Chapter Five Daisy
Chapter Five
Daisy
Magic doesn’t make itself.
—Rules for Witches
So. What time are we all heading down to the shop today?
Daisy looked over at the text that had come through on her phone. Thank God it wasn’t Jonathan. Every other text today had been. After last night’s explosion, that seemed about right. This one was from the Discarded Wives Club, sent by Nora.
I’m already at the coffee shop across the street.
For real? Nora asked.
Yes. Come down to the coffee shop.
Mix? Because I’m on my way.
Yes.
Soraya didn’t contribute. Maybe she wouldn’t. That store had really freaked her out. Daisy couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
She was . . . She was nice. She was just . . . When Daisy looked at Soraya, she swore she saw ropes tied all around her. Like she was bound up. In herself, and the expectations of everyone else.
Daisy stared down into the remains of her cup of coffee. She wasn’t any different, she supposed. It was just that her expectations didn’t come from a church community, and Soraya’s did.
It had taken a hell of a lot to get her to do something decisive about Jonathan.
Last night’s discovery had been a hell of a lot.
Was he actually going to marry that child? He was still married to her.
She sighed and looked at the clock. Lady’s Mantle was opening in twenty minutes. She intended to be over there asking about that bookkeeper position as quickly as possible.
There was a flurry of movement in the coffee shop—a line that stretched to the door, people grabbing small bags of pastries from one end of the bar and coffee from another.
Given there was so much activity, she had no idea why this particular blur of movement caught the edge of her eye and made her turn.
It was her bad luck that her gaze didn’t glance off the subject that had grabbed her attention. No. Her eyes went right to his. And held.
Zach.
Great.
He probably knew the answer to the question she had. The one that had caused last night’s implosion and explosion, which resulted in her quitting before she’d actually lined up a new job.
He was her husband’s best friend and business partner.
Zach had come to town about five years ago after retiring from acting. He’d created a buzz in the community that had yet to fully die down. She could hear whispers rise and fall as he walked through the coffee shop, and she was sure he could too.
He didn’t seem to notice, or care.
Zach Woods had been one of the main crushes for any teenager who liked boys back in the early 2000s. The frosted tips and bad-boy pout had been too much for mere mortal teen girls to resist. Including her.
She’d been obsessed with his show Second Chance City, where he’d played a troubled youth who’d fallen for the equally troubled daughter of a state senator. Very Romeo and Juliet. When he’d first come to Hemlock, she’d been certain she was hallucinating.
Then Jonathan had gotten a job building a custom house for him, and they’d hit it off and started planning to expand the business.
Then Daisy had gotten to know him. Or, rather, tried to. He was inaccessible in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. Not unfriendly, necessarily, but she just never seemed to get any closer to him than she had the day they met.
Not that she needed to be close to him.
Zach legally owned half the business—and technically probably more than half the assets—though he didn’t have anything to do with the day-to-day operations.
He was at quarterly meetings, and sometimes even the company Christmas party, but he wasn’t around all the time.
He was handsome. Not a normal kind of handsome. Not the kind of handsome you expected to see when you looked up in a coffee shop in a small town.
The trouble was, even though he’d left Hollywood behind, he hadn’t transformed into a mortal man.
He was still too good looking, too impactful every time he walked into a room.
There were rumors, whispers, that he was fantastic in bed and rotated women through that bed with the frequency of a man who was still on top of his game.
He was well liked in town, but she knew a few women who worried when their husbands took up a friendship with him. Surely his life seemed more attractive than the average man living in suburban drudgery.
It had proven to be true. Not that she blamed Zach for Jonathan’s infidelity. Jonathan deserved 100 percent of that blame. She didn’t even want to cast any blame on Amberly, who was young and hadn’t been married to Daisy.
Jonathan was the one who’d been obligated to her. No one else.
Sometimes she wondered, though, how much Zach’s lifestyle acted as dream fuel.
“Hi, Daisy.” The expression on his face let her know he was well aware she would have rather avoided locking eyes with him.
“Morning,” she said.
“I heard you quit,” he said.
It was weird that all she had exchanged about her resignation with her husband was a few texts. She was actually talking to Zach about it in person.
“Yeah. I did.”
“Good.”
He grabbed his coffee off the counter, removed the lid, and looked at it.
Then he blew across the top of it, the steam cascading over the side.
He put the lid back on and raised his cup to her.
Without another word, he walked out of the coffee shop.
She had forgotten to ask him what she’d wanted to.
Good? Was that all he had to say about that? Good. Was it good?
It was good. It was good because she couldn’t keep doing everything for Jonathan.
It was good because she needed to have a little bit more dignity.
It was bad because she had serious concerns about his business imploding if he didn’t find somebody competent enough to do his books.
After all, her kids were dependent on their dad having that business . . .
She grabbed her own coffee, which had now gone cold. The way Zach said good made it seem almost like—
The door opened, and it wasn’t Nora who came in, but Soraya, her blond hair up in the same sort of bun she’d been wearing yesterday in the hospital, the scarf wrapped around her neck almost comedically large.
She was wearing big sunglasses and did not remove them when she came inside.
She was looking out of sorts, to put it mildly.
She lowered the glasses slightly and saw Daisy and moved quickly across the room. “I’m going to order,” she said.
Then she fluttered to the end of the line and stood there, antsy and bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet.
A couple minutes later, the door opened again, and Nora walked in.
It was fascinating to Daisy the way Nora had kept her high school look and evolved it.
Like a latter-day goth who had realized that eventually she would have to style herself to get a job.
Her hair was still a shade or two darker than her natural color, long and straight, her bangs as blunt as her manner.
She had a nose ring and rings on every finger, her nails painted a dark-cherry color.
In high school, she’d had a sticker on one of her binders that said: I’m only wearing black until they make a darker color.
She seemed to adhere to the same philosophy now.
The style seemed intrinsic to her, and Daisy had always admired that.
How Nora bent rules around her to suit her had been one of the first things Daisy had found appealing about her.
They were different. Daisy’s family was close knit and happy, mostly.
Nora’s family was dysfunctional, her living situation very often subpar.
She had never been sweet. Acerbic, yes, and terribly funny.
Daisy hadn’t needed Nora to be sweet. She had none of Daisy’s people-pleasing tendencies, and Daisy had found that fascinating and liberating.
In many ways, Nora was who she wanted to be when she grew up. Even still.
She glanced back at Soraya, who had two people in line between herself and Nora, and realized Soraya was leaving her sunglasses on so no one would accidentally make eye contact with her. Daisy took a look around the coffee shop. Really took a look.
No less than three people were sitting at tables with a Bible.
Hemlock Christian Fellowship was the biggest church in the area.
With over five thousand members, people drove long distances to hear Pastor John speak.
It was an oddity, a church that popular in a town so small, and Soraya was deeply entrenched in that community.
Daisy wouldn’t be surprised if she knew every single person in here with a Bible.
When she completed her order, she scuttled quickly to the table, taking the seat that faced the back wall. Only then did she lower her sunglasses.
“You look like you’re fleeing the law.”
“Kind of. I’m fleeing my Bible study.”
“Fair enough. Are you actually going to ask for a job?” Daisy asked.
“Yes. She said she was thinking about having somebody bake. Well, I can do that. I can . . . I can do that.” She suddenly looked wobbly.
Nora popped over to the table right after.
“You didn’t text,” she said to Soraya.
Soraya seemed to fold in on herself slightly. “I didn’t want to text because I was afraid if I did, I would talk myself out of it. Or misdirect the text. You know, I have recent trauma with misdirected texts.”
Nora laughed, then shut her mouth quickly. “Was that not supposed to be funny?”
Soraya frowned, her eyes round. “Oh no, it was.”
“It was.” Nora picked her laugh up where she left off, seeming relieved.
“So, what was your breaking point?” Daisy asked Nora.
“My friend Sam asked me what I was going to do if Ben didn’t want to get together when he came back. I’m embarrassed to admit that’s the first time I really let myself consider that.”
“Lavender latte.”
Soraya put her sunglasses back on, then stood up and went to the end of the bar to collect her coffee, then returned a moment later, taking them back off.
“I think you look like you even with the sunglasses,” Nora pointed out.
Soraya frowned. “Then maybe that means no one is talking to me because I’m excommunicated.”