Dinner. I have extra.
So she would put off texting Ben. She would have dinner with Sam, even though she’d already eaten. He would fix her lights.
And for a little while longer, she could live in this bubble. This bubble where she felt pain but hadn’t pulled the trigger on anything.
This bubble where she had gently tugged the loose end of a thread, but it hadn’t all unraveled yet. Maybe she was just focusing on her upright cups.
So there.
Chapter Nineteen
Soraya
Spells manifest when a witch’s power meets divine opportunity.
—Rules for Witches
Something tapped Soraya on the shoulder early Sunday morning.
You have to go to church.
She hadn’t been for the past couple of weeks because the kids were mad at her anyway, and David was demanding that she move out of the house. She hadn’t spoken to him at all in the three days since she’d vacated the premises, and she knew he hadn’t been over there to check, because if he had, she would’ve heard from him.
But it was an urgent, insistent feeling that overtook her, that she had to go to church.
Maybe to go without him.
While she got dressed, she checked in with herself. Was she doing this because he’d ordered her to, and she was still responding to that on some level?
No. This was coming from her. She had to trust that.
You have to go,the voice persisted inside her.
She argued with herself the entire time. What was the point of going to church and having everybody stare at her? Going and getting ignored by her own kids if she ran into them. Going and getting hitby a bolt of lightning on account of the light witchcraft she had been involved in.
She almost laughed at that as she looked at her reflection in the mirror while praying that her moisturizer would take away some of the new lines and creases on her face that were a gift of this particularly stressful time.
The truth was, she had never believed that God was only around in church. So going to church wouldn’t reveal anything more than staying home would.
One of the strangest things was how she felt at peace spiritually while feeling at war with so many of the people she would’ve said she agreed with.
But that was what she had been grappling with this entire time. She didn’t feel like she was out of step with God. She felt out of step with this particular community and their reaction to her marital breakdown.
Maybe she needed to go so she could ... She wasn’t even really sure. It was about dealing with the issues of lingering resentment. Maybe she was supposed to go so that somebody could say the offensive thing that finally drove her away. Or maybe there would be something healing. Maybe.
That felt a little bit optimistic.
She didn’t feel optimistic. She felt driven. If there was one thing she had been taught all her life, it was that she was supposed to listen to the still, small voice.
She was listening. She was going, even if she didn’t really want to.
She opened the door to her apartment and heard a door open across the hall at the same time.
Declan stepped out right as she did, and her heart jumped slightly.
He was just so . . .
Hot.
