“Keira,” Lark said. “I’m sorry. But I don’t think what happened sixteen years ago matters.” It did. To Lark. It always would. But it had nothing to do with... This tangled disaster that was happening now. With the fact that the man she was in love with’s ex-wife was back, when her wanting him back had been the thing that had dragged them apart the first time.
“Are you sleeping with him?” Keira asked.
“Yes,” Ben said. “She is. And it’s not any of your business anymore. Because like I said, I’m not your husband.”
“We have a child, Ben.”
Those words hit Lark like a bullet.
Because they’d had a child too.
Lark stood there, and she waited for the feeling that she was losing her grip on him. But it didn’t come. This was the showdown they hadn’t had back then. She hadn’t asked him to choose, that was the thing. And she had a feeling she wouldn’t have to ask him to now.
“I went crazy,” Keira said. “I just... I lost my mind for a while, and I don’t want to be away from you anymore.”
Ben shook his head. “I want you back here for Taylor. Not for me. We weren’t happy, Keira. You know that. You were the one that told me that. How can you stand there now and tell me you want to be back in that?”
“Because I... I tried being out there, I don’t know who I am. I don’t like it. I miss this town. I miss you. And...”
“You can’t fix some things,” he said. “I hope for Taylor’s sake, you can fix that. But I’m not in love with you.”
“Because of her?” Keira asked.
“Because of us,” he said. “My feelings for Lark are separate.”
Keira turned and rushed out of the garage. And Lark felt torn. Keira had been her friend. And she was angry at her, weirdly, mostly because of Taylor. But she still... She couldn’t hate her.
“I’ll be back,” she said to Ben.
She left the garage, following after Keira. “Wait,” she said, two paces behind her on the sidewalk. “Let’s talk.”
“What’s there to talk about? You were always, always waiting on the sidelines to take him. You slept him when we broke up just after high school. And you immediately started sleeping with him now.”
“You’ve been gone for three years. And I didn’t come back for him. But even if I did... You’re right. I love him. And I have loved him for a long time. It’s not to spite you. It just is. And I love your daughter too. And you hurt her, you hurt her really badly. So... If you want to have something here, it’s not going to be with him. If you want to repair something it has to be with Taylor, and you have to mean it, or you have to leave now.”
“She’s not your daughter, Lark, you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
Lark breathed through that pain. “But it’s our life,” she said. “Mine and Ben and Taylor’s. We are... We’re trying to make something. And we can include you. Because of Taylor. Because... You were my friend too. But you don’t get to stand there and be angry, not when you’re the one that walked away.”
“You would never have left him, would you?”
Lark shook her head. “No.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Except I did. I wasn’t going to fight you for him. And in hindsight, I kind of think I should have. So this is me, standing my ground now. I don’t want to be enemies. But you have to be realistic. You can’t just come back and expect to slip right in to the life you had. If you want to come back here, you have to make a new one.”
It was what she’d done. It was what she was doing. And maybe she and Ben would be able to work this out. She didn’t know. Because it was tangled and messy and complicated. But he was the one that made her whole. That brought together all the pieces of who she was.
“This just... It’s too hard,” Keira said.
Lark could relate to that feeling. She’d said it herself only recently. “All the good things are.”
“I just feel like I... I’ve made so many mistakes, Lark. Coming back means that I actually have to deal with them.”
And Lark had no idea if they would untangle this. If they could all find a way to be happy. But she’d learned one thing.
“We all make mistakes,” Lark said. “But you’ve never gone so far that you can’t come back home again.”
Hannah
“Did you really call us all together to have a picnic at a graveyard?” Avery asked.
“I did,” Hannah said.
She hugged the picnic basket to her chest as they walked along the trails of the hilltop cemetery. They had all been to Gram’s grave after the funeral, but she didn’t know if any of them had been up here since.
It was a great spot. With a view of the entire town below.
It looked like a miniature, little brick buildings with green trees on every block.
She sat down, right next to Addie’s grave. Dorothy Adeline Dowell.
“Hello,” Lark said, putting her hand on the gravestone. “I wish I would’ve known you better.”
Avery looked at the other gravestones. “Anabeth Dowell,” she said, pointing to one. “Buried next to John Dowell.”
“And Ava Dowell.” Hannah sighed. “Right next to William Dowell. That’s why I wanted us all to come up here. I finished Ava’s diary. The story of the dress.” She took her quilt squares from her bag, glittering with pieces of Ava’s dress. “She had a dream of being famous. Of getting away from here...but it all went wrong. And she had to come home. If I’d read that story at a
