Chapter Nineteen Soraya #2
“You’re going to pay for this,” he said. “That car you drove here in, that’s mine too. All of it is mine. You haven’t earned a single cent the entire time we’ve been together.”
“I got a job. I got a place to stay. So it seems like I’m doing okay.”
He needed her to need him. Without it, he had no power.
She had taken his power. She had given it all to herself.
He took a step toward her but stopped as if he had encountered a wall. Maybe like he was suddenly aware that anyone could see him. “I’m helping with sound for worship today. I don’t have time for this.”
“I don’t believe I called you over to talk.”
His expression darkened. “You’re cheating on me. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it? How else would you have a place to stay?”
She jerked back in shock. He might as well have slapped her.
“Excuse me? Maybe I have friends. Maybe there are people who want to help me because they care about me. Unlike you. And you were supposed to. You’re supposed to be my husband.
But you’re so dedicated to not facing the fact you aren’t perfect, that you’re the one who messed up, that all you can do is accuse me of sins you committed.
All you can do is be angry at me.” She took a step closer to him.
“Everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all, David. That’s a promise. ”
She turned away from him, her heart beating so hard it was all she could hear as she put her head down and walked into the sanctuary.
People turned and looked at her, but nobody said hi.
She walked straight up the middle of the aisle to sit in the front of the church.
She wasn’t ashamed. Not of anything. Not of anything.
She looked down the row of pews and saw Stephanie, the pastor’s wife, blond and pretty and also not meeting her gaze.
She took a breath and looked back toward the front, because if she found any of her close friends, and they did the same, she might lose her nerve.
Might fail in her resolve to simply be here, unashamed and refusing to bend to this narrative of insanity.
Her boys were in youth group, so there was no chance of seeing them this morning, and it made her heart hurt. She missed them. Distant sightings at the baseball field weren’t enough.
It was part of the torture from David.
On some level, he must know he wasn’t enough all on his own. He had to take her kids, her house, her friends. That was what he thought might bring her back.
It was pathetic.
Pastor John came out onto the stage, a Bible in his hand, dressed in a collared shirt, but casually, his hair pushed off his forehead. He was a friendly, affable sort of man who made everyone who talked to him feel warm and accepted.
She wondered if she would still find that to be true or if he would close ranks on her also. If he would see it the same way everyone else seemed to.
She wondered if all the acceptance she had ever felt was something she had been paying for with compliance.
“All rise. Say hello to the person next to you.”
She turned, and the person to her left turned away. She turned to her right, and her gaze connected with a woman she didn’t know very well. Jennifer, she thought her name was.
“Hi,” the woman said softly. “It’s good to see you.”
Soraya was very aware she didn’t have her wedding ring on, but it was good to know not everyone was going to treat her like she didn’t exist.
She sat down when Pastor John gave the directive to do so, and he made some announcements, and then the worship team came out.
She looked behind her, up into the sound booth, where her husband was manning the projector that put the words to the worship song, along with video clips behind it.
Rushing streams and mountaintops and other natural wonders, all curated to create maximum feeling during the service.
Just another service David provided that made everyone think he was just so good.
She shouldn’t think of him as her husband anymore. Legally, he might be. In her heart, that was over. He’d broken their vows.
He’d released her. Set her free.
Two songs in, all the small children were dismissed to go to their classes.
“All right, everyone!” The worship pastor’s peppy tone felt so at odds with her internal monologue, it was jarring.
“Stand up for this one.” He put his hands up over his head, clapping, before returning to the guitar and strumming rhythmically while he turned away from the mic and then back again to begin the song.
It was about trading your sorrows for joy. Even in this moment, she felt it. It didn’t matter what it meant to David. It didn’t matter if everyone here couldn’t understand her decisions. The song still resonated with her.
So she would sing it.
A choir filtered out from backstage, came to stand behind the worship team, all in red robes, swaying and clapping, singing a choral arrangement of a Madonna song that had been recently appropriated by church spaces, though even Soraya knew that, when Madonna sang about being on her knees in the song, she was not in fact singing about literal prayer.
She did her best to push that to the side and just listen to the song, which was being beautifully sung. She looked up at the lyrics on the screen and tried to sing along. A rushing river moved behind the words, the water swelling in time with the music.
Then the movie behind the words changed. It was dark and shaky. Then suddenly it was . . .
Her jaw dropped, and she put her hand over her mouth as the reality of what she was seeing washed over her.
As a man’s naked rear was suddenly projected across the whole screen, a few short screams rose over the music and the clapping faltered.
When a naked woman bounced into view and onto the couch in the frame, the crowd fractured.
Some were moving, turning away; others were frozen, mouths open and staring.
The lyrics were still rolling over the top of what was now a pornographic scene. What was now the literal, original interpretation of the prayer in the song.
Oh. God.
She knew the ass on-screen. And she knew it well.
David. It was David. Naked. With . . . with Pastor John’s wife.
At . . . That was the pastor’s house. She’d been there. She had seen the painting of Jesus on the cross behind the purple velvet couch where her husband was filming himself getting . . . taken there by the pastor’s wife.
Everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.
Everything.
This was the text but sent to everyone. This was the secret of who he was, playing out in full color in front of all the people who had told her how good he was.
The screen went dark.
But everyone had already seen it. Everything seemed to slow down as she looked around her, at the shocked reactions of all the congregants, at the swell of outrage. Some people were yelling. Some were laughing uncomfortably. Some, she realized, had no idea it was more than random internet porn.
John came rushing out onto the stage, his face red, frozen in shock. She knew a moment of real sympathy for him. Because she’d felt that shock, right in these pews only a few weeks ago.
But no one had cared when it was her.
Would they care now?
Soraya looked over at Stephanie, who was frozen in place while chaos swirled around her.
Then Soraya turned back to look at David, who was standing in the sound booth looking down at the chaos below, his shock, his rage, palpable even from down there.
Then he found her, their eyes making direct contact.
Good luck playing the hero now.
She smiled. Slowly. Deliberately.
She smiled, because she knew.
The noise around her had reached deafening proportions. The growing chaos mirrored a slow-motion action sequence in a war movie.
Soraya turned away from all of it and began to walk toward the back of the sanctuary. The crowd parted for her like the Red Sea as she moved with ease through the uproar.
Vindicated. Smiling.
She felt a hand on her arm, and she stopped, looking directly into Kristi’s eyes. Her Bible study leader was clinging to her shirtsleeve, her gaze apologetic.
Soraya didn’t say anything. She just pulled away from her and continued to walk out, with that same chorus that had signaled his downfall playing in her head.
He was cheating on her with the pastor’s wife.
Now everybody knew. Everybody.
They might have all told her that what David had done to her was something she should forgive, but no one would ever tell Pastor John he needed to forgive that.
Maybe she should feel bad that he’d been dragged into all of this. But she didn’t. They’d all made their own beds. Including her. She had been married to, lived with, a man she didn’t really know for years. This was the consequence. This whole mess.
But it was all out in the open now.
What are spells but prayers men don’t like?
Of course, her husband would not like this spell. This prayer. But it had come home to roost either way.
Karma. Justice. Revenge.
Right now, it all felt the same.
She walked back to the parking lot and right past her car. Well. His car. He could . . . he could have it.
She laughed. She laughed, and she simply continued on by it. She would head back to town on foot, and she would do it with her head held high. He could have all his stuff back. Everything. As long as she didn’t have to deal with him anymore.
About a mile into the walk, her resolve started to falter slightly. But it was a grand gesture, so she was doing it.
“Soraya!”
Her head whipped around, and she saw Nora stopped in the middle of the road in her navy-blue Camry, looking at her incredulously. “What are you doing?”
“I’m walking away from an explosion. Triumphantly.”
“Where’s your car? Do you mean a literal explosion?”
“No. Better. Better.” She ran into the middle of the road and leaned into Nora’s window. “David is . . . He was fucking the pastor’s wife. Everyone just saw it.”
She could scarcely remember having ever said that word in her life, but it was fitting to her now.
“Oh my God, get in the car,” Nora said. “I need the whole story.” Soraya rounded to the passenger side and got in. “I’m working this morning, you weirdo. What would you have done if I hadn’t driven by?”
“I would’ve walked all the way back to town. Angrily. But I would’ve done it.”
“Okay. Explain to me about the car later. First, I need to hear about how everyone saw your husband and the pastor’s wife.”
She recounted the entire story in great detail, and by the time she was finished, Nora was crying with laughter.
“I’m so sorry. I sadly, unbelievably, know how traumatizing it is to have seen a video of your husband having sex with another woman.”
Soraya blinked. “It . . . it wasn’t? I think because I knew.
I knew he was doing this. Well, not with her, and I certainly didn’t know he was taking a video of it, but he took pictures of his .
. . his junk, so it makes sense. He sabotaged himself.
He did it to himself. And he’s been so angry at me.
So bitter at me. But I didn’t do this. He did.
I just feel . . . It was magic, Nora. I saw him before the service, and I told him: Everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all. The scripture from my spell.”
They were silent for a few minutes. “Nothing came of mine.”
“Have you talked to him?” she asked. Meaning Ben.
Nora shook her head. “I don’t have anything to say that isn’t an incoherent ramble about betrayal and bad dirty talk. If he saw that he called me on accident, he hasn’t acknowledged it.” She let out a slow breath. “My marriage is over. I really didn’t want it to be.”
“I get it. But I don’t want to be married to that man either. I suspect you don’t want to be married to a man who treats you this way.”
“No. It’s an illusion, I think. That anyone is actually decent.”
“Maybe it is. But I feel . . . a lot more powerful than I ever have before.”
“You probably shouldn’t have given him your car, though.”
“He said he was going to take it back. He was trying to take everything from me. Everything, so that he was my only option. He lost everything today.” Her heart twisted, just slightly.
Because their sons were going to hear about this, and thank God, thank God they hadn’t been in there.
Not for that. Hearing about it would be bad enough.
But actually seeing their own father . . .
At least they’d see him clearly.
She wasn’t on the schedule to work today, but she opted to go into the apothecary for a while. Alexandra’s daughter was cheerfully making coffee, and Daisy was sitting there with an old-fashioned ledger in front of her.
Aggie was sitting at her table where she did her readings, and Soraya approached, even though she had typically kept her distance from this part of the store.
“Just so you know,” Soraya said, “it worked.”
Aggie looked at her, her clear blue gaze sharp. “Of course it did. We’re all magic, Soraya. It just needs to be claimed.”
She stayed until the evening, and when she finally walked back up to the apartment, there was a vase sitting outside the door with flowers in it. She paused and bent down, picking it up and looking at the card.
I’m sorry. Let’s have coffee sometime. Kristi.
She didn’t know if she was warmed by the gesture or not. It had taken that—it had taken a man being betrayed by David—for Kristi to see that he was not, in fact, a good man. It had taken video evidence. But it was better than nothing.
She heard the door across the hall open, and she turned.
Declan was standing there, his dark hair slightly disheveled, looking no less gorgeous for it.
The little leap in her chest from earlier was .
. . subdued. Today had been a lot, and hope was a strange beast at the moment.
She was vindicated, but she had also been forced to look directly at the truth of all of this.
She supposed that was the flip side of pure, unvarnished truth. There was an ugliness to it.
“I was going to ask you to dinner sometime,” he said.
Well. That successfully got a leap out of her beleaguered heart.
“Am I too late?”
She looked down at the card. And then back up at him. “No. You’re right on time.”