Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,43
to God. He’s made them feel joy. And what was I going to do? Talk about his failures? Invalidate what he’s done?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “But...making yourself the bad guy can’t be the solution, either.”
“I don’t know what I am.”
She’d thought her sister was a martyr. Maybe she’d been the martyr the whole time.
She felt like the kitchen had been turned over on its head, but the dough, the rolling pins and everything else were right in the same position.
“Well,” Rachel said finally, “there’s nothing stopping you from being whoever you want.”
That felt like a revelation, and it washed over her like a wave. Maybe she had been the martyr. But that didn’t matter now. Because now wasn’t the end.
“Isn’t that the whole point of a new beginning?” Rachel asked. “Starting again?”
“I’m afraid,” Anna said.
Because now she felt like she was staring at the horizon line of the ocean, at the angry waves, knowing she was going to have to cross them. Knowing she was staring at vast, endless possibilities that she would have to work through, and it was going to be hard.
“Me, too,” Rachel said. She seemed to consider something for a long moment. “We don’t have to be alone in this, though. We’re both here at the same time.”
Anna looked down at her hands, down at the dough. “We are.”
“We’re sisters,” Rachel said, the words coming slowly, as if she was testing them out. “And we’re both still here, alive and...if not well, then just alive. We didn’t miss a chance at having a relationship, a friendship. We don’t have to be alone.”
“Okay,” Anna said. “Okay.”
“You chose to start again. I didn’t. But in the end, it doesn’t matter, because what we have to do is the same. So now we have to...find that life.”
She stared down at the puff pastry. They’d rolled and folded and created layer after layer after they’d talked.
They’d found new layers with each other.
“Mom never wanted us to be heartbroken. Not like she was.” Anna didn’t know how she would begin to repair the relationship with her mother.
“Of course she didn’t. She didn’t want us to be hurt. Life happens. We can’t be protected from it forever.”
“And you would be so relaxed about that when it came to Emma?”
“No. I’m not relaxed about anything when it comes to Emma.”
Anna smiled slyly. “Well, you let her have her job.”
“Yes. I did. One point to me,” Rachel said.
“Yes. And no more, not if you’re going to keep handling the dough like that.”
“You’re so critical.”
“And you’re going to make sure it doesn’t laminate properly.”
“Well, you can put the failed croissants in a basket and label them Rachel’s Follies.”
Suddenly, Anna wished it were that simple. That she could bundle up the misshapen aspects of her life and put them in a labeled basket.
Anna’s Follies.
But she was living them instead.
Rachel was right. It was the chance to start over. And she really wouldn’t go back. Not even if she could.
So starting over was what they were going to have to do.
She was just glad that she didn’t have to do it alone.
And maybe just like dough, and just like her relationship with her sister, it wasn’t about sailing toward new, infinite horizons.
Maybe it was just about making things better. Layer by layer.
12
Sometimes the right thing isn’t the fun thing. But the fun thing hurts later on. Still, if he’s cute enough the fun thing is worth it.
—FROM THE DIARY OF SUSAN BRIGHT, AUGUST 1961, DURING HER TIME AT THE CAPE HOPE LIGHTHOUSE
WENDY
It was much more common for a guest to stay at the inn for two or three days than it was for them to linger for two weeks. John Hansen was lingering. And he made Wendy feel like she was on the verge of a hot flash, which she hadn’t had for more than ten years.
It was strange, being exposed to a man who made her feel quite this off-kilter.
When it came to swearing off men, Wendy was a champion. She had been hurt so badly by Anna and Rachel’s father that it had been the simplest thing in the world to simply shut down that part of herself and focus on raising her girls and running her business.
She was attracted to John, though.
Wednesday morning he had been the only guest, and Wendy had been the only one preparing the food.
She felt a little bit guilty that she had time to think. Time away from the tension between everyone. Emma and Rachel, Anna and Rachel,