Soraya blinked. “Yeah.”
“Absolutely not.” Nora wrapped her arm around Soraya and jostled her. “You’re going to keep manifesting, bitch!”
“Hell yes!” Daisy stood up, the euphoria from earlier gripping her again. “You know what? Yes. We are ... we are going to keep growing and getting stronger.” She lifted her soda from the coffee table. “Here’s to getting what we want.”
“To getting what we need.” Soraya lifted her water cup.
“To getting everything.” Nora held her drink up.
As they all brought them together in a toast, Daisy thought that if today was any indication, that might actually happen. If nothing else, she almost felt like things would be okay.
It was the first time in a while she’d felt like that.
Chapter Eight
Nora
A coincidence is one of life’s common forms of magic.
—Rules for Witches
Two days later, Nora was set up to begin the mural on the Holly Theater. She had made arrangements with Aggie to adjust her hours around her painting time, and it was nice to have an excuse to just never be at home. Her communication with Ben was perfunctory, and it was costing her not to dig into that.
She felt like she was hovering in space in a small glass box. She had to stay there and not push too far forward, not push too deep, be careful not to shatter it.
She’d had that feeling quite a bit in foster care, like it would only take one wrong move for her to get booted out of the house she was in and sent somewhere else. It was the same every time she’d gone to stay with her grandmother too. One wrong move and she’d be right back in the system, which had happened a couple of times. God. How had it come to this with her husband? Where she was afraid to question him on when exactly he was coming back? What he was actually doing?
It was like she’d been put in time-out. Like she was being tested.
That wasn’t how marriage should work. Unilateral decisions cut across the other person when your life was built together.
She did her best not to dwell on that while she painted. Writing had been difficult for her since Ben had left because her mind was continually wandering, and it was almost impossible to bring it back to focus. While she painted, she liked letting her mind wander free. It was one way that the painting supported the writing. Usually, she used it to brainstorm new ideas, to think about the story she might write eventually and try to sell to a major publisher. The novel she had always intended to get to someday, but that felt too big and too lofty for her.
Now, though, she wasn’t loving her free-range thoughts, roaming around and picking at poison berries, tormenting her with an unknown future.
Bullshit.
She had been so sure she was past uncertainty.
There were just so many potential consequences to this. So many potential dreams and versions of her future that could be destroyed.
Like kids. She and Ben weren’t sure if they wanted them. They’d decided to wait. She’d been good with that, because she was the product of young, stupid parents who hadn’t been ready to have kids, and really, never got ready to. She was a casualty of people who had procreated without giving it any thought, and she’d always imagined if she did become a mother, it would be when her life was settled and she’d really honed her writing, or her art, and his practice was solid. When everything was financially in order.
Now she was thirty-five, staring down the reality of sundowning fertility and ... What if she had to start over?
She was rescued from her own thought process when the side door to the Holly opened, and Sam walked past her ladder.
“Sam,” she called down to him.
He stopped and looked up, shielding his face from the sun. She could have jumped down and kissed him. Genuinely. It was just such a relief to see him. Because he made her feel sane. Because he made her feel grounded.
“What are you doing up there?”
“I’m painting a mural,” she said.
“That’s incredible. Back in high school, you would’ve been doing graffiti.”
“I nevergraffitiedanything.”
