Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,130
I—I have no idea how to let myself have that.”
“You just have to get out of your own way,” Wendy said. “It’s as simple and as hard as that. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned over these last months, it’s that life moves on whether you wanted to or not. Things happen to us, and we do things that have consequences. But in the end, we get to choose what to do with the changes. Nobody gets to tell us what we are. Nobody but us.” She turned and pulled an egg soufflé out of the oven just in time. “And you don’t have to know right now. None of you do. We don’t need any epiphanies here. Not right at this moment. Because I’ll be here no matter what. Always. Because I love you right where you’re at.”
And then they all crowded in around each other in that tiny kitchen, and Wendy took all of her girls into her arms. And the real beauty of it was, she didn’t have to regret any of the years past. She might have found something new, something special, the revelation that she could have things she hadn’t previously believed she could. But she’d had the most important things all along, and she had them still.
She had her family. And they had her. No matter what. And they would grow and change even more over the years, but that fact would remain. Always.
36
Love takes as many shapes as the ocean here. Sometimes it roars, sometimes it sneaks to the shore, a massive wave that consumes with no warning. I have come to love the place. I have come to love the people. I have come to love the man. It is not what thought I wanted. But it is what I need.
—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, MARCH 11, 1904
RACHEL
Rachel jerked open her front door and nearly ran into a young man standing there. His short, dark hair was sticking out at odd angles, and he had grease spots on his shirt, and his forearms.
Even without the grease, Rachel would’ve been pretty sure who she was looking at.
“Can I help you, Luke?”
He looked slightly surprised when she used his name, but didn’t express it. “Is Emma here?”
“Well, that depends. Are you going to upset her again? In which case, no, she isn’t here.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Did she tell you...? What happened?”
“She told me enough.” She desperately didn’t want further details on what was going on between Emma and her possibly-ex-boyfriend. It wasn’t her business. She didn’t need to know anything beyond what her daughter had offered up freely.
“I don’t want to hurt her again,” he said. “It just took me a few days to get my head on straight.”
“Is this going to be a pattern?” Rachel crossed her arms and regarded him. He looked tired. Much more so than someone his age should. She hoped that he was emotionally tortured by the whole situation. Because poor Emma was heartbroken, and if the boy wasn’t also heartbroken, then he didn’t deserve to breathe the same air that Emma did, much less speak to her.
“No,” he said, certainty in his tone. “I’m a hard worker. I know how to do that. I know how to fix things when they’re under a hood. I don’t know anything about...loving somebody. But I’m trying to learn. Because I do love her. I just... I need to... I need another chance.”
There was something about what he said that made her heart turn over. Maybe because she related to him a little bit too much. Not because she didn’t know how to love—she did. But because she didn’t quite know how to love Adam. Or how to accept that she might be in love. And she had handled it badly.
Whether his age, or thirty-nine, she supposed that second chances would always be necessary. She didn’t know if he would find that comforting. But she did.
She nodded slowly. “Well, if Emma loves you as much as I think she does, then I think she’ll be more than willing to give you that second chance. But don’t ask for too many of them. And when she needs one...give it to her. That’s all I ask.”
She couldn’t say they were too young, because she had fallen in love at eighteen, and it had been real. A love that would stay with her always, even if the man hadn’t been able to stay with her as many years as she might have wanted.