Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,38
God forbid you be a little bit damp.
She wondered if Rachel would even show up and help her bake. She couldn’t actually imagine her sister backing out on an obligation, but in truth, baking wasn’t Rachel’s special skill and she wouldn’t be looking forward to seeing Anna any more than Anna would be looking forward to seeing her.
She wondered, though, if she didn’t really have anything to blame but the distance between herself and her sister for the blowup that had happened. They had pulled away from each other over the years. Nothing dramatic.
But it was like the pain in their lives was a loose thread, and the more time pulled at it, the more the fabric between them unraveled and they began to separate.
She walked into the kitchen and just stood there, and then she began to assemble ingredients. It was fifteen minutes past their agreed time to meet, and she had dry ingredients, bowls and lots and lots of butter set out on the counter, and she had just come to the conclusion that Rachel probably wasn’t going to come, when her sister walked through the door.
“Oh,” Anna said. “You came.”
“Of course I did. I said that I would.”
And Rachel did like to martyr herself to a cause, even if that cause was pastries.
Anna bit back the uncharitable comment.
“Emma is really happy working at J’s.”
Rachel said that while she was taking an apron off the peg, and she was very carefully not looking at Anna.
“Oh?”
“Yes,” she said, tying the apron around her slender waist and taking a scrunchie off her wrist and putting her long red hair up in a bun on the top of her head with practiced ease. “I’m sorry that I got angry about it. She’s happy. And I think... I don’t know why I didn’t see it. I think she needs a break from being here. From the grief. I mean... He died here. We had the funeral here.”
It hit Anna then how strange it was to see her sister like this. Not knowing what to do. Not being certain. Anna had always found Rachel’s certainty about the world intimidating. Rachel just did things. What needed to be done. Always.
There was only five years between them, but sometimes Anna felt impossibly young standing next to Rachel.
Even more so now.
Rachel had buried a husband. Rachel had a daughter who was getting ready to go to college.
Rachel, for her part, looked far younger than she was, the blessed side effect of living where the sun rarely shone. That, and a combination of what Anna assumed were blessed genetics. At least, they definitely were from Wendy. They wouldn’t know about their father. Neither of them knew him.
Rachel had told her once that she had some vague memories of him, but he’d left for good before Anna was born, and she didn’t have any of her own. She’d never been particularly sad about that. He’d hurt her mother terribly. He’d abandoned his daughters.
He was a cheater.
A cheater...like her.
But she’d had reasons for what she’d done.
Maybe he did, too.
“I’m glad that she’s happy,” Anna said quickly. “And that... It makes sense. I know what it’s like...” She blinked hard, debating whether or not she should say the next thing. “I know what it’s like to need a break from your life. And that really is all I said to her. That if she really wanted something that she needed to come forward with it now. Because if you don’t you’re just going to end up hurting people later.”
“I... Thank you for saying that to her. I don’t know how to do this part.”
“Your daughter growing up?”
“No. People not needing me.”
The silence settled between them for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve always had someone to take care of. You. Emma. Jacob. You grew up.” She pulled a face. “Jacob died. Emma is getting ready to live life on her own. I don’t know what that means for me.”
She stared at Rachel, unsure of what to say. She’d never imagined her sister feeling insecure. Not ever. “You don’t...have to take care of us,” Anna said.