Chapter Twenty-Seven Nora
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nora
Nothing withers magic faster than selfishness.
—Rules for Witches
“Good morning. Whore.”
Daisy gave Nora an extremely unamused look as Nora pushed her way into Daisy’s house, holding a bag of pastries that she had a feeling would lighten Daisy’s mood.
“You sound jealous.” Daisy crossed her arms and wrinkled her nose, trying to meet Nora’s gaze without flinching, clearly.
“Hey. That was whore, affectionate, if you couldn’t tell.”
“I assumed.” Daisy pushed her hair out of her face. It was disheveled. More than just a side effect of sleeping.
Good for her. Genuinely. Nora wasn’t bitter or jealous at all.
“What’s going on?” Daisy asked.
“I haven’t heard from Soraya. She’s not answering her phone.”
“It is pretty early.”
“Yes,” Nora said. “But of course I’d be checking in on her this morning, and of course after she said she . . . Do you really think she’s going to quit? Do you think she’ll go back to that church and all those people who are so awful to her—or worse, to David—because she feels guilty?”
Daisy sighed. “I feel a little bit guilty.”
“Why?” Nora asked.
“Because it feels like it all got out of hand. It feels like everything went too far. I wanted karma, sure, but this is . . .”
“You’re assuming what we did actually had an effect.”
Daisy looked at Nora, unwavering. “We wanted it to happen, Nora. We wanted to ruin them, to hurt them. There was a point where that felt good and like it was enough, but now other people are in the cross fire.”
Nora turned away, walked into the dining room, and set the bag of pastries down on Daisy’s table. “Are your kids still in bed?”
“Yeah,” she said. “So is Zach.”
“Ooh. He spent the night?”
“Yeah. He stayed with the kids while I went over to the fire last night. And then . . . well. You know.” She smiled.
“Yeah. I know.”
“What about Sam?”
Nora ignored the discomfort in her stomach. “What about him? He drove me back home and dropped me off.”
“That’s all?”
“Yep. That’s all.” She edited out that she’d gone back. That she hadn’t stayed away from him after the fire, and everything was now ruined. Why talk about that?
You’re emotionally unavailable . . .
Daisy sighed. “He’s in love with you, Nora.”
Nora bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to hear it.
That it was so obvious to everyone else when she’d missed it.
“I love Sam. With all my heart. But it’s not like that.
” They’d almost kissed. They’d almost changed everything.
They’d almost unraveled the carefully knit together relationship that had sustained them all this time.
It was one of the most terrifying moments of her life, improved by the fact that she’d discovered her husband had been rushed to the hospital because he had fallen down a mountain.
“Why not?”
“I’m dealing with the fallout of my marriage.”
“So am I.” Daisy wrinkled her nose. “Though it is deeply improved by the amazing sex.”
“Zach doesn’t mean anything to you. Sam is everything to me, and if I mess up what we have, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Zach is not nothing to me,” Daisy said. “I don’t know what he is but . . . he’s not nothing.”
Nora looked down at her hands. “That’s not what I meant.
I didn’t mean he meant nothing to you now.
But I mean, you don’t have this preexisting thing with him.
” She never talked about this stuff. She was very good at deflecting from the reality of her life in foster care.
In fact, she was good at it on purpose. But everything felt so . . . undone.
Like her life and the whole world was falling apart around her, and the idea of preserving the facade that she’d kept in place all this time seemed silly.
When even Sam was gone.
Of all the people left in her life, other than Sam, Daisy was the closest to a lifelong friend, but even back then, she had kept a lot of her deep, dark personal stuff to herself.
“Sam has seen everything,” Nora said. “He’s met my mom.
The whole thing with my family is ugly. It’s not something I like revisiting or talking about, so I have this one person in my life who knows.
He knows and he understands everything. It’s the closest thing to acceptance I’ve ever had. To security. To . . . family, I guess.”
“You don’t like talking about your past. That doesn’t mean other people wouldn’t accept you.”
“I know. I do know that. I know that you would. I know Soraya would. But I would have to talk about it. I would have to talk about the times when my grandmother slapped me across the face for being disrespectful and told me I was too much of a burden. Or all the times my mom lied to me and said she was going to get clean, said she was going to give up the men in her life so she could be with me. She never did. She chose them every single time. I can’t even talk about my dad letting me down because I’ve never seen him.
I don’t know who he is. God knows he’s not flinging himself onto DNA databases, either because he’s a criminal or because he knows he has an illegitimate kid out there somewhere.
I never had people who stuck with me. Ben is just another one in a long line.
But Sam has been there. From the beginning. I’ve never wanted to jeopardize that.”
She thought of the way he’d looked at her last night. All hurt and fury.
She’d jeopardized it, and she knew it.
“He’s mad at me,” she said, her voice sounding small.
It reminded her of being a child. Of the way disappointment had sounded in her voice all those years ago.
My mom didn’t show up, did she?
“What do you mean?” Daisy asked.
“Last night, I went back to his house. I said something about sleeping on the couch, and it got really tense. Because we did almost kiss last night. I wanted to pretend it didn’t happen, but it was impossible.”
“Oh dear.”
“I just don’t get why he couldn’t leave it. We were fine.” Her heart clenched tight when she thought about his face. His anger. His hurt.
He wasn’t fine.
Daisy opened the pastry bag and plucked a croissant out of it, examining it for a moment.
Then she looked around the kitchen, her gaze drifting to the ceiling.
“Nothing stays the same. Nothing. I didn’t want my marriage to end, but it did.
I tried to hang on, but I couldn’t. I’m in this house, and there’s a different man upstairs in my bed, and if you’d have asked me what I wanted six months ago, I would have told you I wanted my same life.
My same marriage.” She took a bite of the croissant.
“I don’t have it. I’m happier, Nora. I’m happier with all the change I wouldn’t have chosen, even though there were parts of it that hurt.
That still hurt. I’ve seen you and Sam together over the years, and of course you were married for some of those years.
I can feel things changing between the two of you.
That relationship is changing, no matter how hard you try to keep it the same. ”
Nora sighed and sat down at the table. “I can’t deal with this right now. Soraya’s life is in shambles, and even though she’s pulling away, we have to be there for her. We can’t let her lose all this . . . progress she’s made.”
“Your problems matter.” Daisy took another bite of croissant.
“I know. But I’m tired of them. I would rather talk about Soraya. Or you. I would rather talk about anything else but my own issues because I’m just so desperately bored of being a dysfunctional wreck.”
She’d tried so hard to change that. She’d tried to get married and make all her problems go away. To wave a magic wand and become healed, secure, and normal, and it hadn’t worked.
“All right. What are we going to do? About all of this.”
“I don’t know,” said Daisy. “But at least we can talk to each other about it.”
Nora sighed. “That is true. The problem is, these things happen, and you end up feeling isolated. You feel like you’re the only person who’s going through something like this—”
“Successfully cursing your ex?”
“No. The divorce. Being left, being cheated on. We banded together. That was a lot better than being isolated and alone. But we’ve been thinking too small.
Too angry. We got work at the apothecary, and we learned about magic.
I would’ve said none of it was true. But it is.
We made all that happen. It was karma meeting our intention.
Some of that has backfired.” Nora thought about how hurt Sam was.
“I know it did. On Soraya’s kids, on me.
But I think that’s what came from using all our power for revenge.
We have to do something else with this. Because there are other women out there who feel like they’re by themselves.
Who have lost their friends, their kids, their husbands, who feel powerless.
We know that we are not powerless. We’re powerful. Profoundly. Dangerously, even.”
Nora’s heart was beating faster. “The apothecary is the perfect space. For more women to get together. Women who need a community. That’s why we found each other, because we needed a community.
It’s why Alexandra lost herself. Because she needed a community, but she didn’t have one.
So what if we could stop even one woman from ending up like Alexandra?
From losing everything just because your husband cast you aside.
Revenge isn’t enough. That’s what we’ve been focusing on.
Saving ourselves and getting revenge. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel bad.
I’m pretty happy with my revenge. I’m kind of glad he fell down a mountain. ”
“Nora . . .”
“Well, I am. But I get that you aren’t loving this.
Hell, I don’t like that the karma spell grabbed me and made me hurt too.
I know Soraya is upset. I know her kids were in danger last night, and that scared her.
But she isn’t going to lose her community over this.
We’re not going to allow other women to feel isolated. Not the way that we did.”