She was still sorting through everything that she and Avery had talked about. Sorting through her own complicated feelings about what had happened to her. About how it changed the way she saw herself.
She had punished herself. And punished herself and punished herself for years.
Like she was on a mission to make sure that she could never really come back home.
As if she was afraid that if she did she would never want to go back to Boston. Like she was protecting herself from going back to Josh, and she had to ask herself why.
For the first time she wondered... If her future was actually here. And not in Boston. And the girl that she’d been for so many years rebelled against that. She lay down on the bed, and looked at Ava’s diary. She pulled it closer to herself, and looked at it. Then she opened back to where she’d been, and started to read.
And of course, it wasn’t a happy story.
Were any of them? Her grandmother had lost everything, and then this poor woman... With all these hopes and dreams. It felt way too close to Hannah’s own life.
And when she talked of home, and how it was a dream she could never have, Hannah lowered her head, and she cried.
She had never wanted to be the girl who crawled back home.
And she didn’t have to. But what did you do when a dream didn’t satisfy that hollow ache inside of you? What did you do when you were chasing something you didn’t think existed?
There had been a time when she had believed so firmly that satisfaction would come from her career. That she would reach a place with it where she finally felt special enough. Where she finally felt like she had shown everyone, like she had proved that she has everything she had set out to be.
But she wasn’t finding it.
And she was starting to think there was just something missing from inside of herself.
And in these quiet moments here, and when she walked the streets of Bear Creek, when Josh held her in his arms, she had felt a resonance that she hadn’t been feeling in Boston. Not anymore.
After she dried her tears, she read on.
About the time she got to the end, she was breathless, desperate to see if Ava would make it back home.
He didn’t ask me to beg. He brought me to my feet and wiped my tears away. I told him everything. Everything. He said: You have never gone so far that you can’t come back home again. And he will be my home. We married quickly after that. I have not returned to simple living defeated. Rather I have seen enough of life to know there is beauty in the quiet. And that special is not what the world thinks of you, but rather what you carry in your heart.
Ava Dowell’s diary, 1925
Ava Dowell.
Goose bumps stood up on her arms.
“Ava Dowell.”
She pulled out her computer, and started searching, and there it was. Ava Moore Dowell.
“Great-grandma.” This was her grandmother’s mother. The mother that her grandma hadn’t wanted to confess her shortcomings to. This woman who had made mistakes, who had needed forgiveness, and who had found it with her husband. They would have given it to Gram. They would have. Because they knew. They knew what it was to love through all those things.
How would things have changed if Ava had given this diary to her daughter. If Gram had known that her mother had gone away to Hollywood, had found herself pregnant and alone. Had been so badly treated by people she’d trusted, had come back home and found forgiveness with the man who had loved her first.
How would everything have been different.
If they had known not that they had come from a long line of well-respected people in the town of Bear Creek. But that they had come from a long line of women who were flawed and loved anyway.
What if they had known their whole history.
You can always come home.
Hannah dried her tears, and sent a text to her sisters.
36
I thought I would try writing some of my own story. To keep, and maybe someday to share. I never thought I could learn something new in this small town that I hated so much. But I have. I am not what happened to me. I am not only music and mistakes. And coming back home isn’t giving up.
Hannah Ashwood’s diary, June 21, 2021
Lark
When she walked into the garage that night, it wasn’t the sight of Ben that sent her heart slamming against her breastbone. It was the familiar figure, with the petite frame and glossy dark hair. And Ben looked up, his expression weary.
And when Keira turned around, Lark could see she didn’t look any better. She’d been crying, that much was obvious. And Lark felt like she was standing very much somewhere she shouldn’t be.
Except... Ben was her... Well she’d told him they were nothing. That it was too hard. But Ben was hers. Ben was hers, and she loved Taylor. And she had a right to be here.
“I was just... Hoping to talk to you,” she said, directing that at Ben.
“We’ll talk,” he said. He didn’t ask her to leave.
“Lark,” Keira said. “I... I didn’t realize that you were back.”
“Yeah,” Lark said. “I... Heard that you were back. When I talked to your daughter.”
“Oh, she talked to you? She didn’t talk to me.” Keira was instantly defensive and Lark had no idea what to do with that.
“I asked her to, but she didn’t feel comfortable with it. I’ve been here. You have been gone for the last three years.”
“You’ve been here?” Keira asked. She looked over at Ben. “How long has she been here?”
“I’m not your husband, Keira. So it’s not really your business.”
“Oh, it’s not my business. Right. Is this where we all pretend that I don’t know that you two had sex?”
Lark looked up at Ben, whose face was set in stone.
“When
