“I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t just your journey. That baby was part of me too. And you... I cared about you.”
“You didn’t come after me.” She lashed out then, because how dare he? He went back to another woman and he thought she should have done something else? “Should I have come to your wedding with my baby bump, Ben? What should I have done?”
He stared at her, his expression stone. “I don’t know, Lark. I don’t know. But you’ve had sixteen years to decide how you feel about this, can I have more than five minutes?”
It was reasonable. What he was asking for. But she felt desperate. For understanding she didn’t know if she deserved. To be held and comforted by a man who needed some comfort of his own.
“Ben, please don’t be mad at me.”
“I am furious at you,” he said, his eyes blazing. “Furious at life. At...at not even being able to regret this properly because I can never regret the choices that led to Taylor, not ever. But this... We had a baby.”
“Yes,” she said, helpless anger fueling her now. At everything. That she had to do this. That Keira was back. “We did. I carried her, Ben. I lost her. I have lived with that every day and I... You just went on and had your life. You got to have a life. And I know Keira hurt you and left you, but I...lost you. And I lost Mara. And I have never been the same. I have carried this...” She took a sharp, jagged breath. “And I love you, Ben. I do. But I don’t know. This is too hard. It’s too hard.”
“Lark...”
“I just... I love you and I’m mad at you. And I’m mad at her. And I’m mad at me. For indulging in this fantasy.”
“It’s not a fantasy,” he said, his voice filled with grit. “I’m here.” He grabbed her hand and put it on his chest. “I’m right here. And no, it’s not simple. But we don’t have to run.”
She shook her head. “I have so much... I just don’t think we can make this work.”
“I do.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
Lark waited for the truth to make her feel free. But instead she just felt broken.
And she was so very tired of broken.
34
I will beg him if I have to. I will get on my knees, like he got onto his. It became clear to me on the train home. I turned down something real for a fantasy. The stars in the sky for beads sewn onto a gown. I want the stars again.
Ava Moore’s diary, 1924
Mary
It was quilting night, and Mary was holding not only her quilt square, but Dot’s diary.
She’d read some of it to Joe last night, who’d listened while he’d worked on his projects in the shop. She was trying to share more. And it started with this.
Mary had been casually reading the diary for a while, an entry every time she sat down to work on the wedding dress. She was... It was heartbreaking to read the story of the young woman who had lost the love of her life. This wedding dress... Mary was beginning to understand that it had never been worn. That it had been a symbol of love, and the promise of a union that had never occurred.
And it made her feel a sense of purpose with the quilting that she hadn’t before.
To turn the stress into something. Because Dot had loved the man she’d lost in World War II very much.
And she had suffered. Having to give up her baby as she had.
And the stress... Turning it into something more felt like Mary was honoring that sacrifice. That loss.
There was something beautiful about the diary. Even though it was tragic.
Because it made her think. About all the things that people before her had survived.
And her family would survive all these things too.
They’d uncovered a lot of secret sadness in these past weeks, but revealing it hadn’t created it. It was just forcing them all to deal with the hidden things, brought to light now.
It was hard, but good in so many ways. And it was changing Mary.
Making her face some things she’d shoved down deep years ago.
When she walked into the Craft Café, Avery was there already. And Hannah followed right behind her.
Hannah was also holding a diary. That red one they’d found among her mother’s things.
“Have you been reading?”
“Yeah,” she said. “A little bit. It sounds like she was kind of a movie star. Ava Moore. I wonder if that’s why Gram got her dress? She was definitely in some silent films back in the twenties.”
“That sounds like a nicer story than the one I’m reading.”
“Really?”
“The wedding dress was never worn,” Mary said. “The young man that she was supposed to marry... He died.”
Hannah frowned. “That’s awful.”
They all sat in the circle, and Lark put a tray of cheese out on the tables, along with some wine.
“Anabeth lost her husband,” Avery said. “The woman who had the curtains. And she had to go make a whole new life. Reading about her journey I realized that I’ve had this...sense of dread now for a really long time. It was so much a part of me that I didn’t even realize I had it. And now I feel like I can make something completely... Completely new if I want.” A smile touched her lips. “It’s the most incredible thing. Because I started this quilt, and I felt so connected to this fabric. And it’s this woman’s journey. From grief to something new. I feel like her, arriving at that new place.”
Silently, Mary picked up Dot’s diary, a marker where she had left off. The discussion about all the different fabrics, the different women, made her feel compelled to look at it now.
“I think I ruined things with Josh,” Hannah said. “But I wasn’t going to
