Chapter Four Nora
Chapter Four
Nora
When the light goes out, make your own.
—Rules for Witches
The pictures Ben sent from Chile were pretty. Mountains, him standing on the edge of one of the mountains, him with his group of people all out there searching for . . . themselves.
She and Ben were still in contact, because they were only separated.
Not that it wasn’t painful. His comments about how she’d created distance between them with her issues and prickly attitude had been hurtful.
But after he’d told her about his retreat, she’d started texting him, and he was keeping in contact.
She liked it. It made her feel like there was a bridge that still connected her to him.
She didn’t know exactly when he was coming back, but that was part of the separation. There was a little bit of contact, not total contact. This was about him and his journey. She could accept that.
She didn’t need to be possessive. She didn’t need to be desperate and feral about it.
One of the things he’d said before he left was that she was both emotionally unavailable and insecure.
It hurt to hear, but it wasn’t really untrue.
She had a lot of baggage about abandonment, and she was sure it came out in her interactions with him.
She had completely melted down initially when he told her he needed a separation.
Like he was leaving forever. Because, for her, that’s all it meant.
Of course. There had never been a reunification with her mother.
But he wasn’t her mom.
He’d reminded her of that when he left. She knew it was true. Which was why she made sure to respond to the photos he sent with genuine enthusiasm, so he could see she was supportive of him doing this.
She was supposed to be finishing up some copy for a corporate website she did work for, but she was having trouble focusing, and she was mainly looking at tarot decks online and making her third cup of herbal tea.
Maybe she should have bought some at Lady’s Mantle.
She could have given herself a reading while drinking a brew for concentration.
Or maybe she’d abandon copy for the night. She could write an article called “My Husband Went to Chile to Find Himself, and I’m the One Who’s Lost.” Or maybe “Everything in My Life Seemed Perfect, but It Turns Out I’m Sad like Everyone Else.”
“Blah blah blah,” she muttered, standing from her desk and stretching her stagnant body.
Her tea had gone cold, so she decided to go throw it in the microwave. She opened the door, closed it, hit the minute button, and then “Start.”
And all the lights went out.
“Shit.”
The electricity in this house was finicky at best. Her best friend, Sam, said it was practically negligence, especially considering what the house itself had cost. She didn’t disagree with him.
If she’d had her way, they would’ve used Sam when they did the build, but Ben said that Jonathan McNamara, who had been their contractor, would work only with specific subcontractors, and Sam wasn’t on the list, and it would cause delays and issues.
I do fine. I don’t need to do your house.
But of course, he’d done nothing but criticize the electrical work on her house. Well. After all the problems.
She went to the electrical box, because generally the finicky fuses would trip themselves, and she just had to reset them.
None of the levers were in the wrong position.
She flipped them back and forth, and nothing happened.
She was going to have to ask for help. She really didn’t want to ask for help.
She opened her texts and started a message to Sam.
I’m flipping the switches, and the lights still won’t come back on.
It only took thirty seconds for three dots to appear at the bottom of the screen.
Context would be good
you know the context already. It’s my terrible electricity, and Ben is gone.
She hadn’t gone into a whole lot of detail with Sam on what was happening in her marriage. Okay, she’d gone into no detail. All Sam knew was that Ben was in Chile. He’d made a joke about Aaron Rodgers that she’d only vaguely understood.
Is he that football player who does the ayahuasca sweat-lodge thing?
Yeah.
What does that have to do with Ben?
Nothing, I’m sure.
She always had the feeling Sam didn’t like Ben. Of course, that seemed to be a mutual thing.
In Ben’s case, it was less about Sam and more about his worry she was hanging on to elements of her dysfunctional childhood. She could understand why he’d think that, but it wasn’t fair.
Sam had never felt like a component of the dysfunctionality. In many ways, he was part of the only stability and sanity she’d ever had. He was certainly the only person from her years in the system who kept in touch with her.
He’s like a brother.
She had always told Ben that. It was true. Probably. It wasn’t like she had a real brother to compare it to.
I’ll come and look at it. Bet you blew a fuse.
You don’t have to come over.
Except if he didn’t, she was going to be stuck without electricity all night.
Don’t.
She sat there and stared at the single-word message, wondering what he was telling her not to do exactly, hoping he was on his way.
Five minutes later, she got her answer. The firm knock on her door was most definitely Sam. As she went to let him in, she had the vague wish that she’d put a bra on, but she was wearing a hoodie. Also, it was Sam. He’d seen her looking far worse.
Hell, he’d seen her hunched over the Ouija board all those years ago.
The Ouija board had not been her finest hour.
With that in mind, she pulled the door open and looked up at him with her most grateful and pleading expression. “Thank you.”
He sighed heavily, lifting one large hand and rubbing it over his jaw.
His whiskers scraped against his palm. He was wearing a green baseball hat pushed high up on his head, a hoodie he probably hadn’t looked twice at before putting on, and a pair of jeans with holes in the knees that were splattered with paint and other various pieces of evidence from construction sites.
The way Sam didn’t give a shit about what he wore was nearly admirable.
Of course, when you were over six feet tall and devastatingly handsome, you didn’t need your clothes to do any work for you.
Not that she went out of her way to ponder Sam’s looks.
They had known each other for far too long.
Other women were welcome to his capable hands, blue eyes, and perfect smile.
She just wanted his electrical skills.
“Yep. I was hardly going to leave you here trapped in the dark.”
“Considering you did this kind of thing all day . . .”
“This is not a big deal.”
“What were you doing today?”
“Wiring. At that new complex that’s going in next to HomeGoods.”
“Oh. Neat.”
“You don’t have to pretend to be interested in my job for me to fix your blown fuse. It’s literally going to take less than five minutes.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
“Yeah. It’s just too bad that . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing. It bothers you when I bring it up.”
“Oh. The slander of the electrician who did the house?”
“Yes. The slander of the electrician who did the house. Because he did a piss-poor job, which is one of my issues with Jonathan McNamara as a contractor.”
“Yeah. Well. I think your issues are likely founded in truth, since it turns out he cuts a lot of corners in his personal life too.”
She felt a little bit bad gossiping about Daisy when they’d had a pretty genuine conversation earlier. But Sam wasn’t going to tell anybody. Plus, it would feed his contractor beef, which seemed like great payment for services rendered.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I visited Alexandra in the hospital today.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“Not really. She’s my neighbor, and she’s a huge part of the Creative Kids program.”
“True.”
“Daisy McNamara was there. We went to lunch afterward. She told me that Jonathan left her and moved into a new house with his twenty-five-year-old girlfriend.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered as he opened the fuse box.
“He told her they were done. No discussion. It was all about him having to find himself—” She winced because it sounded close to what Ben had said, but it wasn’t quite. “And of course finding himself meant finding himself in another woman’s bed. He just left her with three kids.”
“That sounds about right, based on the kind of work he does. No commitment. Sloppy. Lazy. Plus, I’m willing to bet he overcharged you. Because this electrical work is cheap shit.”
“As far as I know, nothing about this house was cheap.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
She didn’t really know, because the person with the money was Ben. A realization that made her uncomfortable all over again.
It had felt like it all belonged to them. Because they had gone through college together, and built this life together, and . . .
It was his.
What was going to happen if he came back and decided he didn’t want to get back together?
That won’t happen.
But it could.
But there is no one else. It’s not like Daisy. It’s not like Soraya.
Sam pulled a fuse out of his pocket, popped one out of its space, and slipped the new one in. Then he shut the door decisively and turned to her. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?”
“No,” she said. “I mean . . .” Bastard. He’d surprised her. “There’s nothing going on with me.”
“Why is your husband on a random extended trip to Chile?”
“Because it was a bucket-list thing.”
“When is he coming back?”
She sucked breath between her teeth, rocking back on her heels. “You got me there. I don’t know.”
“You guys having problems?”
“No. He’s having . . . something. I don’t know if it’s a problem. I don’t know what it is. He’s having a moment. He’s looking for himself.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. That is rich-guy shit.”
“Excuse me?”
“I have work to do. I don’t sit around wondering if I misplaced myself.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re an electrician. You’re hardly scraping pennies together.”
“I’m not a dentist.”