Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,42

talked to one of my friends, or to you, you’d ask me why I had to do it this way. Why I didn’t get counseling or leave him before I slept with someone else. I just wanted it so much. I decided not to care. I decided to go ahead and keep it to myself. I talked to everyone at church less and less. I talked to you less and less. Because I didn’t want anything to come up that might make me stop. That might turn me away from the path that I was on, because I knew it would end with me having sex with him. And I wanted to. I really wanted to.”

A tear slid down her cheek. “I’m so angry at Michael for abandoning me. And that’s what you get, isn’t it? I am the cautionary tale. I’m the scarlet woman from our childhood. I destroyed a marriage, even if it was mine. And I was punished for it. I’ll never be able to go down into town again. I’ll never be able to look anyone in the face. I lost my husband and I lost my lover, too. So there you go.”

They went on working for a while after that in silence. The only sounds in the kitchen the buzz of the fridge and the rolling pins.

“It’s funny,” Rachel said slowly. “I had kind of the same thought that you did. That I would marry a good man who would never leave me, and everything would be fine. And he did leave. He didn’t choose it, but he’s gone all the same.”

Rachel cleared her throat and continued. “Marrying a good man certainly didn’t insulate me from pain. I’m so thankful for the life that I had with him. And it was stupid of me to get bound up in being jealous of you. But I thought...a good marriage was a good marriage. The same as any. I said the other day that our vows were the same, but the men weren’t. It isn’t the same.”

Rachel shook her head definitively, and she reached out, putting her hand on Anna’s arm. “The way things were with Jacob and me... It wasn’t a sacrifice in the way people think it was. He showed me that men could be good. And he showed me that a good father could make such a difference. Emma had the best father, Anna. I’m so thankful for that. For him. He made me believe in love in a way that I didn’t before. I didn’t want to fall in love head over heels, because I didn’t want to get hurt. Mom might have made you afraid of passion causing you pain. She made me afraid of love. But I couldn’t resist him. Not at all. I was head over heels the minute that he asked me out in math class. And not just because he was more interesting in comparison to the subject.” She took her hand away from Anna’s arm and wiped her forearm over her cheek, dashing away a tear. “He made me something better. He took a girl who was scared of emotion, and he made me embrace it, all the way to the end. And I am hurt. I’m heartbroken. I don’t know what to do with this new shape my life has taken. I can’t regret the time we had together. I can’t even look at it as a sad ending. Not when it was such a happy life.”

Anna’s heart felt crushed. A martyr. She’d thought of Rachel as a martyr. And she’d forgotten about love. Because if she’d had her marriage, and had to end up caring for Thomas...she would have resented him. Resented being stuck. “Jacob was a good man.”

“Thomas isn’t,” Rachel said. “What he did to you at the church... It was wrong. What he did to you during your marriage was wrong.”

Something in Anna rejected that, too. “I don’t know what Thomas is. I think Thomas isn’t a good husband. But I don’t think he’s a bad man. That’s another thing, Rachel, and I haven’t had the words for it until now. I was afraid to talk to anyone about it because I know that Thomas has changed people’s lives for the better. And...a person doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful. To be used. And he has been. His books have...changed people. He’s brought people out of the depths of despair. He’s taught them how to hope. He’s made them feel closer