Confessions from the Quilting Circle

by Maisey Yates

  “Go back a minute,” he said, his expression like stone. “You said you were moving here?”

  “I did. And... I’m not going to use the house as a vacation rental. Because obviously my sister needs it now. I haven’t talked to her about that yet. But I need to. So I’m going to need some form of income.”

  “You’re moving here.”

  “Yes, idiot. Because of my family.” She rolled her eyes. “And because of you. Because you know what’s really special? When you’re not the center of your own world. When you have people in your life that you love even more than you love yourself. When you can reconcile all that you are, all that you were. When you don’t have to pretend anymore. That’s special. I don’t want to be special out there all on my own. I want to have a special life. And that’s here. And I’m definitely falling in love with you.”

  “That’s a damn relief,” he said, holding her up against his body. “Because I love you too.”

  “All these years later, with a lot of learning, a lot of hurt, and a lot of work left to do, do you think that you can take me back?”

  “With pleasure. With ease.”

  “Then I am very glad that I’m back home.”

  She let him kiss her, and she had to think that her great-grandmother had been right.

  You could never go so far that you couldn’t come back home.

  Avery

  Neither of her sisters were back at The Dowell House, and Avery and her kids had a card game set up on the table, ready for a family game night. A family that was a different shape than it had been a month ago, but one that she was learning to embrace. That was when she saw the package. Sitting on the table, with a letter.

  She opened it, and saw her sister Hannah’s neat script.

  I realized at some point over the last week that this house was never being renovated for guests. It was for you. Because you need it, and this is part of our family history. Our family history was there, when we needed it, even though we didn’t know that was where we were headed. So Mom, Lark and I all agree, that this place is for you and Hayden and Peyton. And of course we got you some curtains, for your new view.

  Tears pooled in Avery’s eyes as she tore the wrapping open and found red velvet curtains, almost exactly like the ones she had been sewing with. Just like Anabeth’s.

  A smile curved her lips, and she saw her future.

  Not what she was doing, or who she was with. If it was perfect.

  Perfect.

  When it was time for Avery to go and get Hayden from his friend’s house, she wasn’t even nervous. And she didn’t mind when things were a little bit awkward with a couple of the other moms who were there at the same time. They probably didn’t envy her. Not anymore.

  But she was happy.

  So, she didn’t care.

  Because she liked her life. And that meant she didn’t need anyone to envy it at all.

  That word had been her prison for far too long.

  I sing because I’m free...

  There were no more prisons, not now. The only limit would be her hope.

  And right now, it was overflowing.

  39

  There is a reason we love the story of the phoenix who is reborn from the ashes. Because in life, there will always be moments where we catch fire, and have to rebuild from what remains. The trick isn’t to avoid the flames, flames are inevitable. The trick is choosing to rise again.

  Lark Ashwood’s diary, June 25, 2021

  Lark

  It was quilting night, and they had already been at it for hours. Because the squares were finished, and all they needed was to be joined together. Which was Lark’s responsibility, since she was the one who knew how to use a sewing machine.

  It was all fine and good to do the squares by hand, but when it came to the big task, she needed equipment.

  She began assembly while her sisters and mother talked, while they laughed and shared passages from the diaries that they had each been studying. Taylor had joined them tonight, which made Lark’s heart feel bruised, but in the best way.

  This was bigger than them. That all the women who had come before them, and lived and loved and made mistakes and been redeemed, were right there with them. Wordlessly, she placed her square at the center, the square she hadn’t shown anyone yet. With embroidery that had taken the better part of twelve hours yesterday.

  But holding the blanket had felt good. Right and real. It had connected her with Gram in a deep, beautiful way.

  There was no judgment in these stitches. It was love, pure and simple.

  And ultimately, that was what she was holding close to her heart. That even though she and her grandma had never been able to speak of it, her grandma had been prepared to offer her what she herself had never been given.

  Acceptance.

  She felt the strongest sense of certainty as she worked, as she moved the fabric through the machine.

  Because she was just ready. Ready to make the life she wanted, not just wish for it. Not just drift into it.

  She was ready to build her home. With her own two hands. And his own two hands, too.

  The conversation in the room hushed and the only sound was the hum of the sewing machine, just as Lark finished stitching together the last piece.

  She looked up to see what had everyone so silent, and saw a woman with shoulder-length gray hair standing in the doorway, looking around the room.

  “Linda,” Mary said. “You came.”

  The older woman nodded, tears in her eyes. “I did. These must be your daughters.”

  “Yes,” her mother said. “Lark and Hannah and Avery.”

  Lark took the quilt out from beneath the sewing machine and held it close to her chest.

  “This is Linda,” her mom said. “My half sister. Gram’s daughter.”

  It felt right that she was here. And Lark felt hungry to know everything about her. Because they didn’t keep secrets anymore, they shared stories.

  “You’re right on time,” Lark said. “We just finished the quilt.”

  She draped it over the wooden rack she had set up earlier, the colors bright and rich. Interlocking triangles of blue and silver, cream colored lace and rich brocade.

  The party dress, the wedding dress, the parlor curtains.

  Those fragmented pieces joined together, telling a story, of who they were. And there, at the center, was the baby blanket. Lark had finished the tree that her grandmother had begun, and beside it she had embroidered the words: You have never gone so far that you can’t come back home again.

  Lark had always believed that it was art, creation, that healed. And this had healed them.

  Their history. Their secrets. All right there, bright and brilliant and shared.

  Lark’s mother put her arm around her, a tear rolling down her cheek. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “It is,” Lark said. It was beautiful. Not just because of what it was, but because of all it represented. And Linda came to stand beside them, and Lark looked at her sisters, her mother, at her mother’s newfound sister. “She gave us this. She didn’t tell us all her secrets. She didn’t ever find a way to ask you to forgive her, Mom. She didn’t find her way back to Linda. We never spoke about the baby. But she left us this quilt. And gave us a chance to make it together.”

  To stitch together the rifts between them, like squares joined by the finest stitches.

  She had been waiting. For this moment. When she’d looked at her grandmother’s pieces she’d seen that it wasn’t finished, and she had been waiting for that word to echo in her soul.

  Finished.

  But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t about finished, or unfinished. For their work, their lives weren’t done.

  They would always grow and change.

  But here and now pieces of their history were brough
t together. Each stitch like a path, showing where their ancestors had walked, and where they could walk forward.

  And their stories would show the ones that came after them how to keep walking forward too. She could see it all in front of her now, all that history, all that time.

  Time didn’t pass on by, never to be seen again.

  It moved through the earth, through all that they were, like stitches in a quilt. Each thread, each fabric creating a bigger picture, a bigger truth. Each piece an integral part of the story of what had created them.

  The sorrow, the joy. The loss, and the chance for new beginnings.

  And the certainty that home would always be there.

  She stood there, with her family, with her future stretched out in front of her, bright and brilliant however it would unfold.

  And the word that echoed inside her was better than finished could ever be. Sitting with her sisters, her mother, and making this quilt, reading about her ancestors, learning to love all over again...

  It was as though joining each bit of fabric had restored a part of her she’d thought was gone forever.

  Lark Ashwood was no longer a woman in pieces.

  She was whole.

  epilogue

  Three months earlier...

  Adeline Dowell knew she was dying. She was ninety-four. She could no longer ride her bike wherever she wanted. Her grandchildren were scattered and she couldn’t run her candy shop. She loved her great-grandchildren very much, loved watching them needlepoint, even Hayden who pretended he didn’t like it.

  But she was rapidly losing independence, and it was even a chore to dye her own hair. That just made it seem like there wasn’t much point going on. These days, she was pragmatic like that.

  The years for fancy were long gone.

  She had regrets. A mountain of them. She did her best not to dwell on them.

  She hadn’t finished that quilt, not ever. Now most of the fabric, along with her plans for it, were in the attic at The Dowell House and she couldn’t manage all those stairs, not anymore.

  She wished she had gotten her mother’s diary down from the attic before it had gotten too hard for her to get up there. But she hadn’t. It didn’t matter.

  She could see the beautiful, red cover in her mind even now. The stamped gold letters there. And she could recall the words of her father, as recorded by her mother, by heart.

  You can never go so far that you can’t come back home.

  Those words had brought her back to Bear Creek years ago.

  They were calling her now.

  She felt it. Heard her mother’s voice more strongly now when she recalled the words from her diary.

  Then she picked up her own diary, blue and filled with failures. With heartbreaks. With business she had no time to finish now.

  But she thought of Mary, of Mary’s beautiful girls. The loving marriage her daughter had made with Joe. She couldn’t take credit. Not for that. Not for the strength and talent of her granddaughters. For Lark’s creativity and spark and perseverance in the face of loss Addie couldn’t bring herself to ask about.

  For Hannah’s brilliant musical gifts, and Avery’s certainty.

  For Linda’s happiness. The life she’d watched her have from afar. She might never have been able to be her mother in practice, but she’d been her mother in her heart.

  She didn’t need credit. They were her joy.

  There were so many things she’d left unsaid. But as she finished putting curlers in her bright red hair, and lay down in her bed, she didn’t feel regret.

  She felt only love.

  And a sense that someday all of the secrets, all of the mysteries, would be laid bare. That the things hidden in darkness would be brought to the light. And she had the strongest feeling of being forgiven.

  Maybe not now, but there was a certainty deep within her that someday Mary would, and she could feel it even now.

  But you’re running out of time...

  No. She wasn’t running out of time. She’d had time. Time that had been good, time that had been painful.

  And in the end she knew that all those heartbreaks couldn’t be erased, couldn’t be changed or easily mended. But they were not stains on her life, not now. They were part of who she was. Each broken piece coming together to create Dorothy Adeline Dowell.

  She had thought as a girl she had to stop being Dot. For Dot had loved and lost, and felt destroyed by it. She’d become Addie, and that hadn’t fit either.

  But she was both. Everything. All the sorrow, all the triumph, all the joy.

  It filled her now. Gave her a sense of wholeness. The good along with the bad.

  Her daughters, her granddaughters, they were her legacy and they would carry on. Any scattered pieces she had left behind, fragments she had never managed to mend, they would.

  She knew it as sure as she’d ever known anything.

  As she let her eyes drift closed, a smile touched her lips. Clear as day, she saw George as he’d been the last time she’d seen him. In his military uniform. Smiling. So handsome. Perfect in every way.

  And the deepest sense of peace she’d ever known washed over her, like the warmth of a quilt, all blue and silver and lace and rich red velvet.

  Finished.

  * * *

  acknowledgments

  I owe my thanks to so many people, as always. To Rusty Keller and Megan Crane, for always being up for a stay in a historic house. And listening to me read strange histories to you while we sit in them. And again to Megan, for reading this book when I finished it so I could have her greatly valued take. To Jackie Ashenden and Nicole Helm, who read this in chunks and took the time to help me get a handle on my characters. To my editor Flo Nicoll for her deep insight, which helps me take a book to where I really want it to go. To my agent Helen Breitwieser, who provides constant support.

  The history of WWII is foundational in both sides of my family, as it is in many. Before this book came out, my grandfather, a veteran of the war, passed away at ninety-three. He was a walking, talking piece of history, and the world is poorer for his absence.

  I owe a special thank-you to my family for this book, because the starting point for this idea came from our story. Though this story is entirely fictional, the initial seeds of it came from this history, and I want to pay it tribute. To my grandmother, who lost her first love July 15, 1944, in the Battle of Normandy, and was left a young widow with a baby. And to her first husband, my uncle’s father, George. Who I know was much loved and has been missed all these years.

  from the author

  There’s really no way around the obvious comparison that, for me, the pieces of this book came together like a quilt.

  Lark and Ben, as characters, had been with me for a long time, and I knew I wanted to write their story, but didn’t have a setting for it.

  There is a historic house in my town that I drive past almost every day that I’ve been fascinated by since childhood.

  And my grandmother’s life story has been one I wanted to explore for a long time. And as time passes, and we get even more distance from that period in history, using it the way I wanted to felt even more important.

  But these were all just pieces, and pieces don’t make a story.

  When I found out that home I’ve long been obsessed with is now a vacation rental, I jumped at the chance to grab a couple of writer friends and stay there for a few days. And it was in the house that my pieces began to come together.

  There were books on the family history (including many, many pictures of the men with their hunting spoils, and men in trees holding rifles) and a lot of rich detail about the history of the house and when it was built.

  The B.F. Dowell House became the not-so-disguised model for The Dowell House in this book. The Miner’s House is a nod to another historic house in town that
has been many different businesses, including an Ice Cream Shop and a Candy Shop, and most recently, The Miner’s Bazaar, a Craft Café where I’ve spent a lot of time knitting and eating cheese. And while it too is altered for this book, the historic town of Jacksonville, Oregon, was the primary inspiration for Bear Creek.

  These brick buildings are pieces of the past that still stand. Both changing, and unchanging all at once. The businesses and the people inside them are different, and yet they stand much the same as they ever have, proof that what’s gone on before has a lasting echo through time.

  And as I reflected on history, the history in these buildings, the history of a family, it became the binding thread of this story.

  Mary, Lark, Avery and Hannah have all become the women they are in part because of the histories of the women who came before them. From Addie, going back into further generations. A history unseen, not standing on the main street of a historic town, but that is a part of the way these women are put together, part of the very fabric that makes them. But in the end the history they take forward is their choice. To dwell in pain and secrets, or move forward in strength, writing a new story, an open book, for the generations that come after them.

  It’s why I loved the idea of Addie feeling that sense of wholeness in the end, even though her daughters and grandchildren had yet to go on that journey. That in her final moments her past, her present, were all there, a complete story. And that in the end, it wasn’t regret, or pain, or disappointment that she carried with her, but it was the love she’d given and received in her life that shone brightest of all.