Oh, there was the truth. They were talking about her. All of them.
“Pastor John prayed that you’ll see what a good man you married, that God will show you how to forgive and be gracious, and that’s really why I’m here today. I hope you can hear the words I have for you. I know everything seems difficult right now. But you know God won’t give you something you can’t handle. As long as you continue to honor him.”
A faint memory began to scratch at the back of her mind. Her telling Nora that her mother leaving her was some kind of test from God. That he was trying to show her his goodness through trial.
She remembered very clearly what Nora had said in response.
At the time, she had been horrendously offended. Not only because what Nora said was sacrilegious, but because she hadn’t been able to understand that God didn’t make mistakes. That any trial she was experiencing had to be for her own edification.
What a ... abitchSoraya had been.
What a bitch Kristi was being now.
“Don’t blame my husband’s mistakes on God.” The teakettle whistled. “Wow. Too bad that took so long, and now you have to leave.”
Chapter Four
Nora
When the light goes out, make your own.
—Rules for Witches
The pictures Ben sent from Chile were pretty. Mountains, him standing on the edge of one of the mountains, him with his group of people all out there searching for ... themselves.
She and Ben were still in contact, because they wereonly separated. Not that it wasn’t painful. His comments about how she’d created distance between them with her issues and prickly attitude had been hurtful. But after he’d told her about his retreat, she’d started texting him, and he was keeping in contact.
She liked it. It made her feel like there was a bridge that still connected her to him.
She didn’t know exactly when he was coming back, but that was part of the separation. There was a little bit of contact, not total contact. This was about him and his journey. She could accept that.
She didn’t need to be possessive. She didn’t need to be desperate and feral about it. One of the things he’d said before he left was that she was both emotionally unavailable and insecure. It hurt to hear, but it wasn’t really untrue. She had a lot of baggage about abandonment, and she was sure it came out in her interactions with him. She had completelymelted down initially when he told her he needed a separation. Like he was leaving forever. Because, for her, that’s all it meant.
Of course. There had never been a reunification with her mother.
But he wasn’t her mom.
He’d reminded her of that when he left. She knew it was true. Which was why she made sure to respond to the photos he sent with genuine enthusiasm, so he could see she was supportive of him doing this.
She was supposed to be finishing up some copy for a corporate website she did work for, but she was having trouble focusing, and she was mainly looking at tarot decks online and making her third cup of herbal tea. Maybe she should have bought some at Lady’s Mantle. She could have given herself a reading while drinking a brew for concentration.
Or maybe she’d abandon copy for the night. She could write an article called “My Husband Went to Chile to Find Himself, and I’m the One Who’s Lost.” Or maybe “Everything in My Life Seemed Perfect, but It Turns Out I’m Sad like Everyone Else.”
“Blah blah blah,” she muttered, standing from her desk and stretching her stagnant body.
Her tea had gone cold, so she decided to go throw it in the microwave. She opened the door, closed it, hit the minute button, and then “Start.”
And all the lights went out.
“Shit.”
The electricity in this house was finicky at best. Her best friend, Sam, said it was practically negligence, especially considering what the house itself had cost. She didn’t disagree with him. If she’d had her way, they would’ve used Sam when they did the build, but Ben said that Jonathan McNamara, who had been their contractor, would work only with specific subcontractors, and Sam wasn’t on the list, and it would cause delays and issues.
I do fine. I don’t need to do your house.
But of course, he’d done nothing but criticize the electrical work on her house. Well. After all the problems.
She went to the electrical box, because generally the finicky fuses would trip themselves, and she just had to reset them.
