Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,53

at the end of the day he’s just a man like any other. Unless Anna has a chance to stand up in church and share her side of it...you won’t know the whole truth, will you? Unless you’re able to blend the two perspectives into one, then you really don’t know what happened. Who can know the truth of a marriage from the outside of it?”

“You’re taking this very personally,” Lillian said. “I just wanted to express concern for you. Because I feel that you did work very hard to build up a reputation in the community that was beyond reproach... And now—”

“A reputation doesn’t matter very much if you don’t have your family. And I’m certainly not going to distance myself from my daughters because people can’t stop from wagging their tongues down in town. I work with tourists, anyway, thank God. And I would rather see them. At least if this is what I get from the locals.”

That seemed to wake up Cynthia. “That’s enough, Lillian. I’m not here for this kind of talk in my house, or anywhere.”

Wendy stood, shaking with rage, because it was too little, too late, as far as she was concerned. She went over to the sideboard, collecting her cheese platter. “This is coming back with me.”

And before anyone could speak again, she swept out of the house and out onto the cold street.

Which felt warmer than that house, particularly after that.

And she knew that it was likely shock that had prevented anyone but Cynthia from speaking up in her or Anna’s defense, but it didn’t much matter.

She had been left on her own to defend.

That, she supposed, was common enough.

And something she was used to.

She had forgotten. Somewhere along the way, she had forgotten.

That everything she was now had been to protect Rachel and Anna.

The way she had reacted to what Anna had done, even just on the inside... She had forgotten who she was. And she had let her fear over Anna being in pain transform into anger, into disappointment.

But nothing that she had, nothing that she was, mattered at all if she lost her relationship with Anna. If she let her own knee-jerk judgment affect the way she treated her daughter.

Because how, then, was she any better than Lillian? She wasn’t. Her job wasn’t to find out the facts and then decide how she felt after that. Her job was to stand by her daughter.

She was going to do just that.

She might eat this entire cheese tray by herself first, but she was going to do it.

She only hoped that she didn’t have too much damage control to do.

That she didn’t have too much damage to repair.

14

Inspection today. I negotiated with the Coast Guard to allow me to paint the walls approved colors. Mint and lavender. If I can’t have sun outside, I will make it in here.

—FROM THE DIARY OF JENNY HANSEN, MARCH 5, 1900

RACHEL

Rachel pulled into the parking lot of the plumbing store and put her head on the steering wheel. It was rainy and cold, as April—even late April—on the Oregon Coast could decide to be at any given moment, and she didn’t want to be shopping for plumbing parts.

But you didn’t always get what you wanted in life.

She was just sick of being the poster child for that particular truth.

She got out of the car and scurried quickly into the store, dodging raindrops as she went.

They were having their first dinner at the inn tonight, and people from town had made reservations, as well as some current guests.

And, of course, they were having a plumbing issue.

Thank God it was a contained, standard sink-plumbing issue, and not an explosive, toilet-plumbing issue. Rachel was intimately acquainted with both.

Rachel, Wendy and Anna had not run an inn by themselves for this many years without learning how to fix things. From basic electrical to plumbing, they were all pretty accomplished in household repairs.

Repairs, epic stain removal—a hazard of working in the hospitality industry—and deep cleaning.

The house was old, and they’d fixed things when the occasion arose more times than Rachel could count.

Jacob had joked often throughout their marriage that his wife was handier than he was.

And it was true. She was.

Jacob had a flair for the artistic, a brilliant eye for photography, and his work had hung all over the different buildings on the property for years.

But he couldn’t fix anything.

Rachel had to go buy a U joint, and it would be easy enough to repair the pipe under the