Confessions from the Quilting Circle by Maisey Yates (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📗

He was still downstairs. And the only escape from this room would be to go up.

She opened up the bedroom door and went up the curved staircase that led to the attic. She pushed the door open, and was yet again surprised by the sheer volume of things stacked into the tiny space.

“Okay,” she said, looking around. “Do you have answers for me up here? Because you always acted like you did when you were alive. And you said I was too focused and too intense. But I was right, you know. And you wouldn’t know anything about that. Because you decided to do something, you decided to get married and have kids, and you didn’t even keep on doing that. So really, what would you know about the kind of commitment it takes to see something through?”

She had the thought of going back to the Craft Café. Going to see Lark. But she didn’t think she could handle that right now.

She felt spiteful and mean even knowing she was just talking to her grandmother’s ghost that way. But she was so angry. She was angry and she didn’t know how to have that conversation with another person. Because she had spent so much of the last nineteen years handling every thing by herself. And things had been good. They’d been fine. She didn’t need anything. She didn’t need anyone. She had only needed her music.

She went over to the stack of fabric, where they had mined their quilting objects from. There was another bin, nearby, but it didn’t have only fabric in it. It had trinkets.

She wondered if Lark had seen all of this yet. She thought, briefly, about taking the box to her sister but she couldn’t face...anything. Not right now.

She knelt down and opened the top.

There was a stack of old photos inside. The top one had a picture of a man with a mustache, wearing suspenders and blue jeans, holding a clearly deceased creature by the leg. The label read: Jason Dowell with Bobcat, 1919.

“Great. Great for you, not so much for the bobcat.” There were more pictures, of The Dowell House in other stages of construction. Also a picture of an old barn with hides tacked to the outside. Fittingly labeled: Skunk Hides, 1918.

The best photo was of a man standing on top of a tree branch, his hunting dog on the branch as well. He was pointing his gun off into the blank space. Labeled, William Wesley Dowell, 1922.

She was fairly certain that was her great-grandfather.

If nothing else, her ancestors were certainly... Well, something.

She pulled the next picture out, finding more animals, buildings and men holding weapons. But there was another photo, smaller than the others. And she paused.

It was a young woman, her dark hair cut short, pinned into waves that framed a heart shaped face. Her lips were dark, and though the photo was black and white, it was easy to imagine that they were a deep red. She was standing in almost a ballet pose, wearing low heels, and a dark colored dress that fell down past her knees, with a dropped waist, and a spangle of shining beads over the fabric.

Very familiar looking fabric.

“The Party Dress.” She touched it, and then turned the picture over, looking for a label as comprehensive as the others. But there was only a date. 1923.

She stared at the girl, at the dreamy look on her face. If she was a Dowell, then she was definitely an odd one in the middle of all these outdoorsmen. In the middle of all this... Practicality.

In many ways, Hannah had always considered herself practical. It wasn’t that she didn’t take the steps to make her dreams happen. She did. But there had to be more. That magic. The kind of magic that had a girl who might’ve been part of this suspenders-wearing family choosing a dress that looked like this. Something frothy and beautiful and ornate, that wouldn’t have been at home here in Bear Creek.

“Maybe you weren’t at home here either.”

She shrugged off the vague disquiet that asked her if she knew where in the world she was at home now.

12

His mother says our child will be a bastard. And I know she is right. That there is shame I will bring on our child if I insist on raising him. I cannot tell my mother at all. I fear her disappointment too much.

Dot’s Diary, July 1944

Mary

Lark was still at The Miner’s House when Mary arrived for quilting night.

“I’ll be out in a minute, Mom,” her daughter called from the kitchen area at the back.

The Closed sign was turned, but the lights above the bar still glowed with warmth. And Mary paced around the room, taking in the changes that Lark had put into place since the last time Mary had been in.

She’d been busy the last few days—volunteering for morning reading for preschoolers at the library, taking Peyton to her evening ballet class and picking her up and making sure Joe had all of his gear together for the three day trek he was taking into the woods to take pictures.

Joe had wanted her to go, but she had too much to do here to go sit around in nature. She didn’t have an interest in photography and she’d never been one for camping. She liked the outdoors, but it was something her father had always seen as being pretty foolish when a body had running water and electricity at home.

She agreed.

Plus, she didn’t like sitting around being idle.

Lark had a display with local art under a glass case, and shelves with handmade ceramic mugs and local honey.

There was jewelry hanging from pegs, that Mary was sure Lark herself made. Tapestries hung from the walls, painted with images of naked women draped in flowers and sitting in fields with wolves.

There was a sweetness to the art, but something confusing in it too. Like her youngest daughter. Lark was sweet and