by Maisey Yates
“Because I... I tried being out there, I don’t know who I am. I don’t like it. I miss this town. I miss you. And...”
“You can’t fix some things,” he said. “I hope for Taylor’s sake, you can fix that. But I’m not in love with you.”
“Because of her?” Keira asked.
“Because of us,” he said. “My feelings for Lark are separate.”
Keira turned and rushed out of the garage. And Lark felt torn. Keira had been her friend. And she was angry at her, weirdly, mostly because of Taylor. But she still... She couldn’t hate her.
“I’ll be back,” she said to Ben.
She left the garage, following after Keira. “Wait,” she said, two paces behind her on the sidewalk. “Let’s talk.”
“What’s there to talk about? You were always, always waiting on the sidelines to take him. You slept him when we broke up just after high school. And you immediately started sleeping with him now.”
“You’ve been gone for three years. And I didn’t come back for him. But even if I did... You’re right. I love him. And I have loved him for a long time. It’s not to spite you. It just is. And I love your daughter too. And you hurt her, you hurt her really badly. So... If you want to have something here, it’s not going to be with him. If you want to repair something it has to be with Taylor, and you have to mean it, or you have to leave now.”
“She’s not your daughter, Lark, you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
Lark breathed through that pain. “But it’s our life,” she said. “Mine and Ben and Taylor’s. We are... We’re trying to make something. And we can include you. Because of Taylor. Because... You were my friend too. But you don’t get to stand there and be angry, not when you’re the one that walked away.”
“You would never have left him, would you?”
Lark shook her head. “No.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Except I did. I wasn’t going to fight you for him. And in hindsight, I kind of think I should have. So this is me, standing my ground now. I don’t want to be enemies. But you have to be realistic. You can’t just come back and expect to slip right in to the life you had. If you want to come back here, you have to make a new one.”
It was what she’d done. It was what she was doing. And maybe she and Ben would be able to work this out. She didn’t know. Because it was tangled and messy and complicated. But he was the one that made her whole. That brought together all the pieces of who she was.
“This just... It’s too hard,” Keira said.
Lark could relate to that feeling. She’d said it herself only recently. “All the good things are.”
“I just feel like I... I’ve made so many mistakes, Lark. Coming back means that I actually have to deal with them.”
And Lark had no idea if they would untangle this. If they could all find a way to be happy. But she’d learned one thing.
“We all make mistakes,” Lark said. “But you’ve never gone so far that you can’t come back home again.”
Hannah
“Did you really call us all together to have a picnic at a graveyard?” Avery asked.
“I did,” Hannah said.
She hugged the picnic basket to her chest as they walked along the trails of the hilltop cemetery. They had all been to Gram’s grave after the funeral, but she didn’t know if any of them had been up here since.
It was a great spot. With a view of the entire town below.
It looked like a miniature, little brick buildings with green trees on every block.
She sat down, right next to Addie’s grave. Dorothy Adeline Dowell.
“Hello,” Lark said, putting her hand on the gravestone. “I wish I would’ve known you better.”
Avery looked at the other gravestones. “Anabeth Dowell,” she said, pointing to one. “Buried next to John Dowell.”
“And Ava Dowell.” Hannah sighed. “Right next to William Dowell. That’s why I wanted us all to come up here. I finished Ava’s diary. The story of the dress.” She took her quilt squares from her bag, glittering with pieces of Ava’s dress. “She had a dream of being famous. Of getting away from here...but it all went wrong. And she had to come home. If I’d read that story at a different time I would have thought she’d lost. That she’d failed. She didn’t, though. She didn’t fail, she...she let herself be happy and she didn’t let pride stop her. Didn’t let a choice she’d made when she was young become the whole rest of her life.”
Hannah looked around the cemetery, bright and filled with history. It wasn’t creepy or sad. It was...alive, somehow, this place. With the memories of all of these souls. The lives that had come before them. Part of the fabric that made the town they lived in. For they’d built the foundations, the houses, the businesses. The streets that they all still walked on.
This wasn’t a sad place at all, it was...brimming with hope. With truth.
“I could only let myself want one thing,” Hannah said. “I loved too many things too much. And my music teacher...he took advantage of how much I loved the violin. He...made me think I needed to give him my body to have my dreams. And I was so afraid that if I ever loved another thing I could be hurt like that again. But the violin was already a scar so I just...pursued it. Doggedly. Determinedly. Single-minded. But I’ve run out of steam on that now, and I can’t be one thing. I have to be more.”
She looked down at the quilt square in her hand.
The party dress nestled against plain cotton.
I want stars again...
Hannah was both. The girl who’d grown up in this town and the girl who’d run away. The woman who’d made a career for herself in the symphony, and who had fallen for a man in a small town where she’d never be able to have the kind of career she used to dream of.
“This is who we are,” Hannah said. “All of us. These are the women that make up our history. And they were brave, and they were flawed. And we’re them. They’re part of our story. And we didn’t know.”
Avery frowned. Lark went to her knees next to Gram’s headstone, brushing her fingers over the lettering.
“I wish I could have talked to her. About how it feels to lose your child.”
“You can talk to us,” Avery said. “That’s what we have to do. Talk to each other. And I need to make sure I keep talking to my kids. So that they know me. The real me. Not some sanitized version that I’m trying to show them to make them feel better. Because it doesn’t help, does it? You just end up thinking you’re the only one with problems. You want to hide things and try to make them easier, but it doesn’t make it easier. Mom didn’t know Gram’s history, and she just thought it meant Gram didn’t love her. But that wasn’t true. It was herself that Gram didn’t love.”
“They were all so desperately human,” Hannah said. “And didn’t want to be. I relate to that.”
“Me too,” Avery said.
“I don’t want to go back to Boston,” Hannah confessed. “And this is the first time I’ve been able to say that and not feel like it’s giving up, or failing. And not feel like it means the last nineteen years have been nothing. Because they haven’t been. I needed them. I’m not failing by being done. Because that’s it, I just... I want more than one thing from my life. I played, and it was wonderful. I loved it. And it gave me distance from here. From what happened.”
She looked into the sun, squinted and pretended the moisture in her eyes was all from that. “I always felt like I bought my scholarship with my body. And if you’re going to be a whore you better be a really great one. I’m good at extremes. And I think it made me get obsessed in a way... I love it. I love it, and I’m not sorry that I went to Boston.” She ran her thumb over the beading on the dress. “I can’t be one thing anymore. And that will mean...compromise I guess? I don’t even know what that feels like. But I’m a woman, not just a musician. I’ve been a victim,” she looked at Avery, “but t
hat doesn’t mean I’m not strong. I have to figure out what staying here means for my life. What I’ll do. I mean, I’ll still play. But, it’s going to definitely be on a much smaller scale.”
“Do you really want to leave Boston?” Lark asked.
She nodded slowly. “Yes. Because being back here made me realize how much I miss all of you. Maybe in a way I never did before. If you’re just staying gone because you’re trying to prove your own point, and prove that you’re right...well, that’s not really strong either. That’s just rebellion. I don’t think I’m ever going to be special until I decide what that means. And what I have here, that’s special. What I have with all of you.”
“Josh?” Avery asked.
“Yeah,” Hannah said. “I think I want to stay for him too. Seventeen-year-old me is tearing her hair out.”
“But you’re not seventeen anymore.”
She laughed. “And thank God. I can accept a whole lot more complication than seventeen-year-old me could. I can see a lot more about how the world is put together. With cotton and chiffon and glass beads, all beautiful together. Party dress fabric sewn into a heritage quilt.”
She sat down on the ground next to Lark, and put the picnic basket in front of them. And then Avery sat down next to her. Lark put her head on Hannah’s shoulder, and she put her arm around her younger sister.
“It’s amazing,” Hannah said. “How much talking changes things.”
“It helps when someone is there to listen,” Avery said.
“I’ll always be here to listen,” Lark said.
“Let’s just all be here. For each other. Talking and listening and everything.”
And then Lark and Avery both reached into their bags, and took out their quilting. Lark had a large yellow square, which she turned away from them, but began working away on.
The sun filtered through the trees and bathed the headstones in golden light, and them right along with it. There they all were, under the same sun.
Special.
This was special. They were special. And Hannah didn’t feel like she was coming home again. Instead, home felt like something different than it ever had before. Home didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a gift.
And maybe that was the real lesson.
That you could change, but then you can keep on changing, and it might bring you back to where you started.
That you could make mistakes, and run away, and be hurt and broken, and find a way to feel anyway, to be reborn, while carrying those memories along with you.
And when you became that new creation, you had to be okay with where it might take you.
37
Being afraid of showing my emotions, of failing, of being a bad wife and mother and woman, has been my greatest enemy. It did more damage in my life than simply asking for help, showing I didn’t know what to do, ever could have. I finished my first ever crafting project. My first quilt squares. I was so afraid they wouldn’t be perfect. And they aren’t. But they are filled with love, and they brought me closer to my daughters, closer to my mother. Brought me a sister I didn’t know I had. Lark was right about creating. It isn’t about struggling to make something that looks perfect, but about the joy to be had in the journey. The same, I think, might be true of life.
Mary Ashwood’s diary, June 24, 2021
Lark
It was a shock to have Ben turn up at The Dowell House. Her sisters, and niece and nephew were all inside, playing Go Fish, in a ruthless fashion that had nearly drawn blood. Lark had been feeling enervated since her confrontation with Keira. But there was... There were a lot bigger problems between her and Ben than Keira.
Like the fact she’d turned him away last time they’d been alone together.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Ben... I want this to work. I... I really need it to and if you’re going to tell me it’s impossible, I will understand. Because everything is complicated and I get it. But please make it quick if that’s what you’re here to do because I can’t take it.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not what I’m here to say. It’s not too hard, Lark. Too hard is not being with you. And everything else... Everything else we’re going to find a way to work through. But I needed to make sure that I did the thing I didn’t do last time. I needed to make sure that I came for you. Because you... You matter to me. You more than matter to me. I love you. I love you, and everything else is just details.”
She laughed, and launched herself into his arms, toward him. Not away. Right into messy. Right into the past, the present and the future.
She didn’t run, not anymore.
She would stay, right here. With him.
“They are really messy details,” she whispered against his neck.
“Yeah. They are. But I didn’t get your name tattooed on my shoulder just because I thought a bird might look nice. It’s because you’re part of me. You’re part of my life. My journey.”
“We should’ve talked then.”
“Yeah. But we didn’t. But we are now.”
“I’m not sure if we could’ve weathered that. Losing her.”
“We did the growing we needed to do. And maybe we could have done it together. We didn’t. But things are... They’ve come together now. We are together now. I choose this. I choose us. Jumping in with both feet. Both eyes open. Not just because it’s easy, not just because it’s expected. Just because of love.”
“You know,” she said. “I remember how you got that scar.” She touched the slashing line on his face. “And I remember you jumping off the rocks at the creek. And you hiding under Avery’s bed after I told her a ghost story, so that you could help me scare her. And I remember that time that you came to my house, and you said that you loved me. And then you kissed me.”
“Really?”
“It’s my favorite one. My very favorite memory.”
“Then I better make it happen.” He moved closer. “I love you.” And then he did kiss her. And it was like all the pieces of her life, every fragment, every girl she’d ever been, came together at that one moment. All the sorrow, all the laughter, all the journey that made her who she was, was wrapped up just then, in a neat little bow. And she realized then that it actually didn’t matter. If they were meant to be or not.
Because they chose each other.
And that, in the end, was what mattered.
“Why don’t you come inside.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We’re playing a pretty violent card game, though.”
“Is it Uno?”
“No. We save that for after the children go to bed. It gets too colorful. Avery curses like a sailor when she loses at cards.”
“Well, I’m here for a little Uno after dark.”
“Perfect. Does Taylor want to come over?”
“She’s actually with... With Keira.”
It surprised Lark, but it made her feel... Good.
“I’m glad,” she said.
“But I’ll let her know that we are playing cards. I think she’ll be happy.”
“I hope so.”
“Well, I know I am.”
“For now. But you haven’t faced my sisters yet.”
“I’m ready.”
She had a feeling, that after all this time, they were more than ready.
38
Starting over is terrifying. But for me the worst thing was knowing how my life might end up if I didn’t have the courage to change. The unknown became far less terrifying than what I knew for certain. To let go of a life that no longer fits is not a failure. Pride is a poor substitute for joy.
Avery Grant’s diary, June 22, 2021
Hannah
The night of her thwarted hookup with Josh, she’d come to his ranch, but she hadn’t really looked at it. And as she
stood on the front steps of the modest, but exceedingly clean house, she felt guilty. She was coming to the conclusion that she had been pretty tunnel-visioned and pretty selfish back then. She had claimed to love him, even in her own heart, but everything had been about her. About what she wanted. She had belittled what he cared about because it hadn’t mattered to her.
This ranch wasn’t nothing. This life that he had wasn’t nothing.
He was a good man. He had always been a good man.
He pushed the door open, wiping his hands on a dish towel, his gaze assessing. He leaned up against the door frame. “What brings you here?”
“To talk.”
“I was just doing dishes.” He slung the towel over his shoulder and held the door open. “Come on in.”
“You do dishes?” she asked.
“You seem easily surprised that I know how to do basic things that most humans do to sustain themselves.”
“Well. I don’t. I’m a terrible housekeeper and a little bit of a disaster. But I have someone clean my apartment and I have takeout places bring me food. And I am in general kind of miserable. And that’s what I’ve been facing. That I’m miserable. That I’m hurt. But I’m not untouched by what happened to me back then. That I... Josh, I couldn’t face that. Because I thought I had to make it mean something. I had to believe I was special, so I made it something else in my head. Instead of just accepting that it...that it was wrong. And that a man used his power against me in a way that he would have done against any student in my position, and probably has.”
“Hannah, I don’t blame you for not wanting to think of it that way. Maybe it wasn’t my place to say what I did.”
“Somebody had to. Because yeah, it is making me question a lot of things, but I needed to.” She shook her head. “I needed to go to Boston. I am so grateful for all the years I had playing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Not just because it made me a whole lot of money, and when I sell the apartment that I bought with some of that money, I am going to have enough money to live here while I figure the rest of everything out. But also because it was my dream. It was my dream, and the whole time I was living it I didn’t really appreciate it. I was waiting for the next thing. I’m tired of waiting for the next thing. The first time I was happy in a long time was when I just put everything aside and played violin in the bar. And hooked up with you. And it was because I was happy with the moment I was in. I haven’t let myself feel that for a long time.”