Chapter Eighteen Nora #2
She had never wanted to get married. But her deepest, darkest, most embarrassing fantasy was that she had always wanted a traditional life.
Had always wanted a home and the kind of family she’d never had growing up.
She hadn’t believed she could have it, though.
Hadn’t believed she deserved it. Because something had always felt like it was fundamentally broken inside her.
Falling in love with Ben, and him falling in love with her, marrying her, had made her feel like she had defeated that long-standing narrative.
This was cruel. It would’ve been better to have never had this love.
To have never had that hope. Because it wasn’t like he had been honest with her.
It wasn’t like it had been a relationship that wasn’t working, a relationship where they had communicated honestly about that, and then worked together toward fixing it. He had let her believe they were happy.
Then he had blindsided her by going off on this trip, where he hadn’t wanted to find himself at all but had wanted to find himself inside another woman.
At least, that was the best she could assume based off what she’d seen.
Fundamentally, even if it hadn’t escalated to sex, it was a betrayal all the same.
Because he was lying to her. About what he was doing, about why he was doing it.
“Have you read any new spells in the grimoire, Daisy?”
Daisy reached out and picked up the old book, sliding it toward her. “I’ve been reading more about revenge spells.”
Nora smiled. “I’m all for that.”
“We already did one,” Soraya said.
“Yes,” Nora agreed. “But nothing is happening yet.”
“Much like prayer, I assume spells aren’t always activated right away.” Leave it to Soraya.
“I have to figure out how I’m going to handle Ben,” Nora said. “I need him to come home.”
“You could ask him to,” Daisy pointed out.
“I think we’re past cordial requests.”
“Is there a reason you won’t talk to him?” Daisy asked.
Nora scowled. “Because it doesn’t change anything.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t change anything.
It just is what it is, and I have to process it, and I have to deal with it, so I might as well deal with it on my own time.
Without him here to watch me have a breakdown about the total and complete degradation of my life.
” She was breathing hard, so she sat down at Aggie’s table and touched the top of the tarot cards.
“I can think of nothing worse than having to make myself vulnerable to the man who’s cheating on me. ”
“But at some point, don’t you want to confront him?” Madison asked.
“Yes. When I can actually do that.”
“You mean and not cry,” Soraya said.
“There’s nothing wrong with crying,” Madison said. “Historically, the patriarchy has turned tears into a sign of weakness in order to invalidate women’s emotions.”
“Well,” Nora said. “Fuck the patriarchy. But I still can’t think of anything worse than crying.”
“He’s your husband,” Soraya pointed out. “He cheated on you. You get to cry and scream and do whatever you want, short of murder.”
“There’s no point. You can do all of that.
Cry and scream and whatever else, but it doesn’t make people stay.
You just end up debasing yourself for a man who’s too detached from the marriage to even have an honest conversation.
Uninterested, thank you.” Nora shuffled the cards and laid out one.
“Past.” Then she laid out a second. “Present.” Then a third. “Future.”
She flipped over the first card, the Moon. She only had a little bit of experience with tarot at this point, but the Moon was a card that confused her, which was ironic and fitting because it was a card about confusion. But how was her past confused?
She turned over the next card. Death. Great. Her present was death.
But she already knew that. It was the slow, dying breath of her marriage. Of the life she’d imagined living. Of her safety and her belief in happily ever after.
She turned over the third card. The future. The Five of Cups. On the card was a man staring at three spilled cups with a look of despair on his face, while there were two upright behind them.
It was a card of ingratitude. Of not seeing everything you had.
Great. So her future was being an ungrateful bitch after experiencing death and confusion.
She blew out a breath and flipped the cards back over.
“What?” Daisy asked.
“I’m not connecting with the cards at the moment.”
“Admittedly, that wasn’t the most flattering reading, but you know you can always change the future card.”
“I don’t think that’s how tarot works,” Nora said.
“I don’t mean just draw a different card.
” Daisy sounded lightly exasperated. “That reading was about what your future looks like now, based on your feelings. I’m not sure that tarot tells the future so much as reads the energy around you.
Right now, your future looks like that because you won’t be able to see what you have because you’re focusing on what you lost.”
“You do one.” Nora was annoyed at Daisy’s arch tone. She loved Daisy, she really did, but the problem with having a friend who did all that reading and research and crossed all her T’s and dotted her I’s was that she tended to be irritating in moments like this because she was too pragmatic.
Daisy sat down in front of the cards and shuffled them. “Past.” She drew one out of the spread-out fan. “Present.” She hesitated. “Future. The Ten of Wands. The Lovers.” Her cheeks turned bright red. “The Two of Swords.”
“See?” Nora said. “It’s not fun when your future card is weird.”
Daisy frowned. “It’s about choices. A choice only I can make. I was overburdened, and now I’m . . .”
“Getting properly shagged?” Nora suggested.
“Yes. That.” Daisy cleared her throat. “Then there’s going to be a choice that no one can make for me.”
“Swords tend to be sharp,” Nora said. “So difficult choices, maybe.”
Daisy glared at her. “You’re only saying that because you’re mad about your reading.”
“I’m not mad.”
Nora was, in fact, mad.
“I’ll go.” Soraya sounded tentative, but her offer to go at all was a shock.
“Sometimes I’ve been . . . casually looking at the ones in my apartment.
Daisy, I liked it when you said it was a reflection of your own energy.
The depth of what you feel. I guess that’s kind of how I think of it, and why it feels okay for me.
I just hadn’t articulated it before. I’m not asking a spirit to show me anything.
I’m trying to make sense of what’s happening around me and inside of me. ”
“I like to call to the spirits,” Nora intoned.
“Yes, I know.” Soraya furrowed her brow.
“Bonus points if the spirit is Satan.” That earned Nora a steely glare from Soraya. “I’m kidding. I know Satan isn’t a spirit. Plus, I prefer Hecate, if I’m honest.”
“Past,” said Soraya, putting one of the cards down. “Present.” She took a deep breath. “Future.” She turned the cards over slowly, like they might be a snake about to bite her. “The Hierophant. Well, that’s what Aggie drew for me the first time we came in here. The Empress. The High Priestess.”
“Trusting man-made structures, creating your own path, trusting your own intuition.”
“Oh. I like that, I guess.”
Nora felt personally victimized that Soraya’s was so clear and unchallenging.
“Do you want to do one, Madison?”
Madison nodded, sat down at the table, and took the deck of cards. She shuffled them with ease and then fanned them out in front of her, repeating the same structure the rest of them had used.
“The Seven of Swords. The Tower. Justice.” They looked at the reading, and goose bumps rose on Nora’s arms.
Daisy frowned as she examined the cards. “Deception. Trying to get away with something. Then obviously . . .”
“Yeah. My mom being in the hospital and nearly being dead. That would be a tower.”
“But there’s justice.” Soraya touched the card. “Justice for her.”
“I don’t even know what that could mean.”
“Maybe something needs to come out,” Daisy said.
“The cards don’t tell the future.” Madison stood up. “You all just said that.”
“Daisy and Soraya said that.” Nora pinched her brows together.
“I don’t know that I believe that.” Of course, her past experiences with the metaphysical hadn’t necessarily filled her with a great level of confidence about it.
Because the Ouija board had told her she would find love, and she had done a love spell to no avail.
She stared down at the Five of Cups and ignored the strange, aching feeling inside her.
“I want to believe that, for you, that’s a fortune. ”
It was far more comfortable to focus on Madison’s reading than to marinate on her own.
“Thank you, guys,” Madison said. “This is the first time I’ve felt . . . hope.”
Nora wished she could feel the same. She didn’t look at her reading and see a way forward.
All she saw was more treading water. Three cups lying on the ground, poured out, and with two standing.
That felt like her life right now. She had a lot of good in her life, but there was so much that was painful.
She wanted to shut it off. She wanted to not deal with it.
She wanted to embrace the anger that had driven her the night she had cast the karma spell.
Because at least that had been clear. At least that had felt protected. Solid.
They said their goodbyes, and she reluctantly drove back to her house. She took a deep breath and decided that after dinner she was going to call Ben. Or text him. Something. But she was going to confront him.
While she ate, she pulled up that bitch’s Instagram again. She scrolled through the newest carousels and let herself gag on the photographic evidence that there was something going on between her and Ben. In every picture he was in, they were touching. In the final photo, she was kissing his cheek.
She tasted something sour in her mouth and stopped eating her dinner. She was going to text him.
Then the lights went out.
“Agh!”
She picked her phone up, and instead of texting Ben, she texted Sam.
Can you come fix my lights?
You are a trial.
I know. Please. Rescue me?
What’s in it for me?
Dinner. I have extra.
So she would put off texting Ben. She would have dinner with Sam, even though she’d already eaten. He would fix her lights.
And for a little while longer, she could live in this bubble. This bubble where she felt pain but hadn’t pulled the trigger on anything.
This bubble where she had gently tugged the loose end of a thread, but it hadn’t all unraveled yet. Maybe she was just focusing on her upright cups.
So there.