“I think it’s a good idea,” Lark said, bypassing the question she’d been asked. She was happy to linger over their plans for a moment, which would give her more space to address her own next. “A vacation rental. The house is famous. I think people will really enjoy staying here.” She took a deep breath. “I want to stay here. In town. Permanently.”
Avery and Hannah looked shocked. Her mother’s expression was smooth, except one divot on the right side of her mouth, which suggested pleasure.
“Have you ever been to a Craft Café?”
That earned her a couple more blank stares.
“They’re these cafés where you can come in and work on crafts. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory.”
“Does anyone do that?” Avery asked.
“Yes. They’re getting more popular in places, and I think it could work here. We get all the tourism in the summer, and the kinds of people who move here are... Well, they have a lot of leisure time on their hands. They’re either retired, or they have family money of some kind.”
“What about your illustrations?”
Her heart squeezed uncomfortably. “I... I’m taking a break from it. But I have the money to put into the place. I don’t need to use Gram’s. But we all own The Miner’s House and I am proposing that I use it for business. So, I need all of you to be on board with it.”
“I don’t have plans for it but...”
“Do you have a business plan?”
Her mom and Hannah spoke at the same time.
“I do have a business plan,” Lark said.
And she was thankful for her friend Rusty who had told her in no uncertain terms that “starting a crowdfunding campaign is not a business plan.”
Then had helped her make an actual business plan.
“And I know it’s going to take some time and money to rehab the place, but, if we’re working on the house here, I can easily get the same crew to go down the street and do some work there too. Two houses, one stone. Or one phone call.”
She took a breath. “I sold everything. I mean, all my furniture. And my lease was up. I... I want a fresh start here.”
The deep irony of looking for a fresh start here. This place that had made her, then unmade her. Tearing out each and every stitch that had held her together so she’d been forced to go off in pieces and find a way to repair what was.
It wasn’t holding. That was the problem.
All these years later. Nothing was healed, just hidden.
She felt like she’d left pieces splintered of herself all over the country. On rivers and lakes in the Midwest, in the Atlantic Ocean. In different towns and different cities, different jobs and groups of friends.
She’d been searching for things there, but it had only left her more fragmented. And none of it had brought her healing.
She’d been everywhere else looking for it. But she hadn’t been back home, not really. Visits with her parents, the will reading, the funeral, that wasn’t the same as really being here. When she came back she didn’t spend time on Main Street in town, didn’t visit old friends. She usually holed up in her parents’ house and went between there and The Miner’s House to spend time with Gram.
“If you can open this shop, you’ll stay?” Her mother’s expression was neutral, and Lark couldn’t really tell what her feelings were on the subject.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then try it,” Mary said. “Why not?”
“A ringing endorsement,” Lark said. “What about you two?”
“I figured I’d just line up the renovations for The Dowell House,” Hannah said, in her typical, straightforward fashion. “Avery and I have already gone back and forth on furniture, and I ordered some.”
“You didn’t ask me?” Lark asked.
Avery and Hannah both had the decency to look slightly guilty. “I didn’t think you’d care,” Avery said.
But they hadn’t asked.
Their skepticism about her ability to run a business combined with this felt...
Like something you’ve earned?
She ignored that. Even if it was true.
She felt nearly divided sometimes, into before and after. Before she’d left home, and after. When she’d been young she’d been...well, young. And probably a little bit spoiled because she was the youngest. She’d always wanted to have fun, to have good feelings because bad ones had been unbearable and she didn’t know how to keep them in, and when they came out it was always a whole meltdown.
And then after...
She’d just stopped letting herself show those feelings. She’d stopped...letting herself want so much. And if her family thought she was sort of a shiftless drifter then fine. It suited her. It kept her a little mysterious, which also suited her.
Except now you’re mad about it. And hey, you’ve moved home. So much for your distance.
“Do whatever you want with The Miner’s House,” Hannah said. “I can’t run a shop and I don’t need a little house.”
“Same,” Avery said.
It was, maybe, the most tepid unanimous yes of all time, but Lark would take it.
She put her hand on top of the swatch book, and held the silver Christmas ornaments to it, looking at the silver glinting against the worn leather. Her grandmother would approve of the idea, she knew she would.
Gram had loved art. And she had fostered the love of it in Lark. In all of them, really. The Miner’s House had been the only place the three of them had ever gotten along.
“I’ll keep a bowl of candy on the counter,” she said.
Because her gram would want the kids to be able to come in for candy still.
She just knew it.
“What’s that?” Mary pointed to the book that was on the table next to Lark.
“It’s not your business plan, is it?” Hannah asked.
Lark rolled her eyes. “No. Even I’m not a big enough hipster to put my business plan in a leather bound book.”
“I don’t know about that,” Avery said.
“I don’t know what it is. I grabbed it off the top of the craft boxes before I came down. I wanted to see what was in it.”
It was worn, the edges looking chewed and tattered. The leather cover was pale in the places where someone’s hands might have rested while holding it. She opened it up, and saw small, neat handwriting on the first page.
Memory quilt.