First Witches Club

Chapter One Nora

Chapter One

Nora

If your life is going to fall apart over a man, he should be hotter.

Like your husband?

The swift comeback from Nora’s subconscious made her grimace as she stood in front of her neighbor’s hospital room door, flowers clutched tightly in her hand.

Her life hadn’t fallen apart. She and Ben were just separated.

She stared at the whiteboard by the door. Alexandra Stone.

Alexandra was the most organized, pulled-together, formidable woman in Hemlock, Oregon. She and Christopher were a power couple. Though Nora had always thought Christopher was getting the better end of the deal.

Nora lived across the street from Alexandra and Christopher, and Nora worked with her on community art and writing classes for kids in foster care, but when Christopher’s affair had come out, Alexandra, who spearheaded more committees than Nora could readily list, had quit everything.

She’d started staying out late. Going to the casino two hours up the freeway and gambling. Drinking. She’d been unraveling.

And two days ago she’d gotten in a car crash on her way home from the casino, and now she was hovering between life and death.

All because she’d been betrayed by a man with the round, smooth face of a gallon milk jug. A man who was essentially a pair of sentient khakis wandering around the car lot he owned like it was a kingdom, and he its very king.

That’s not me.

Nora blew out a breath.

“For God’s sake, Nora,” she muttered as she raised her hand to knock on the door.

Which then opened before her hand could make contact.

“Nora!”

Her fist was hovering right above Daisy McNamara’s face. She lowered her hand quickly. “Hi.”

“I was just dropping off a bouquet.”

She looked behind Daisy and saw a gorgeous array of flowers that made her own look a little sad.

“Same.” She lifted her vase slightly.

Daisy was dressed all in green, from her green skirt to her green cardigan, and green, thick-rimmed glasses.

“Come in,” Daisy said. “Not that I’m . . . Madison stepped out for a vape break.”

Madison was Alexandra’s adult daughter.

“Ah. Vaping. The deeply less cool way to compromise your lungs.” Nora stepped into the hospital room and looked around.

“Our cigarette era was much cooler,” Daisy said.

She and Daisy had been friends in high school but had lost touch in that way you did.

She didn’t avoid Daisy in the produce aisle.

Whenever she and Daisy ran into each other, they would talk for fifteen minutes, at least, and promise to do something sometime, which never happened because they were both busy, and that was fine.

She meant it when she told Daisy they should have lunch. She was sure Daisy meant it too. It had just never occurred.

It wasn’t like Daisy had stolen Nora’s boyfriend or worn the same dress to prom or spit in her iced coffee.

There hadn’t been a dramatic friendship breakup.

Their friendship had been a victim of the relentless continuation of space and time that carried them away from the people they’d been in high school.

They’d gone to different colleges and done life on different timelines.

Daisy and her husband, Jonathan, had gotten married very quickly after school and had started having kids.

Nora was mildly embarrassed that she didn’t know the name of Daisy’s third kid. The first one was Avery. The second one was Wren.

What was the third one?

It was a boy. Nora was reasonably sure it was a boy.

“Which florist did you get yours at?” Nora asked, because the flowers were stunning, and small talk was all she had. She deliberately avoided looking at Alexandra’s bed, the soft beeping of all the machinery reminding her of exactly where she was.

“Oh, I made it.”

Of course she had. Daisy was one of those women who did everything. Not unlike Alexandra, really.

Nora kept her focus on the flowers for as long as possible. There must have been fifty bouquets. She took a step toward an arrangement of sunflowers in a rusted water pot, tied with a burlap bow. She touched the card and turned it over.

God Bless!

Xx Soraya Nichols

Oh, Soraya. She’d barely seen her since high school, and apparently today was a near miss.

She glanced up at Daisy and was about to say something dry about Soraya, but the expression on Daisy’s face, which was suddenly so bleak, stopped her.

Finally, she looked at Alexandra.

Oh God, Alexandra would hate for people to see her like this. With her dyed red hair half bandaged—likely shaved—and tangled on her pillow. With bandages on her arms and no makeup on her face.

“I’ve never seen her without lipstick.”

Daisy let out a short, shocked laugh. “You know . . . neither have I.”

They both stood there for a moment.

“Nice to . . . see you,” Daisy said. “Even if it’s . . .”

“I didn’t know you knew Alexandra.”

“Yeah. I do. In the way that everybody knows her. But I’ve been back and forth between my house and YMTO rehearsals and the hospital a lot because my grandma is getting PT before she can go home, and my mom isn’t doing so well, so she and my dad are dealing with .

. . Anyway, I was here.” Daisy tucked some of her rigidly straight light-brown hair behind her ear, her blunt bob in perfect order, as she always was.

“Oh. Sorry about your grandma. And your mom.” Nora had no idea what was happening with her own mom or grandma, but she imagined at this stage of life there was a strange sort of freedom in that.

Now Daisy had to care for the people who had cared for her. Nora was free because her family had never cared for her at all.

“Jonathan knows Alexandra,” Daisy continued. “He’s been on the city council for a couple of years. It’s good for him. With the construction company. You know, he gets a lot of information on zoning changes and things like that. It gives him some influence.”

Nora frowned. “That’s not a conflict of interest?”

“It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have a conflict of interest here. This town has like ten thousand people,” Daisy said, and Nora huffed a laugh.

“Indeed, it does.”

All they had talked about when they were younger was wanting to leave. Because as beautiful as Hemlock was, nestled in the mountains of Southern Oregon and only a few miles from the California border, it was boring for teenagers.

Nora had never asked Daisy how she had ended up back here.

Of course, Daisy had never asked Nora how she had ended up back here either.

“We should get lunch,” Daisy said.

“Yeah,” Nora replied, meaning it just like she did every time. “We should.”

Daisy shook her head. “No. Not sometime. Let’s have lunch, Nora. Today.”

If this moment was a reminder of anything, it was that life was mean and took unexpected turns off the road.

You couldn’t keep putting the deep, important things off until a tomorrow you might not have.

“Yes. Let’s have lunch.”

Too late, Nora realized that might mean talking about her personal life. Which might mean bringing up the subject of Ben and the separation.

Would that be so bad?

Yes, it felt potentially fatal, actually.

Proving Ben’s point.

Wasn’t that what he’d said? That she clung to the past in unhealthy ways and resisted healing and kept her walls up?

But what was the alternative?

She looked back at Alexandra. That was the alternative. Being so vulnerable, caring so much, that when someone left you, all the pieces of yourself fell away.

Nora was sad about the separation, but she was okay.

She also had every confidence they’d get back together.

They’d made vows. They were a team, a partnership.

Friends. He needed to go and deal with his issues, which was fine.

She was strong enough to let him go away and do what he needed to do. They were strong enough.

“I hope you . . .” she started to say to Alexandra, but the words died on her lips.

“The community might fall apart without you,” she said instead.

“I mean, who’s going to organize the Christmas parade?

The tree lighting. Community trick or treat.

The Arts Club won’t be able to function without you.

We’ll all be lost without you.” Nora cleared her throat. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Daisy nodded wordlessly, her lips closed in a way that suggested she might cry if she tried to speak. They walked out of the room and down the hall.

It was quiet in the elevator, and Nora felt like she didn’t know what to say. She looked down at her purse. Ben had given this purse to her for Christmas just last year.

The perfect purse. Black with the cycles of the moon embroidered on it in gold. It went with everything she owned, and it felt like her, and of course he’d known that.

Had he found the purse in a cute little boutique, bought it, and carried it back to his car thinking, In eight months, I’ll tell her I haven’t been happy for years?

That would be insane.

Yet now she was stuck on it, her hand on the purse feeling like it was on fire. Feeling like Ben was right about her.

No.

When the elevator doors opened, she could breathe again.

She wasn’t the worst.

She did have friends.

They walked through the lobby area and past the gift shop, which was when she caught a glimpse of her.

Soraya Nichols.

Sunflower Soraya.

She had been one of the most obnoxious girls in high school. Every so often Nora hate-scrolled Soraya’s Facebook feed, just to check and see if she was still deserving of Nora’s rage. She was.

She would look at photos of Soraya’s sparkling white kitchen, photos of her wearing dresses that seemed like they belonged on a prairie somewhere as she made glorious loaves of sourdough, her blond hair still up in a big messy bun like she was fifteen years old, or down in bouncy Instagram curls.

Happy, happy. So blessed so blessed. Hashtag boy mom.

She made Nora’s teeth ache.