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

I love that, Hannah, I found out I really loved the ranch. It doesn’t pay the bills on its own, and that’s one reason I started this business. It’s better, to not have to worry about your land sustaining you. Better to have something else to help out, because one thing I can guarantee you is that pipes will start leaking, but I can’t guarantee you that we’re going to get a good crop of hay. I can’t control the weather. And then Jamie got married and started having kids, and I get to be an uncle. That makes me happy. My family makes me pretty happy.”

It made her ache to see him like this. This man, who had a capacity to care about the land of his family in this deep way. Who made his roots here seem steady and solid and right, instead of limited and small like she’d seen them all those years ago.

It was her life that felt small suddenly. An apartment and a violin. Yes, she had friends. And yes, she cared about them. She had fun. But it didn’t resonate, not right now. And for some reason this did. For some reason he did.

She had always thought that if she ever came back and had a confrontation with him she would be fancy and superior and he would feel like a damn fool. Wish that he had followed her, or something.

Even though you made that impossible.

“I’ve dated other women, Hannah. But I don’t think anything’s ever come close to us.”

She tried to choke down the lasagna, but it suddenly tasted like sawdust. Because he still thought she was someone she wasn’t. And that was the problem with that little fantasy she just had. That he might someday wish he could have her back, or wish that he’d gone with her.

She’d done her best to kill that. To end it. She really had. She’d been mean, but she hadn’t told the truth.

And that secret was so deep, so buried inside of her that even thinking it made her head hurt.

She thought of Lark and Ben and how much she wanted Lark to be able to find her happiness with him. How she’d pushed her the other night to have her own reunion fling and...

And she just wanted to run away from hers now.

Because this wasn’t a fling.

And it wasn’t casual.

She’d known it wasn’t. She’d known it when she couldn’t sleep with him that first night and she was still here.

It had still come down to this.

“Dance with me,” he said, taking his napkin from his lap and putting it on the table.

“No,” she said. “That’s silly.”

He took his phone out of his pocket and opened up the music app, put on a song about a woman looking perfect tonight, and held his hand out.

And she sat there frozen, staring at that hand, her mind flashing hard between the past and the present.

And when she looked up at his face, it wasn’t his face that she saw.

You want to get into that school, don’t you, Hannah? If this is about that boyfriend of yours, I thought you were different. I thought you were driven. That’s why I feel the way I do about you. Because you’re like me.

You’re special.

Her skin crawled, and she stood up, moving away from him.

“No, Josh, this is a mistake. I’m going back to Boston. I’m not starting something with you.”

“Hannah, I can’t explain what I feel for you. After all this time. I’m actually pretty pissed off about it. That I wasn’t angry when I saw you, I just wanted another chance to see what we could be.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. Because you love it here. And I... I hate it.” But those words felt like a lie. “I thought that I would’ve made you hate me effectively enough nineteen years ago.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t,” he said. “God knows why.”

“Well if you knew the real reason I broke up with you, you probably would.”

“And what’s that?” he asked, his face stone.

“I slept with someone else, Josh. I slept with someone else, and when I broke up with you I couldn’t bear to tell you that. But it’s true. You shouldn’t want me. Because that’s who I am. You loved me, and I betrayed that. You can’t trust me. At the end of the day, if you know one thing, you should know that. You can’t trust me.”

25

She has arranged for the baby to go to her cousin. She will send for her later and claim she is the child of her niece, widowed by the war and unable to care for her. She says this is right, for she has a piece of him, and our daughter will endure no shame. I don’t know what it means for me.

Dot’s diary, February 1945

Lark

Lark stumbled into Ben’s garage, still feeling high off of the shouting session she’d had with her sisters. It had clarified things. She’d worked the whole day and done what needed doing at the Craft Café, but she’d been buzzing with energy, anxious to see Ben again.

She’d learned something in that attic. That sometimes outbursts made you closer to someone, not more distant.

Ben looked up when she came in and her heart stopped. But her words wouldn’t be.

“I have a whole lot of speeches for you. Saved up. Rehearsed. Some of them are angry, and some of them are tearful, and some of them are about how I have a lot of regrets. And some of them are about how I don’t have any. I’ve gone back and forth a lot over the years. But now that I’m here, I don’t actually want to give any of them. I just...”

She crossed the distance between them, and it felt like walking across years. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck, and she kissed him. And he kissed her. He dragged her into the garage, shutting the door behind them, and turning the lock. It was fierce, and hard.