by Maisey Yates
The weight of tonight was heavy. So heavy.
She couldn’t sleep. So she pulled out Anabeth’s diary, and sat at the foot of her bed, looking around the room. At the beautiful, textured wallpaper and the intricate wainscoting. And she sat there, holding the book in her hand, feeling the history pressing in all around her.
The generations that had lived here before her.
The lives that were here now.
They all carried so much pain around with them.
Her grandmother, with her bright red hair, and easy smile, had clearly spent years consumed with grief.
And so had her sister. Her sister, who had run in much the same way Gram had.
And she hadn’t blamed Hannah for not making an announcement about what had happened between her and her violin teacher. There would be a time and a place to talk about it, but she knew that Hannah needed to sort through it in herself first.
Her kids would carry pain too. From their childhood. From their father. And no doubt from her, because they each carried a piece of baggage from their own wonderful, loving mother.
It was a frustrating and dark revelation, coming on the heels of all of the good that had happened earlier today.
But maybe that was just it. Everything didn’t need to be perfect for hope to exist. There could still be light even when there was a little darkness.
And they were all just doing the best they could.
She opened up the diary, and started to read. She made it to their marriage, and her breath caught when she saw Anabeth’s new name. And when she finished the last entry, tears were streaming down her face.
The house is finished and it is beautiful. I told him we didn’t need anything so grand, but he insisted on making me feel at home. I told him my home is anywhere he is. I have learned the heart can heal in such miraculous ways. I have a new home now, Oregon. I have a new husband, and he has my heart. This house is a new view, but with John’s blessing I kept the parlor curtains. The view is new, and pieces of the life I had are part of how I see that view. For we are both what our past lives made us, and we are living this new one together. What a wonderful thing, to realize there can be new life after sorrow. To know you can build a new home, always.
Anabeth Dowell’s diary,
in The Dowell House in Bear Creek, Oregon, 1866
“Because of course. Of course you are, Anabeth,” she said, touching the pages.
Anabeth Dowell.
Who had left home, started over, endured loss, and been brave enough to find love.
Who had made a new view.
A new view.
I hung the parlor curtains in our window. And the view is beautiful.
They had hung here. In this house. And they had belonged to her great-great-grandmother. And so did her spirit. It belonged to all of them. To her, to Lark and Hannah, their mother.
To Gram.
It was why they still stood; it was why they forged on. It was why they still hoped.
Because this strong, brave woman, who had endured the loss of the man she loved and left everything she’d ever known, shared her blood with them.
Her story was part of them.
Her story. The curtains.
The quilt.
The wedding dress was Gram’s.
It was their story. The story of their family. Coming together.
She thought of the man who’d come into the store, and the thrill of sharing a moment with him. It wasn’t about him. It was about the possibility.
It wasn’t just one new view, it was many. Not about finding perfect, or neat or certain. But embracing this wide-open path, as broad and big as the prairie.
The grass is like the sea...
And she could follow it in any direction she chose.
She stood from the bed and went and looked out the window, at the night sky, scattered with stars.
She couldn’t see the future. And she couldn’t take away the bad. But she could move forward. And make all the good that she could.
And she would. She would.
35
There’s an honesty to being sixteen. You think about your feelings. You let yourself and everyone around you know exactly what they are. But then you start wanting to look a certain way. Have a certain life. You can lose yourself somewhere in the middle of it. I lost myself. I let myself believe that joy was a house, a position in the community, the envy of others, rather than a glow in my heart. I would rather have myself and my joy.
Avery Grant’s diary, to be given to her children, June 2021
Mary
It hadn’t taken long to track her down. Linda Meriwether-Johnstone. Mary’s half sister. They talked on the phone in the afternoon, and then later that day, had met in the coffee house. There was a lot of grief and hurt to untangle, but as far as the sisters went, there was nothing but a desire to build a bridge across a chasm made deep by generations of grief and separation.
They had talked about how Linda’s parents had always told her that George was her uncle. She knew his story, but had never realized he was her real father.
They had talked.
She had invited her to the quilting circle.
And now Mary was back home in her house, the place where she had raised her children. Where she had made her own life, one as separate from the grief of her childhood as possible. But of course, she had always carried it with her. Going through her mother’s diary was a study in reopening wounds. And then allowing them to heal in a way they never had before.
The last entry in the diary had been an extremely bitter pill. Because it had been about her mother’s life right before she decided to leave.
It was not about a sampler, about Mary’s inability to make beautiful things the way that Addie had done. Not about her being a frustrating child.
Not about her inability to needlepoint, or learn quickly enough.
It was not about Mary at all.
And of the many great things she had imagined that had driven her mother away, that it could possibly have been demons entirely contained within her, had never occurred to Mary.
She had read about women with postpartum depression, and that was what it sounded like. Well, depression. Maybe. This endless certainty that everyone was better off without her. That she was failing.
And the truth was, had her mother said any of that to her face, Mary wouldn’t have believed her. She would’ve thought she was deflecting, being dishonest. Trying to make herself sound like a victim.
But she couldn’t look at her mother’s full story and not... Believe.
* * *
I feel like a ghost. I walk through the rooms in the house and don’t touch anything or anyone. I can’t feel anyone touching me.
He’s a good man, but I can’t love him.
Not the way I loved George.
I look at my children and see how I failed her, and I know I’m failing them too.
How terrible for them, to have a mother like this. It would be better if I weren’t here. He could find a better wife.
They could have a better mother.
* * *
How well Mary knew the fear of falling short.
Because her mother’s wordless abandonment had transferred those feelings to her. And maybe sharing, maybe being honest would have changed things.
What if she’d said those things out loud, instead of just to her diary? What then?
What if she were brave?
Mary had thought that being steady and measured, that hiding her emotions, was being brave. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t hiding them in a journal and running away either. She wasn’t so different from her mother than she’d thought, though.
She had never bared her heart. She’d let her anger simmer over sometimes, but she hadn’t told her girls why certain things hurt, and in retur
n they hadn’t been able to speak to her about their own pain.
In many ways, she had abandoned them.
It was such a difficult thing to realize that much of what she had lived for was in vain.
But not the love of her girls, never that.
She hadn’t been perfect.
She had made mistakes. She had stayed though. She had been there the best she knew how.
And her life wasn’t over.
She didn’t need to leave her husband to try and satisfy the ache in her. No, of course she didn’t. She had this life, this wonderful life. And she was just more free to live it now.
It was like an incredible burden had been rolled away from her shoulders, and she could... She could breathe.
She stood up, and set her mom’s diary down on the couch. She stroked the blue cover.
“I love you, Mom. And I forgive you.”
Blinking back tears she walked out of the house, down the little path that led to Joe’s shop.
Her husband of forty years was bent over his workbench, measuring something. A signpost, perhaps. It didn’t really matter. She crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his broad back, resting her head between his shoulder blades. “I love you,” she said. “Our time together has been a gift.”
He straightened, turning around to look at her. “Are you leaving me?”
“No. Just making sure you know how... How happy I’ve been. And how thankful I am that you gave me the family that I always dreamed of. Joe, we’ve had a wonderful life. Not perfect. Better than perfect. Real. I’m sorry if there were times when my fear held me back.”
“Did things go well with your half sister?”
She nodded. “Yes. But... More importantly I just... I got some answers. To these questions that have hounded me all this time. It’s late but... But at least I did. I look at you, photography and camping and making furniture. You’re not slowing down. And I... I want to do all of these things with you. I want to do new things. I... I’m not scared of them now.”
“Even if you can’t do them perfectly right away?”
“Especially then.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “I’m glad to hear that. What do you think of doing that big Colorado hike. Staying in cabins on the trail.”
“Yes,” she said. “You can bring your camera. Maybe I’ll... Maybe I’ll bring some quilting. Or a good book.”
“Bring whatever you want. So long as you bring you.”
Hannah
Hannah looked at her violin, and she didn’t want to play. She was the only one who hadn’t participated in the family confessional. But she just didn’t... She didn’t see the point.
She was still sorting through everything that she and Avery had talked about. Sorting through her own complicated feelings about what had happened to her. About how it changed the way she saw herself.
She had punished herself. And punished herself and punished herself for years.
Like she was on a mission to make sure that she could never really come back home.
As if she was afraid that if she did she would never want to go back to Boston. Like she was protecting herself from going back to Josh, and she had to ask herself why.
For the first time she wondered... If her future was actually here. And not in Boston. And the girl that she’d been for so many years rebelled against that. She lay down on the bed, and looked at Ava’s diary. She pulled it closer to herself, and looked at it. Then she opened back to where she’d been, and started to read.
And of course, it wasn’t a happy story.
Were any of them? Her grandmother had lost everything, and then this poor woman... With all these hopes and dreams. It felt way too close to Hannah’s own life.
And when she talked of home, and how it was a dream she could never have, Hannah lowered her head, and she cried.
She had never wanted to be the girl who crawled back home.
And she didn’t have to. But what did you do when a dream didn’t satisfy that hollow ache inside of you? What did you do when you were chasing something you didn’t think existed?
There had been a time when she had believed so firmly that satisfaction would come from her career. That she would reach a place with it where she finally felt special enough. Where she finally felt like she had shown everyone, like she had proved that she has everything she had set out to be.
But she wasn’t finding it.
And she was starting to think there was just something missing from inside of herself.
And in these quiet moments here, and when she walked the streets of Bear Creek, when Josh held her in his arms, she had felt a resonance that she hadn’t been feeling in Boston. Not anymore.
After she dried her tears, she read on.
About the time she got to the end, she was breathless, desperate to see if Ava would make it back home.
He didn’t ask me to beg. He brought me to my feet and wiped my tears away. I told him everything. Everything. He said: You have never gone so far that you can’t come back home again. And he will be my home. We married quickly after that. I have not returned to simple living defeated. Rather I have seen enough of life to know there is beauty in the quiet. And that special is not what the world thinks of you, but rather what you carry in your heart.
Ava Dowell’s diary, 1925
Ava Dowell.
Goose bumps stood up on her arms.
“Ava Dowell.”
She pulled out her computer, and started searching, and there it was. Ava Moore Dowell.
“Great-grandma.” This was her grandmother’s mother. The mother that her grandma hadn’t wanted to confess her shortcomings to. This woman who had made mistakes, who had needed forgiveness, and who had found it with her husband. They would have given it to Gram. They would have. Because they knew. They knew what it was to love through all those things.
How would things have changed if Ava had given this diary to her daughter. If Gram had known that her mother had gone away to Hollywood, had found herself pregnant and alone. Had been so badly treated by people she’d trusted, had come back home and found forgiveness with the man who had loved her first.
How would everything have been different.
If they had known not that they had come from a long line of well-respected people in the town of Bear Creek. But that they had come from a long line of women who were flawed and loved anyway.
What if they had known their whole history.
You can always come home.
Hannah dried her tears, and sent a text to her sisters.
36
I thought I would try writing some of my own story. To keep, and maybe someday to share. I never thought I could learn something new in this small town that I hated so much. But I have. I am not what happened to me. I am not only music and mistakes. And coming back home isn’t giving up.
Hannah Ashwood’s diary, June 21, 2021
Lark
When she walked into the garage that night, it wasn’t the sight of Ben that sent her heart slamming against her breastbone. It was the familiar figure, with the petite frame and glossy dark hair. And Ben looked up, his expression weary.
And when Keira turned around, Lark could see she didn’t look any better. She’d been crying, that much was obvious. And Lark felt like she was standing very much somewhere she shouldn’t be.
Except... Ben was her... Well she’d told him they were nothing. That it was too hard. But Ben was hers. Ben was hers, and she loved Taylor. And she had a right to be here.
“I was just... Hoping to talk to you,” she said, directing that at Ben.
“We’ll talk,” he said. He didn’t ask her to leave.
“Lark,” Keira said. “I... I didn’t realize that you were back.”
“Yeah,” Lark said. “I... Heard that you wer
e back. When I talked to your daughter.”
“Oh, she talked to you? She didn’t talk to me.” Keira was instantly defensive and Lark had no idea what to do with that.
“I asked her to, but she didn’t feel comfortable with it. I’ve been here. You have been gone for the last three years.”
“You’ve been here?” Keira asked. She looked over at Ben. “How long has she been here?”
“I’m not your husband, Keira. So it’s not really your business.”
“Oh, it’s not my business. Right. Is this where we all pretend that I don’t know that you two had sex?”
Lark looked up at Ben, whose face was set in stone.
“When Ben and I were broken up. Before our wedding? I know you did. I know you’d been after him for a long time. You were probably happy when we broke up, while you were pretending you were still my friend.”
“Keira,” Lark said. “I’m sorry. But I don’t think what happened sixteen years ago matters.” It did. To Lark. It always would. But it had nothing to do with... This tangled disaster that was happening now. With the fact that the man she was in love with’s ex-wife was back, when her wanting him back had been the thing that had dragged them apart the first time.
“Are you sleeping with him?” Keira asked.
“Yes,” Ben said. “She is. And it’s not any of your business anymore. Because like I said, I’m not your husband.”
“We have a child, Ben.”
Those words hit Lark like a bullet.
Because they’d had a child too.
Lark stood there, and she waited for the feeling that she was losing her grip on him. But it didn’t come. This was the showdown they hadn’t had back then. She hadn’t asked him to choose, that was the thing. And she had a feeling she wouldn’t have to ask him to now.
“I went crazy,” Keira said. “I just... I lost my mind for a while, and I don’t want to be away from you anymore.”
Ben shook his head. “I want you back here for Taylor. Not for me. We weren’t happy, Keira. You know that. You were the one that told me that. How can you stand there now and tell me you want to be back in that?”