.”
“I’m not by myself. I have friends.”
“No. Everything you do, you do it... Come on, you were never that close to anyone when we were growing up. I mean, not to us. Not to Mom and Dad.”
Hannah itched, the microscope now on her, making her want to crawl out of her skin.
“Why are we talking about me?”
“Because you think you just... Know what you would do. If you were me. But you don’t. You’re a different person than me.”
“I’m well aware.”
“I don’t think you are. And you know what, it’s not even that we’re different people. It’s just that you don’t know what it’s like to have your life wound around somebody else’s like this.”
Lark was silent.
“What do you think?” Avery asked Lark.
“I don’t know either,” Lark said. “I don’t have anyone.”
“Well, what would you do?”
“I don’t know,” Lark said, looking flustered. “I don’t. I would... I don’t know. Maybe pretend it wasn’t happening for a while.” Lark’s blue eyes filled with tears. “I’m just really sorry, Avery.”
Hannah thought maybe there was something broken inside of her, because she didn’t want to cry. She wanted to break things. Preferably her brother-in-law. And she didn’t know why it was so difficult for her to offer sympathy. Why it was so difficult to be like Lark and sit there and tear up and look sorry, and just say that she didn’t know what she would do.
The idea that you might not know what to do is way too scary.
“Why did you keep it a secret?” Lark asked. “I know you were scared, I know... I just wish you’d told us.”
“You don’t know,” Avery said, choked. “It’s not just not knowing what to do, or loving him still. I’m so... I’m so embarrassed. I didn’t ask to be this woman. I didn’t ask to be her.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Hannah said.
“You know, everybody says... They all say that they would leave him if he hit them. If he cheated. And I used to think the same thing. That if my husband ever did anything like that to me there’s no way I would stay,” Avery’s voice was low, shaky but strong at the same time. “But that was before. Before I’d been with him for so long I couldn’t remember what life was like without him. Before I was... Comfortable, and dependent in so many ways on the way that we structured our lives. Hannah, the violin is your dream. David was mine. You tell me that you could walk away from a dream that easily even if it hurt?”
Her words were sharp, and they stabbed into Hannah’s chest.
They tangled around inside her with all kinds of words she’d called herself. All kinds of fears about dreams and what she might or might not be.
And what it looked like when everything unraveled...
That was what Avery looked like.
Hannah’s worst fear.
Avery leaned forward, clasping her hands in her lap and letting out a slow breath. “He’s so smart,” she said. “And handsome. And he’s funny sometimes. And when he smiles at me I feel like someone turned a light on inside me. And those are the reasons I fell in love with him. Those feelings, those reasons, they didn’t go away the first time he hit me. And since he did I’ve spent the last two years telling myself that he was still the man I loved. Not the man he was when he got angry, when he berated and belittled me... That it wasn’t him. Not my husband. It was someone else who... Made him do those things. He became someone else when he did it. And when he didn’t, he was completely that man I fell in love with in the beginning. But it is him. It’s as much a part of him as his blue eyes and his humor and that smile. Now I think I’m finally not so in love anymore. Or at the very least I realize I can’t keep on loving him like I have.”
A tear fell down her cheek. “I really did it. I left. And now I have to... I have to make more choices.”
“We should go to the police,” Hannah said, her chest feeling sore. “I just think it’s probably the safest thing for you to do.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s going to mean for me.” She crossed her arms, closing her eyes, another tear sliding down her cheek. “Seriously. I think he’s going to lose his medical license.”
“Yeah, and maybe you’re not going to have a lot of money,” Hannah said. “But you’ll be safe.”
“The kids go to private school.”
“And they can go to public school.”
Avery doubled over, and Hannah had never seen anything quite so scary as her most confident sister...undone.
“This is what I was afraid of,” she said, straightening, her fists pushed hard against her eyes. “You guys know and now I have to...oh I have to go to the police. He hit my son.”
“What?” Lark asked.
“Hayden told me that David slapped him.” She wiped her arm under her eyes, sniffing loudly. “I can’t let it go. I can’t hide it. I have to do this. I just... I want to go back and hit Pause. I just want to go back to a week ago. Two years ago. I want to go back to before, and I can’t.” Sh
e breathed out, slow and strong. “It’s today. And I wish it weren’t. I want to be in the future or in the past, but I don’t want to be here.”
“We are here for you,” Lark said, leaning forward and putting her hand on Avery.
“Yes,” Hannah said. “Lark can be... Soft and sympathetic, and I can get angry for you, when you can’t. Also, admin.”
Avery opened her eyes, and surprisingly, laughed. “Well, those are your individual strengths.”
“Let’s go to the police station,” Lark said, squeezing Avery’s hand. “We’re here for you. Mom and Dad can come over here so Peyton and Hayden don’t have to shuffle back over there.”
“They don’t need to be watched,” Avery said, but Hannah knew that her sister wouldn’t want the kids to be alone right now.
“Great,” Hannah said. “I’ll call Mom and Dad. Get your coat.”
Hannah suddenly had the vivid memory of Avery babysitting her and Lark on their parents’ date nights. How she’d been cool and calm and mediated all fights. How she’d cooked for them and scolded Hannah for going out in the dark and cold to play violin without properly bundling up.
Hannah had found it annoying then. But she could see now it came from a place of love. Of caring.
And Avery needed Hannah to take care of her now.
“Okay.”
“Are you ready?” Hannah asked.
Avery’s eyes met hers. “No.”
“That’s okay.”
“We have to do it anyway.”
“Yeah,” Hannah said. “Sometimes that’s how it is.”
16
His wife and little girl died of fever. He told me after he took me for a ride to a field where he said we’d find bluebonnets. He gave one to me and told me his story. Right now bluebonnets feel like home.
Anabeth Snow’s diary, 1864
Avery
The last time she was in the police station in Bear Creek, she had been there to help her daughter sell Girl Scout cookies.