—Rules for Witches
Today had been weird, and she hadn’t been herself, honestly. She shouldn’t have gone into that store. She shouldn’t have gotten wine drunk in public and spilled her guts to Nora and Daisy.
Nora didn’t even like her. She never had.
Which was fine. She and Nora were just ... too different. Soraya had tried being nice to her, but Nora had been such a hot mess in high school, it had been hard. She couldn’t be okay with Nora smoking cigarettes in an alley. It was bad for her. So of course she said something about it, and Nora got mad.
Nora was always mad.
Now so are you.
Ouch.She didn’t like that. She’d tried so hard all her life to be happy. Filled with joy. The light she was supposed to be in the world. A beacon on a hill.
Now she was alone in her kitchen, everything far too quiet while she kneaded her sourdough loaf and listened to nothing, a black hole of darkness shut away, which wasn’t a commission in any ideology.
Usually, she put on a Bible-study podcast or some worship music, but she felt empty, and for the first time didn’t want to be filled by anything. Not someone else’s thoughts or opinions on what she should do or how she should feel.
Her whole life was about receiving instruction and listening to it.
Maybe that was part of why Nora had always felt tricky.
She didn’t listen to anyone, and Soraya had to listen. Always.
It was so quiet that the knock on her front door followed by the ring of the doorbell just about sent her straight to heaven.
“Probably hell,” she muttered. She stepped away from the counter and wiped her hands on her apron as she made her way to the foyer. “Since I went into Satan’s lair today.”
She peeked out the side window and frowned. Kristi, her Bible study leader, was at the door. She had missed the last two weeks.
She felt a little bit guilty about that, but at the moment, she felt weird and bad and guilty about everything, so nothing really galvanized her into action like it used to.
It was a tangle she couldn’t sort through.
She jerked the door open and smiled. She hadn’t even forced the smile, it was compulsory. Her church smile. The everything-is-fine smile. Glory-to-God smile. Hallelujah.
“Kristi,” she said. “What an unexpected surprise.” Well, that was both redundant and obvious.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure. I was just ... I’m about to put a loaf of bread in the oven.”
“Oh. Lovely.”
Kristi came in and stood there in the vast entryway, her smile competing with Soraya’s for brightest. And most fake.
Anxiety hooked itself around Soraya’s stomach. She thought of the missed Bible studies. She was definitely getting a check-in. AHey, girlie, let’s have coffeewithout the preceding message.
An ambush.
At least the house was clean. She didn’t have anything else to do. Nothing but keep it clean, bake the bread, and worry. Worry that the entire place was going to crumble around her. That everything she had lived for, created, would fall apart. That she would be crushed beneath the weight of it.
But she kept smiling. “Come in. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
“Tea for me, thank you,” Kristi said. For some reason, that felt like a rejection.
“Of course.”
Kristi had been to her house a number of times, so Soraya didn’t have to lead her to the kitchen but did anyway, wringing her hands as she did.
