Confessions from the Quilting Circle by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2021-02-04T18:21:25+00:00

16

His wife and little girl died of fever. He told me after he took me for a ride to a field where he said we’d find bluebonnets. He gave one to me and told me his story. Right now bluebonnets feel like home.

Anabeth Snow’s diary, 1864

Avery

The last time she was in the police station in Bear Creek, she had been there to help her daughter sell Girl Scout cookies.

She had been walking on her own two feet, letting Peyton move ahead of her. Peyton had been skipping, her ponytail bouncing as she had approached the uniformed officers and asked for their support in helping her earn an owl keychain, for which she had to sell one hundred and fifty boxes.

She had walked out with a full order form and Avery had listened to her chatter the whole way home, her excited voice filling the car.

It had felt perfect.

Not now. It was dark now, and Hannah and Lark were on either side of her, their arms linked through hers, bracing her. It was only their strength that held her up, that propelled her forward. Without them, she didn’t know if she would be able to stay standing.

For two years she’d taken it. More than taken it, she’d hid it for him. And for more years than that she’d pretended their relationship wasn’t corroding.

One day she’d been cleaning the silver glasses they’d used at their wedding and had noticed a black blotch at the center and for some reason, she’d quit polishing it. She’d watched it grow. For years she’d watched the tarnish on that silver spread, grow, and there had been something satisfying in it.

It was them, she realized now.

That silver had been her private homage to their degradation.

So she was here now, making public what had been a shameful secret.

On some level she had known. She had known that it was getting to this point. She had hoped—no, she had prayed. She had prayed that it would be an anomaly. That it would stay that way. That it would happen once. Twice. But it was escalating.

He had cared, at least for a while, about making sure that none of his fits of rage were visible anywhere on her body. That nobody would know that he had vented his frustration, her body a journal of his professional disappointments, his personal inconveniences. Sore muscles and bruises on her arms, impressions of his fingers dug deep into the upper part of her arm. She had learned to carry that over the last couple of years. Had learned to push it down and just not think about it.

She had compartmentalized. Turned him into good David and bad David and made sure they were never the same man in her mind. But now, everything had collided. And as she’d been looking at herself in the mirror and laying on as much concealer as she possibly could, she had to actually look herself in the eyes while she contended with a mark left behind by her husband.

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