Confessions from the Quilting Circle

being snarky, because Hannah was always snarky.
It reminded her so much of their mother that it shocked Lark into silence for a moment. “He’s a doctor,” she said again. “The kind of pressure he’s under is a lot more intense than...”
“Raising his children?” Hannah asked.
“I thought you liked David,” Avery said, frowning at Hannah.
“I do,” Hannah said. “But I don’t like this. I don’t like you just dismissing your whole life because David is an important doctor.”
“I’m not dismissing my whole life. I need some extra help picking my son up. That’s all. And if I didn’t want to be here so badly, I wouldn’t need help.”
“You gonna text Karen?” Lark asked.
“Yes,” Avery said, stabbing at her phone, then staring at it for about thirty seconds before stabbing at it again. “There. Handled. Okay, where are we at up here?”
“I just found the fabric that Gram was going to use to make the quilt,” Lark said.
“That sounds like more fun than discussing my schedule.”
“I’m thirsty,” Hannah said.
“I brought wine.”
“Nothing stronger?” Hannah asked.
“Sorry,” Avery said. “I left my flask in the other minivan.”
“You joke, but probably half of the moms in that hellscape you call a pickup line have gin in their water bottles.”
“Oh, more than half,” Avery said.
Hannah lifted a shoulder. “I find it interesting that so many women fade into a life that requires they dull their senses for half of it.”
“Fade into a life?” Avery asked. “Is that what you think I did?”
“No,” Hannah said, sounding defensive but not totally convincing.
Avery’s expression was flat, unamused.
“I made the choice to come back,” Avery said. “There was no fading anywhere.”
The growing tension between her sisters built up a knot in Lark’s chest. Hannah and Avery were both blunt, and would go right in for a fight without even pausing to think about it. They also got over it when it was done. They always had.
And of course neither of them realized that Lark had wanted, more than anything, to fade into the kind of life Avery had. If it were that simple, she’d have done it.
“I’ll have wine,” Lark said.
She grabbed a glass out of the bag and held it up to her sister. Hannah, meanwhile, dug in the corner for a blanket, and then looked up impishly.
“Remember how we used to use this clothesline?” She flipped her finger over the top of a cord that hung stretched across one section of the room.
“Yes,” Lark said.
She slung the sheet over the top of the line, then took a stack of boxes and used it to anchor four corners of the sheet.
“The tent.”
“A wine drinking tent,” Avery said. “Excellent.”
They exchanged glances, and Lark was the first person to get underneath.
“Remember when we’d have sleepovers with Grandpa and we’d come up here and tell scary stories until Lark cried?” Avery asked.
“I didn’t cry!” Lark frowned. “And if I did it’s because I was a child and you were all being mean.”
“We had a fort like this at Gram’s too,” Hannah said. “Just in the backyard.”
The silence that stretched between them was heavier then. Filled with memories.
“I remember that. She’d sit in it with us,” Avery said. “And tell us about the great Dowell family.”
“So many legends about the men and how great they were at...hunting skunks.” Lark shook her head. “I always thought it was weird there were no stories about the women.”
“What was always weird was having Gram and Grandpa just down the street from each other. But never speaking.”
“You can’t really blame him,” Lark said. “She left him. As much as Grandpa was an old-school gentleman he held a grudge.”
“I’ve always had a hard time with that,” Avery said softly. “I love Gram. I always have. When we were teenagers it was easier to be close to her than it was Mom but... But you see things differently when you have your own kids.”
Lark bit down on the inside of her cheek as Hannah shot Avery a quick, irritated glance.
“I’m perfectly capable of understanding why it’s upsetting that somebody left their daughter without having children of my own, thank you,” Hannah said, her tone tart.
“That’s not what I meant,” Avery said. “It’s not. It’s just... I think about it a lot. I put myself in that position. And I don’t understand.”
“Do you really not?” Lark asked. “You never wanted to just run away from everything?”
Avery frowned. “No.”
“I do,” Lark said. “I want to run away from things all the time.” Currently this conversation. “Neither of you ever just want to...detonate a bomb in the middle of everything and start over?”
She was genuinely curious. For her, settling in the town was a big shake-up. As big as the first one, really. When she’d left home at eighteen for school. When she’d decided she wouldn’t live in Bear Creek, not again. When she’d figured out how to care less. How to go with the flow more rather than...rather than hoping so badly for something she might not get to have.
“No,” Hannah said. “I worked way too hard to change what I’m doing now. I get chances to change scenery for a season or two, but BSO is my home. It’s my life.”
“Never,” Avery said, shaking her head.
“Never? You never want to act out of character? I don’t know, the idea I could unmake and remake everything tomorrow if I needed to is what makes me feel less claustrophobic on a bad day.”
“But picking up and leaving isn’t acting out of character for you,” Hannah said.
“Not true,” Lark said. “I think for me uncharacteristic is what I’m doing now. Coming home after all this time.”
And it scared her. But if she thought back to where she’d been before she made the decisions, she felt calmer again. She’d reached the end of the road she was on. She was exploring a new road here.
No one was forcing her to do anything. It was her choice, and she could make a new choice if she needed to.
“So this is what your bomb detonation looks like?”