Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,40

for me. And that isn’t fair. It’s not fair, because he wasn’t a burden. He was my great joy. He was the love of my life. But sometimes I just... I got tired, and I got sad. I wanted things to be like they were. I wanted us to be able to have what we did. Because I loved that. We found something that worked. We found happiness. It wasn’t like it was a long slog of sadness. It wasn’t. But it was hard sometimes, watching you two. Watching you get to be a wife the way you were. I let it make us distant. And knowing it wasn’t perfect now doesn’t change how I saw it then.”

Anna didn’t know what to say to that, because she would never have guessed that being around her was hard for Rachel for those reasons, not for a moment. Not when Anna could see plainly that Jacob had more affection for Rachel in his every breath than Thomas had for her, particularly in the end.

And she had to think of her own whys. Which she’d been avoiding for a long, long time now.

She’d hidden her own issues with Rachel, with her life, behind the careful, perfect pastor’s-wife facade she’d built around herself. She’d used it to keep her own feelings a mystery from even herself. But it was all crumbling now.

She could see clearly now that Jacob and Rachel had been together in a way that had worked a sore spot into her own heart over the years.

Because after those family dinners, she’d imagined them together. How they talked, laughed, behaved, kissed, after everyone had gone home.

Thomas just closed the door on her and went back to his important work.

“I pulled away from you,” Anna admitted finally. “Because watching the way that he looked at you made my heart break. Not because I felt sorry for you, and I know that maybe I should have. It made my heart break because I’m selfish, and I could see that he... He loved you. He loved you so much, Rachel.”

“Thomas loves you.”

“No,” she said definitely. “And if he did, he doesn’t now.”

Rachel paused for a moment, then met her sister’s gaze. “I was afraid to ask this before. I was being selfish. But I want to understand now. Why did you do it?” There wasn’t any condemnation in the question. And Anna knew if she wanted Rachel to understand her, she had to give her a chance to understand.

But how could she do that when she hardly understood herself?

What had seemed clear while she was in it felt muddled in the rubble.

Anna blinked, and she rolled the dough again, created another layer. “Do you remember what it was like in school when a boy would smile at you and it made you feel warm all over? And it could make your whole day. Your whole day could center around that smile. I remember feeling that way about Thomas. He was so...important. And he cared so much about everyone. He cared so much about being a good person. I admired that. And I wanted it. Because you know... Mom always made it sound like marriage was the most important thing. The absolute most important thing for us to do was marry a good man. So that we didn’t end up in the same situation as her. And also, to not have sex before we got married so we wouldn’t get pregnant.”

Rachel laughed. “I failed at that.” She rolled and folded another layer.

“You did?”

A sly smile curved her sister’s lips. “I slept with Jacob before we got married. I couldn’t help myself, in spite of Mom’s pregnancy fearmongering.”

“Well, I didn’t sleep with Thomas. I waited. We both did. It was important to him. And it was important to me for the same reason. But that’s the thing. I loved that about him. I loved that he could wait. I loved that he had restraint. And that he wanted to do the right thing. I knew that if I could just marry him that my life would be perfect. That it would be everything that I was supposed to be. Rachel, I knew that it was the right thing. But somewhere along the way he quit smiling at me. And then he quit looking at me. And I realized that I lived with a stranger.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Yes. Not with his fists. And, no, he didn’t sleep with another woman, but he... I thought I lost the ability