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.

On the next page was a graph. A design for a quilt, with each piece laid out on the grid.

“Grandma was making a quilt,” she said. “This is...”

She turned the page. There was a scrap of lace affixed to it, and underneath it in that same handwriting it said: wedding dress.

“It’s like a swatch book. With fabric for the quilt.”

“That’s interesting,” Hannah said. She got up from her seat and move down to the end of the table, peering over Lark’s shoulder. “What else?”

She flipped the page where there was a very colored fabric in silk and velvet. “‘Parlor curtains.’” She went to the next page, which had a fine, beaded silk. “‘Party dress.’”

“There’s all kinds of stuff like this up in the attic,” she said. “Remember when Gram used to let us go through her collection and choose things to craft with? Broken earrings and old yarn and fabric. And always tons of unfinished projects lying around. Obviously she intended to make this quilt. Maybe she even started it. And it’s somewhere up there with all of the...the unfinished things.”