Confessions from the Quilting Circle

Hannah asked. “Camping out in your grandpa’s attic and drinking wine? Super cool.”
Lark made a scoffing noise.
“No, I don’t ever want to do anything like that,” Avery said. “Gram hurt Mom, even if she never admits it. And I...it was wrong what she did. Taking off and leaving my responsibilities could never be a fantasy. Mom might not have been the easiest person to talk to, but she taught us all how to be responsible, that’s for sure.”
Mary Ashwood had definite ideas of what she wanted for her daughters. Lark remembered the time her mother had told her she had to remember to think of others, to act with her head and not her heart.
Too emotional and untamed and she’d end up like Gram. Lark hadn’t understood why that was bad. And that was the first time Mary had told her. That Gram had abandoned her as a child.
She’d said it all no-nonsense and brusque. Just relaying the facts.
But it had wounded Lark, deeply. To have her Gram knocked off her pedestal like that.
But it had certainly made an impression on her. To know that the woman she admired so much was capable of hurting her mother so much. Her grandpa. Her uncles.
If Gram could, Lark could too.
So she had to listen to her mother. She had to make sure she never did anything quite so reckless.
“Well. She knew that I would stay here. So I think it was pretty easy for her to support you.”
“What does that mean?” Hannah asked.
“I’m just saying, I don’t think it would’ve been quite so easy for her to let you go if I wasn’t here.”
“Did you want to be anywhere else?”
Avery shook her head. “No. I didn’t. Anyway. I’m not sure how we got started on this. It’s not important.”
“I don’t know. I think the fact that you brought it up proves that it’s at least a little bit important,” Lark said.
“I’m happy with my life,” Avery said. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”
“I know you’re happy. That doesn’t mean you never wanted anything else, though,” Hannah said. “You have a great house. And husband. And kids.”
“I know you’re allergic to kids,” Avery said.
“I’m not allergic to kids,” Hannah said. “They just don’t fit anywhere in my life.”
Lark would have fit them in. But no one asked her.
It was weird, how they could feel so linked by their past, by the fact they were sisters, and yet have no real idea of who each other was now.
There had been a time when they’d known exactly what each other thought about everything. And then Avery going through puberty had widened the gap hugely, then Hannah going after her and leaving Lark behind.
It hadn’t left a lot of time for sisters.
Lark had her own group of friends. Friends who were incredibly important to her. Friends who had introduced her to the benefits of hard cider and Doritos as a flavor combination.
Of course, that group had dissolved too.
“Kids don’t fit into your life,” Avery said. “You rearrange your life to fit kids into it.”
“A fantastic reason to go on without then,” Hannah said. “I’m just teasing. But my only goals right now revolve around the symphony.”
Hannah had always known exactly what she wanted. She’d always had her music. And she had always known which direction she was headed. Lark felt like her life had been one big redirect after another. Thinking she was on one path, ending up on another. Flying off of the new one spectacularly and landing somewhere entirely different.
Avery had gone to school for English, but she’d also always been very clear that she wanted to get married and have children. She’d come back to Bear Creek with a degree and a fiancé.
It made Lark feel like the cuckoo in the nest. If it weren’t for Gram she would have felt like she was an entirely different species to her family.
“I like kids,” Lark said. “And the idea of being in a shop the way that Grandma was... It makes me happy. I want it to be filled with people. Laughing and talking and creating. I want it to be...” She looked at the piles of things they had gone through already. “Her. Everywhere Grandma went she created something. It was like her hands were magic. That was what I learned from her. That hands could make magic, right here in the real world. And I want to give that to other people.”
“I can mend socks and make costumes and do all kinds of things thanks to Gram,” Avery said. “I’m not sure I find the kind of magic in it that you do, Lark, but it does make me feel closer to her.”
“All this stuff,” Lark said. “It’s such a treasure chest.”
“Loose ends,” Hannah said, wrinkling her nose. Lark noticed her sister didn’t have a comment on what it had meant to her. But she was right about one thing.
A lot of loose ends. So many of them. Down in Lark’s own soul. And even in the story of their grandmother. And Lark found herself wondering if there was a secret in the things her grandmother had chosen to make. In the things she hadn’t finished.
The family she didn’t talk about. The wounds that she carried. How a woman who clearly loved so much, the kids in town and her grandchildren, had left her husband and her children for as many years as she had.
As Lark had gotten older, and understood more deeply why there was friction between her mother and grandmother, as she’d realized she loved both women and that Gram’s actions were hard to reconcile, she’d wondered about her life. She’d wondered about why.
“We need to finish the quilt together,” she said.
“I don’t really quilt,” Avery said.
“You know how. And, I’m making a whole space just for this kind of thing. Wouldn’t it be great if we got together every week and worked on this? It’s Grandma’s memory quilt, and what better way to finish it than as a family?”
“I...