Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“We’re having a full moon circle tonight,” Hannah told Ben. “If you’d like to come and chant with us and give offerings to the goddess, you’re more than welcome.”
“I’m good,” he told her, grinning. “But I appreciate being invited.”
“You should let me make you a special mask,” Hannah told him, pulling a Tiffany business card case out of her back pocket, then extracting one of her cards, and giving it to him. “You can email me with your address and I’ll get one right in the mail to you.”
He looked like a deer in the headlights.
“You should listen to her,” Sam assured him.
There was lots of nodding.
When he left us, Sam said we were going around the side, we weren’t even walking back through the house of horrors.
“Mother,” he called over to her as she put an enormous bowl of potato salad down on the main table where all the food was going. “Jory and I will be over tomorrow morning to bleach the house. We’ll see you then.”
“Samuel Thomas Kage,” she scolded him. “You can’t just take your family and leave!”
“Watch me,” he bellowed back, waving at her as he steered us out the gate and around the side that was gravel and his mother’s roses to the front yard and out to the street.
We passed several of his relatives on the way to his monster SUV, and when we got there, the trunk opened slowly and he leaned in and got hand sanitizer from his new emergency box that was packed with extra masks, latex gloves, Clorox wipes, and barbecue tongs in case he had to touch something that he felt was contaminated, and garbage bags to put whatever item was in fact contaminated, into.
His original emergency box had things like road flares, jumper cables, a blanket, the stuff you could spray into a tire to fix it enough to get you to a service station, bottles of water, glow sticks, the kind you cracked and shook, a sleeping bag, a flashlight that turned night into day, and, because he was Sam, night-vision goggles. The regular things like the tire jack and everything else that was in his car all the time, were always in working order. He checked the things in my minivan as well, and there was even a card in the side pocket that he initialed to let me know my kit had been inspected. Because he was a freak.
Once we were all sanitized to his specifications, he drove us home. We ended up barbecuing chicken breasts I had on hand, and even though I knew it wasn’t hot dogs and hamburgers like my people had wanted, I used a really old recipe of mine that was spicy that you dipped in applesauce, and everyone loved it. Sam liked the fact that I’d marinated it in Gewurztraminer and dill. He was also impressed that we even had that on hand.
I missed seeing the parade and fireworks, but I realized that even if those things had gone on, I wouldn’t have wanted my family there. For me, the safest thing was the best thing. Once the sun went down, the coven converged on us and laid out the Triple Moon blanket to put all their items on that needed to be cleansed in the moonlight. It was nice for me. Hannah with her friends in their robes, Sam and Kola playing basketball in front of the garage, and me on the table on the porch with a glass of sangria in my hand watching the dog in the backyard try and eat fireflies.
“You all right?” Sam called over to me.
I had the man I loved, the kids I cherished, and the home I always wanted, and we were all safe.
“I’m perfect,” I told him.
Okay, so that’s all for July. Have a safe and healthy rest of the month, stay hopeful, and I’ll see you all next month.
AUGUST 2020
Hello, all, Jory Harcourt here. Welcome to the August edition of He Said, he said, and another month where I REALLY meant to do the question-and-answer thing, and for sure, this one will be a little of that, but we had a thing happen that I need to tell you all about.
My girl has a boyfriend.
Leave it to my child to make her first serious love connection during a pandemic.
They have been school friends since freshman year, and now that she’s going to be a junior—at home for the foreseeable future—she had a talk with her father, assuring him that, since she’s now fifteen, and will be sixteen in November, having a boyfriend should be acceptable. I agreed, and eventually, so did her father.
They have started hanging out regularly now, and because Kayden Holmes lives in Wilmette and we live in Oak Park, Hannah has made certain to suck up to her brother on a regular basis so he will drive her back and forth from our place to Kay’s on the nights that she’s allowed to stay out until eleven.