Chapter Twenty-Seven Nora #2
“So, what exactly are you suggesting?”
“We use our power for good. We think bigger. Better.”
“Is this all so you can avoid self-reflection?”
Nora shook her head emphatically. “No. No. Maybe a little. But think about Soraya. How she didn’t have a place to stay.
You and I and how we needed to do something to make money so that our husbands couldn’t take everything from us.
We’re not the only ones in the same situation.
And what helps? A network of women. So we need to make the network bigger. ”
“I like that idea,” Daisy said.
“We should have an open house at the apothecary, if Aggie wants to. We can invite anyone who needs a community. Anyone who’s feeling lost. We know that we’re powerful together.”
“That’s true.”
“So let’s make it happen. But we need Soraya.”
“Maybe we give Soraya the day.” Daisy was as pragmatic as ever.
“Maybe. Although, the next thing I need is to find a lawyer.”
Nora heard footsteps on the stairs. “A lawyer?” Her jaw almost dropped when Zach came around the corner shirtless, and good God, so sexy. “I can help with that.”
“Zach, you don’t have to do everything,” Daisy said.
“Why not? I have resources. I might as well do something with them.”
Nora looked at Daisy, who was staring at Zach like he was the Second Coming. Fair enough. A man who wanted to help. What a novel concept.
Daisy smiled overly sweet at him. “We might be wanting to use your resources as our new idea gets off the ground.”
“What idea is that?” Zach walked over to the coffee maker and began to make a new pot.
“Can you clone him?” Nora asked Daisy.
“Back off.” Daisy made a mock-fighting stance, and the very idea of Daisy fighting Nora was enough to make her laugh.
Then she explained everything to Zach, who listened intently, though paused partway through the conversation to go upstairs and put on a shirt. By the end of the discussion, Nora could see why Daisy had been quick to say she had feelings for Zach. Who wouldn’t have feelings for Zach?
“Now all we have to do is get Aggie on board,” Daisy said.
That proved easy. Aggie was more than happy to celebrate Beltane by having a tarot and spell night at the store, and was even happy to donate her services for the evening, doing readings free of charge and offering certain spells.
By late afternoon, Daisy had started making a poster, while Nora went straight to the lawyer’s office that Zach had set her up with. “I need a divorce.”
The lawyer was a young woman with a quick wit, a lot of opinions, and a forearm covered in tattoos.
Nora liked her instantly. The conversation was bracing.
Really digging into the reality of separating hers and Ben’s lives was sad, but it was also clarifying, and now that she had a more concrete plan, she felt better.
She also knew her lawyer was the exact sort of person she’d love to have at the open house. “You wouldn’t happen to be interested in coming to an apothecary open house this week?”
She furrowed her brow. “An apothecary?”
“Yes. I work there. In addition to writing and painting. At the apothecary, we do spells. Tarot readings. There are tea blends and coffee, baked goods. Everything and anything that might be good for the soul. But also, I’m hoping that some women might come who could use some help.”
“I’ll see if I have time.”
She and Daisy spent the next couple of days talking to small-business owners and spreading the word about the open house.
The next thing was getting Soraya on board. They waited until Tuesday afternoon, and after she still didn’t respond to their texts, they ambushed her in person.
Soraya opened the door partway after they knocked, her hair back up in that ridiculous blond bun. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, you can.” Nora reached out and took Soraya’s hand. “Because we need you.”
“We really need you,” Daisy emphasized.
Soraya drew back. “Well, I’m done with all of this.”
“So are we.” Daisy took a step forward.
“You are?”
“Well. Not with the apothecary. But with . . . the petty stuff. The vengeance stuff.”
“We’re expanding,” Nora said. “We want to help people. Women like us. It’s not enough to just get revenge on the men. We need to do something more. Better.”
“We’ve done enough.” Soraya moved to shut the door.
Nora stopped her. “No. We haven’t. We haven’t even come close to doing enough.
We proved that we’re powerful. And you know, maybe that’s the thing men don’t want us to know.
You got told to ignore your instincts. To not listen to your intuition, and to listen to a man instead.
I spent my whole childhood being told that everything I did was too much.
That I was too much work. That I was someone who had to be put up with.
I carried that into my marriage. Daisy always feels like she has to do everything for everyone. ”
“Thank you, Nora,” Daisy said.
“Well, it’s true. We’re amazing. We came together at the worst time in our lives, and look what we made happen.
Maybe it backfired. But what if we channeled that power into something good?
You can hide it, Soraya, and pretend that you never discovered it.
You can go right back to how you were before.
But then what’s the point of any of it? Isn’t that part of your faith?
That you’re not supposed to hide your light?
Now that you found it, don’t cover it up again. ”
“The boys are in their rooms. Probably on their phones.”
“Then we’ll be quiet,” Nora said.
Soraya moved to the side and let them come in.
“What happened the other night was . . . devastating.” She crossed her arms. “And I just . . . I’m scared.”
“Listen,” Nora said. “It backfired on me too. It backfired on Daisy. The man cut his finger off, and how is he going to work and support their kids? My whole relationship with Sam is a complete wreck. That’s what happens when you invest in revenge.
It’s not enough. It’s not enough. We have to get justice.
Not just for us, but for every woman in town who feels this way.
Think about how different it would’ve been for you if instead of judging you, people had rallied around you.
What if we can be that for other people? ”
“I think that would be good.” Soraya looked away. “It isn’t just a rebounding spell, though. I think I was being punished.”
“Why?” Nora asked.
“I . . . I slept with Declan.”
Nora and Daisy were completely silent. Nora had assumed Soraya would sleep with someone eventually, but she’d expected it would take multiple dinner dates and an emotional connection, not . . . a couple encounters in a hallway.
“So, you know, having the house go up in literal flames right after felt like a plague. A punishment.”
“Oh, Soraya.” Daisy reached out and put her hand over hers. “Sex didn’t cause it. Okay, sex did cause it, but that was on David, not you.”
“That seems logical, but what about any of this has been logical? We’re playing with all this power, and who knows what all it can do?”
“Yes. Yes, that is true. We have power,” Daisy said. “And yes, it can hurt people. If all we’re channeling is anger.”
“So how do we channel something else?” Soraya asked.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” Nora responded.
She had a couple of things she had to deal with that she wasn’t especially excited to confront.
She needed to have it out with Ben, and at some point she was going to have to handle Sam.
Sam. Just thinking about him hurt. “Am I emotionally unavailable?”
Soraya and Daisy looked at her. “Yes.” Their answer was in unison.
“Well, that . . . I don’t like that. I thought it was just a shitty thing that had been said to me to manipulate me.”
“It might’ve been a shitty thing that Ben said to you,” Daisy said. “Because he wasn’t trying to work your issues out. He was just looking for an excuse to leave you and not talk to you. Having said that, I can’t say that you’re the most open person.”
Nora huffed. “I just . . . I . . .”
“It’s not actually a character flaw,” Daisy said. “I think it’s trauma. Has anyone ever actually attempted to communicate with you, or have they just weaponized your own issues against you?”
“Sam,” Nora said. “I think he tried. I blew it up by generally being closed off.”
“Well, I am sorry about that.”
“It’s a bad combination of things. Because I want to work on myself but also be less self-obsessed. Focusing only on my own issues is what caused a lot of this.”
“Maybe that’s the thing.” Soraya rubbed her arms. “Maybe the more we reach out to other people, the more we help other people heal, the more we heal ourselves.”
“That’s kind of profound,” Nora said. “Thank you. I think you’re right.
Isolation is the enemy. It makes you feel like you’re crazy and making all of it up.
That’s what makes you feel like everything is hopeless.
When you get cut off from your community and your kids and everything else, that’s what makes it unbearable, and then you’re sort of focusing on all your own issues at the exclusion of everything else, and you can’t ever catch your breath. ”
Daisy put her hand on Nora’s. “I think this is the right thing. I think it’s the way forward.”
“Also,” Soraya said, “Sam is your best friend. It’s okay to be hurt by what happened, but don’t you think you need to go talk to him?”
“But if I do, then . . .”
“What are you actually afraid is going to happen?” Daisy pressed.
Nora buried her face in her hands. “I’m going to kiss him. Then I’m going to sleep with him. Because I want him.”
The stark truth, coming out of her own mouth, so unambiguously, was not quite what she expected. But it was true.
“I have wanted him. I . . . But it’s so scary.
At every stage of my life, it’s been so scary.
I’ve been playing this game where I try to prove to myself it’s not that.
Especially since I married Ben. He’s my husband.
If I was married to somebody else, if I loved somebody else, then I couldn’t love Sam.
He was safer, because he was off-limits. ”
“He wasn’t safer,” Soraya said. “Because you love him, with or without Ben in your life.”
“But just talking about it is breaking us into pieces.”
“No, because you didn’t talk about it. He threw all of that at you, and you didn’t tell him how you felt.”
“Because I want to protect it.”
“But it’s not protecting it,” Soraya pointed out.
“You know what.” Nora put her hands on her hips. “If you could just stop being right, that would be great.”
“Sorry. I’m wrong a lot. I’ve been wrong a lot with you, so it’s nice to be right for a change.”
“Wow,” Daisy said. “Soraya admitted she’s wrong sometimes.”
Soraya shot her a look. “I’ve been wrong about a lot of things for a very long time. Being able to admit that is really freeing. Maybe I’m wrong about everything now too. Maybe.” She sighed heavily. “I told Declan I can’t have dinner with him.”
“Why?” Daisy asked.
“Because of the apocalyptic sex.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Soraya, your sex did not burn the house down!
” Nora said. “You just spoke a hard truth to me, so I’m going to speak one to you.
The way you’re thinking about God feels narcissistic.
I think—if God is up there—that he isn’t obsessing over every little thing you do every day.
It makes sense to me that he would want you to love others and not be a hypocrite, not do harm, to be honest and to lift other people up.
I really hope he hates it when people like your husband preach about him and then do all this awful, awful stuff to the people around them.
But the only people who benefit from you being scared of every little thing are the ones who are invested in controlling you. ”
Soraya looked away from her. “It didn’t feel like the wrong thing. Mostly. I got worried about it afterward, and then the fire happened.”
“I will grant you, I think we dabbled a little too darkly. I think there was definitely power at play in all of this. Our spell worked too well. But that has nothing to do with you and Declan.”
“You say that very confidently. Like you know the rules to all of this, and I don’t see how you can.”
“That’s what I do. I talk confidently and loudly to hide that I’m an insecure wreck, okay? But one of us has to pretend they know what’s happening, and neither of you are going to do it.”
“True,” Daisy said.
“Yeah,” Soraya agreed.
“We need to sort our shit out,” Nora said. “Because we can’t be afraid. We can’t be afraid of ourselves. We can’t be afraid of the future. Not anymore. We didn’t want any of this to change, but it did. So when the universe gives you a chance at a new life, you have to take it.”
She was just talking confidently, though. Because when she tried to imagine a new life, the only thing she could see clearly was the image of losing yet another person she loved.