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)
“Happy Labor Day, Jory,” Anne chirped as she appeared beside the picnic table where Kola and I were pouring wax into a hundred votive holders with wicks in them. “I see you’re hard at work on something.”
“Hi there,” I said, glancing up and then back down. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to pour this now or re-melt the wax and wait for it to get to the exact right temperature again and just…no. I’m so done with this project already.”
Kola chuckled but said nothing, expertly pouring much faster than me.
“Of course,” she replied, chuckling. “This is my sister, Heather, and that’s her son, Jeremy, and this is Hannah’s father, Jory, and her brother, Kola.”
“Pleasure to meet you both,” Heather assured me.
“You too,” I affirmed.
“Ditto,” Kola drawled out the word, and Jeremy chuckled.
“This looks like quite the production,” he stated, moving around the table near my son. “Do you need any help?”
“No,” Kola told him. “I’ve got this down, with how many times a year I do it, and we’re almost done with this part anyway.”
“Five feet!” Jake yelled suddenly.
Kola and I straightened at the same time, both of us done, and my son stood there, pitcher in hand, looking over to where Jake and Harper and Kayden, or Kay, as everyone called him, and Kayden’s sister, Mira, were standing.
“Five feet will put you into Mr. Johnson’s elm tree,” Kola shouted back.
“This is what I said,” Harper chimed in, just as loudly.
“Give me the pitcher,” I ordered my son, “and go supervise.”
He growled, passed it to me and then walked to the porch railing and flipped over the side instead of taking the stairs.
“What’s going on?” Jeremy asked even though he didn’t turn and look at me, watching my son instead.
“Jake,” I answered, “he’s the one with the blond hair flying in every direction, is trying to lift our swing so it goes further across the yard, but to do that it has to clear the side of our house as well as the one behind us.”
“Are you kidding?”
I shook my head. “No, go see.”
He scrambled after Kola, and I put one pitcher down and turned to Anne and Heather. “So how are you both?”
“Good,” Anne confirmed. “I hope you don’t mind us popping in, but we thought since we were dropping Kayden off on our way back from my mother’s house, that instead of dropping the kid at the curb, we’d at least come say hello.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” I assured her as my daughter appeared from the house, not surprisingly with a mask on, and with a stack of them in her hand.
“Pa,” she chimed brightly, rushing over to me. “You and Coca-Cola did so great!”
She hardly ever called him that anymore, and it was cute to hear. “Thank you,” I said, turning my head so she could put a mask on me, adjust it around my ears, squeeze the flexible nosepiece that she’d been sewing into all her masks so it fit my face, and then lean back to admire her handiwork. “Well?”
“You look good with smiling suns all over your face.”
I grunted. “Now hurry up and get the boys masked so you can put the other stuff on the tops of these before the wax sets.”
“Yes, hurrying,” she assured me, darting down the steps from the patio and crossing the yard to the boys she had to mask, and everyone else.
“So what is all this?” Heather wanted to know.
“Oh, these are Hannah’s Mabon candles,” I told them. “She needs them for her coven, and for each member to have in their homes, and she delivers others to family members.”
Nothing. Neither woman said a word.
“She still has to make the individual sachets of herbs, but that’s all her,” I rambled on, which was what I did whenever there were silences to fill. I wasn’t great with quiet.
Still no sound.
“This is the only part she needs help with,” I announced, because maybe they were waiting for me to conclude my remarks.
After a long, painful moment, Anne looked up from the candles to me. “Am I to understand that your family is Wiccan?”
“Actually, my husband is Catholic,” I informed her, smiling behind my mask. “Kola was thinking about becoming a Buddhist, though lately he’s leaning more toward atheism, and Hannah is a Hearth Witch with Catholic leanings.”
“How can––”
“I think that’s right,” I told them. “It changed a bit recently. We can ask her here in a second when she gets back.”
“Are you not Catholic like your husband?” Heather inquired.
“No. I’m not anything,” I said, shrugging. “I don’t really have a feeling on the religion thing one way or another.”
“But you allow Hannah to be a witch?”
“Yes, because she’s a good witch,” I teased them as my daughter returned, walked by us to the small card table that we’d set up in the shade, and returned with two big bowls.