Soraya was watching Nora’s spell burn, the ashes settling in a dish on the table, her heart pounding hard. This seemed ... wrong, and yet she couldn’t tear her gaze away.
Her phone buzzed, and she felt like the text had interrupted something sacred.
She took her phone out of her pocket and saw a very long text from David.
There was a joke in there somewhere aboutlengthregarding previous items he’d sent via text.
She stared at the words, having difficulty making sense of them.
Since you won’t see reason.
Out of the house within the week.
Go to church with me on Sunday.
Try to restore our family.
She blinked.
The words were all out of order in her head, jumbled.
He was actually threatening her. Threatening to take the house away.
Just yesterday he’d ... imploded on a baseball field in front of the whole community, and he had the audacity to act like he was ... so lofty? So far above her?
He’d been staying in one of their unoccupied rentals, and now some new tenants were going to move in, and he wanted her out. Or she was going to have to take him back, because he wouldn’t sleep in the guest bedroom at his own house, and he would not be denied access to his wife.
Access?
None of this was about missing her. It was about getting what he wanted. Saving face. It was about his pride. But she wasn’t the one who had caused this. She wasn’t the one who had done it. She didn’t have any power. She didn’t have ... anything. He was making sure she knew it. That she felt it.
The boys want their mother back.
Oh, of all the lies. Of all the diabolical lies he had told, this was the worst. The only reason the boys didn’t have her was because he had made them angry at her. Somehow all of this had been twisted around and turned into her fault. No one could see it.No one could see it.
Theyhadher.
She was the one being punished. Who was being kept away from them, by her husband’s brainwashing nonsense.
“I need them to see it,” she said.
She hadn’t meant to say the last part out loud.
“Did you find a spell, Soraya?” Aggie asked.
What are spells but prayers men don’t like?
She nodded and took a step closer to the table.
Maybe Aggie was right. Maybe she didn’t have to abandon who she was. In fact, that was the problem with all of this. Soraya felt like she was being herself. Like she was being the woman she had been taught to be. The person she was supposed to be.
The Christian chorus line was behaving like she was in the wrong. She felt like everything she’d ever believed had been turned and twisted, and no one seemed to notice except her.
They all thought saying God’s name cavalierly was taking it in vain, but what was this? Using God’s name to try to manipulate her, to try to force her back into a home where she wasn’t respected. Where she was lied to and betrayed.
They were all saying she was the one who couldn’t see. That she was deceived in some way.
It wasthem.
