Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,60

those out at sea right on back home.

“So,” Anna said slowly, “between us, we’re Job and Judas. And people are desperate to believe they could never be either one.”

“Exactly. Not righteous enough to be tested, not weak enough to betray.”

“If only it were that simple.”

“The thing is, any of us could be either one, depending on the circumstances. We’re all so much weaker and so much stronger than we think.”

Anna hoped so. Because her weakness had been tested already and she needed some of that strength Rachel seemed to believe existed in everyone to be found somewhere inside her. “I’m going to need a lot more strength than I’ve got right now to get through this.”

She wondered if Rachel would ask if she was going to leave. She almost hoped she would. So they could discuss it. So Anna could sort through that thought and decide what she wanted.

The problem was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.

And if her sister did suggest it...

But she didn’t.

“I got asked on a date,” Rachel said.

Anna looked at her, shocked by that. “A date?”

“Yes.” She paused. “And I understand. Why Michael making you feel pretty stopped the world for you. I’ve never thought of Mark that way at all. I—I still don’t. And even then his attention felt good because I haven’t had anything like that in ages. And knowing a random guy could think I was pretty, well...”

Anna nodded, her heart clenching tight. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“It’s like you said. You were afraid to look too deeply at what you missed, at what you didn’t have because it would make you discontent. I didn’t have a choice but to decide my life was fine. Jacob wasn’t doing anything to me. Him being sick wasn’t about me, it was about him. Of course, it was hard. Of course, I missed what we couldn’t have anymore. Of course, I wished... Of course, I wished we could just...have a miracle. Or an alternate reality. Something where he wasn’t sick. But I could never ever let myself wish for a different life for me. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

Anna touched her sister’s arm. “It’s okay if you wanted one sometimes, though. It doesn’t mean you didn’t love him.”

Tears slipped down Rachel’s cheeks and she didn’t have a chance to brush them away before the wind carried them off for her.

“Are you going to...? Are you going to go?” Anna asked.

“I can’t go,” she said.

“Why not?”

“He hasn’t been...gone long enough, surely.”

“What’s long enough?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I feel like there can’t be a long enough. For twenty years of marriage? Twenty great years?”

“Do you want to go?”

“I don’t... I mean... It wasn’t like him asking me was exciting because of who it was. But it was nice to have someone notice me. Actually me.”

Anna made an understanding sound in the back of her throat. “I mean, maybe I’m not the person you should ask, though. About the appropriate time to start dating a new man. Since I don’t exactly have a grasp on that.”

The laugh that Rachel let out went over the waves this time, a short, sharp burst, followed by a string of laughter. She put her hand on her stomach, doubling over.

And then Anna couldn’t help but laugh, too. Until the tears were falling down her face, because it was either laugh or cry.

And out here, under the low-hanging sky, the mist all around them, the light from that lighthouse still cut through. And maybe that’s what this was. Maybe it was what they needed.

There was no one here to see that they were laughing, anyway. At the sharp, painful, absurd things. There was nothing to do but laugh, because it was either that or cry forever. And right now, Anna was doing both.

Without judgment.

With her sister.

“How did we end up here?” Rachel asked when their laughter had died down.

“I don’t know. It definitely wasn’t my plan when I was a little girl. My MASH game said that I was going to have one husband and live in a shoe in Italy. Not one husband, one lover and end up in my childhood home in Oregon.”

“Yeah, I was supposed to have a Lamborghini,” Rachel said. “That didn’t pan out, either.”

Silence fell again and Anna thought about her sister’s date. Yeah, maybe it seemed soon, but a date wasn’t marriage. And she knew that Rachel had been a caregiving wife in the end, and that her role had been different than what it originally was.