Chapter Fourteen Soraya #2
After thirty-five years of counting it all joy, she just couldn’t do it anymore. Apparently this came for everyone. This churning, black hole of cynicism.
She moved back to her spot against the wall and slid down, holding the cards in her hands as she pulled her knees up to her chest and sat there staring at the deck.
Daisy and Nora just stood there, looking at poor Soraya.
“I’m not crazy.” Soraya wiped the tears off her cheeks that hadn’t been on Nora’s.
“I might be,” said Nora. “Or homicidal. I did a love spell just a few hours ago, and now I find out that he’s cheating on me.”
“Maybe magic isn’t real.” Daisy adjusted her glasses.
“It’s not about the magic.” Nora slapped her hands against her thighs and turned in a slow circle, anger radiating off her in a palpable wave. “It’s about what I believed. It’s about me defending him to all of you. You knew. You knew, didn’t you? That I was being delusional.”
It was Soraya and Daisy’s turn to exchange glances.
“I wouldn’t say that I knew.” Daisy adjusted her glasses again, this time clearly due to discomfort and not out of any need.
“You did.” Nora’s tone was almost accusing, and Soraya could see that if they weren’t careful, they were going to catch some of the shrapnel from Nora’s outrage.
“Nobody can tell you anything about your husband before you realize it,” Soraya pointed out.
“At least, nobody would’ve been able to tell me something bad about David.
I wouldn’t have believed them. Honestly, that text earlier with him telling me to get out of the house.
Nothing has quite driven home the point of exactly who he is like that.
But you can’t know that before the moment is right for you to know it.
Now you know it, and I’m really sorry that you had to know it that way. ”
“It’s not any different than what you went through.” Nora put her hand over her mouth, holding back a laugh. “I really thought I might be the only woman on earth whose husband was having a real existential crisis that wasn’t actually about sleeping with a younger, hotter woman.”
“She’s younger,” Soraya emphasized. “That doesn’t make her hotter.”
“Thousands of years of patriarchy would disagree.”
“Hex the patriarchy.” Soraya was hoping to make Nora laugh with the totally out-of-character comment, but she meant it a little more than she’d realized.
“I regret not putting the karma spell on Jonathan. Tonight, I . . . I might’ve cursed him. But I want to make another . . . another spell, and I want to put it in his truck. I want . . . I don’t want him to get away with this. What if he was lying to me the whole time?”
That same fear echoed inside Soraya. She could see that it was a new fear for Nora.
“He tricked me.” Nora was incandescent. “He made it sound like it had nothing to do with . . . with sex, with me. But it is about sex. He’s off having sex with some woman who wants to do dentist role-play.
It has nothing to do with finding himself.
It has to do with losing his dick inside of another woman. ”
“I fear that’s what motivates most men,” Soraya said. “I spent so many years hearing all about that. I spent all of youth group being told I had to dress a certain way. That I had to be careful not to tempt any men with my . . . bare shoulders and front hugs.”
“Front hugs?” Daisy asked.
“Yes. You can’t hug a guy from the front because he’ll feel your breasts.”
“They said that to you in youth group?” Nora asked, her jaw slack.
“Yes.”
“I mean, they were the ones sexualizing you. Just by thinking of it that way. Making you think of your own body that way.”
Soraya sat and stared at a spot on the floor. “Well . . . oh.”
“Like seriously, who says that to teenage girls?”
“Youth pastors. Then after you get told to cover up, never think about sex, never let yourself get turned on, don’t be a temptation, don’t be tempted, you get married.
Then you get told to put out. To be a good wife who has sex with her husband whenever he wants it.
I did that. I did it, and I still wasn’t enough.
I was pure and perfect for him, and it still wasn’t enough.
” Soraya wiped angrily at her tears. “Maybe if I’d had more experience . . .”
“I was by no means pure or perfect for Ben,” Nora said.
“I give an awesome blow job. He still cheated on me. It has nothing to do with you, what you know, what you don’t know, how many men you slept with, how many men you haven’t slept with, or what size you are or how old you are.
It isn’t about anything but a man’s own goddamn selfishness.
No. It isn’t you, Soraya. It’s not me.” Nora’s voice broke.
“It’s just that you can’t trust anyone. I was right, it turns out.
I thought I could trust him. I thought that because I loved him it meant that he loved me. ”
“Exactly,” Daisy said. “I thought that because he was the love of my life, I was the love of his.”
“It isn’t our fault.” Nora was seething. “It’s theirs.” She looked down at the coffee table and sprang forward, grabbing the book of matches. She lit a candle, then took her phone out and started typing. “I wish I had the grimoire.”
“What are you doing?” Soraya asked.
“I’m putting a spell on him. No. Not a spell. A hex.” Nora’s pupils were so large her eyes were black. “I don’t want karma. I don’t want balance. I want revenge.”
She held her phone up, the light of the candle reflecting on her face, her goth makeup even more dramatic.
A chill went down Soraya’s spine, but she didn’t feel like she wanted or needed to turn away from this. Nora’s anger was dark, but all of this was dark.
They’d been abandoned. Cast aside. Lied to. Lied about.
They had each other. And they had this. This one place where they’d found a way to reclaim their power. So far, it had been working. Except Nora had just wanted her husband to love her and she couldn’t get that, so why not get payback?
Why not?
Soraya had spent all her life trying to be good in a very specific way.
She’d turned away from intuition. From power.
From rage.
Right now, she felt it all coursing through her like fire.
“What you did to me, be returned but times three,” Nora said. “Head to toe. Skin and bone. It is time for fate to reverse. It is time to feel the pain you inflicted on me.” Nora took off her wedding ring and dropped it so it encircled the flaming wick, the fire burning around it. “And so it is.”
Daisy took her ring off and dropped it over the top of Nora’s. “And so it is.”
Soraya looked at them, her heart thundering hard.
Then she took her own wedding ring off, which she hadn’t done since the separation. Because it had felt like something final. Because it had felt like giving up.
But this didn’t feel like giving up. It felt like something else entirely.
She held it over the flame and dropped it over the wick, flame encircling all the rings. “And so it is.”
Daisy reached out and took Nora’s hand, Nora took Soraya’s, and then she closed the circle and took Daisy’s other hand, the rings around the flame, not melting, not scorching, just there. A symbol. A sacrifice.
Daisy closed her eyes. “I call my power back to me. I call my energy back to me. I call my magic back to me. I am shielded from anything that would take my power from me. Nothing can harm me or take my light. I am safe. I am protected. I am powerful. And so it is.”
Nora nodded. “And so it is.”
She leaned forward and blew out the candle. A rush went through Soraya, straight through the center of her chest. It was like everything had changed, even though everything was the same. She was shaking, and she dropped Daisy’s and Nora’s hands and put her palm against her chest.
She was afraid to speak. She was afraid to do anything.
Nora looked around the space. “This is beautiful. It’s going to be a great place for you.”
Soraya nodded, her throat dry. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I could call him. I could ask him what he’s doing. I could move out without talking to him. I don’t have kids to worry about. I . . .”
For a strange moment, Soraya envied Nora. She could just cut ties with Ben and be done with him. Except for all the emotional stuff. But she didn’t have this . . .
These kids that she loved with every desperate part of her, tying her to the man who had betrayed her. Turned against her by the man who betrayed her.
“Why don’t you give it a couple of days?” Soraya suggested. “Whatever he’s been doing, he’ll keep on doing it.”
“Yeah.” Nora shook her head. “Maybe he’s never coming back. Maybe he’s actually abandoning the house and the practice. He’ll just quit paying for all of it, and maybe it’ll get taken away by the bank.”
“Maybe,” Daisy said. “But I doubt it.”
Soraya leaned down and picked up the candle, then she lifted it and put it on top of the mantel. “This is the symbol of the Discarded Wives Club.”
“We’re the First Wives Club.” Nora looked intently at the flame. “Lord knows they may go on to have second wives. Maybe third wives.”
Daisy laughed. “First Witches Club, remember?”
Nora grinned. “Yes. The First Witches Club. I have no idea what I want to do. Except I don’t want to be with him. Sam said . . . earlier, Sam said I deserve better.”
“Sam Reynolds?” Soraya asked.
“Yeah. He’s my foster— Ugh, no, I don’t like that label. We were in foster care together.”
“He’s right. You do deserve better,” said Soraya. “We all deserve better.”