Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Hannah was sitting at the table in the dining room, wedged in between two young women, with three others clustered around her. They all had their phones out, so I suspected they were all exchanging information. A lot of people followed Hannah on Instagram. She’d lost some people, more over the politics than her being a witch, but gained others. Kola had corralled Jake, and the two of them were sitting with Finn and, I was guessing, his cousins. He had a lot of them. Kola was being his gregarious self, but I noted that his knee was wedged against Jake’s, just needing that bit of grounding. When I got a wave from him, I made my way over and leaned in.
“Pa, Harper wants us to pick him up on the way home. His plans with Wick fell through, so he wants to play games with us tonight.”
“Am I invited?” Finn asked hopefully.
Kola gave him a bored look, like he was being dumb. “What’d I say about that?”
Finn’s slow grin was adorable. “That I should always consider myself invited.”
Quick pat on his shoulder and Kola’s wide smile in response. “Though Monopoly gets a bit cutthroat, and Uno is just as bad.”
Jake nodded between bites of macaroni and cheese.
Finn squinted at Kola. “How bad can it be?”
Kola scoffed. “Wait. Just wait.”
I enjoyed Jake sitting up from his slouch, then explaining about some of the pieces he’d made for Monopoly, like the bridges, the slides, and recently, a ferry. The other guys were listening in rapt attention, and I started for the kitchen. Hannah called me over to her then, because she needed my phone to show her new friends pictures of the Imbolc and Ostara candles she’d made this year. Often, she forgot to snap photos, but I never did. It was too late for any of them to get one, as Ostara was Tuesday and this was Sunday already, but they could put in their orders for Beltane. As usual, she just needed confirmation of a payment to her favorite animal shelter and they’d be all set.
Walking around the side of the kitchen, of course I stopped when I heard Sam’s name.
“He’s some kind of law enforcement?” the first voice asked.
“Yeah. I think I heard he’s an FBI agent,” second one answered.
“Like it matters what he does for a living. He’s got a job and he looks like that? Are you kidding me?”
“He’s married, Gina, that means hands off.”
“Like Steve was when you two were married, huh, Lise?” She cackled.
“Fuck off, and only my friends get to call me Lise, you fuckin’ whore.”
“Okay,” Anne rushed out. “You two need to go to opposite sides of the house, and, Gina, Sam Kage is married to a man.”
“Ohmygod he is not,” Lisa, I was thinking that was it and not Lise, said happily. “You better not be lying.”
“Why would I lie about that? I met his lovely husband. His name’s Jory.”
“Oh, Gina,” Lisa crowed. “Good luck with that.”
“There’s no way,” Gina stated.
“I met the man’s husband, Gina. He’s gay.”
“We’ll see,” she said, and walked right by me as she left the kitchen.
I went in then, and Anne gasped.
“Hey,” I greeted her.
“Oh, Jory, were you perhaps waiting to come in?”
I grinned at her.
Anne put her face in her hands as another woman walked over to me, hand out.
“I’m Ilise Baynes, and you are?”
So it was Ilise, not Lise or Lisa. “Jory Harcourt-Kage,” I said, shaking her hand. “Pleasure.”
“What a handsome man you are, Jory.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said, chuckling. “That’s very kind.”
“Jory, please forgive my friends, I don’t normally have Gina and Ilise at the same party. We got our wires crossed today.”
It sounded like it was a day of that happening with whatever Anne had thought about Kola and her son.
“Hey.”
Looking for Sam, when I turned, he was there with an empty plate. “Did you eat?”
“Not yet,” I told him as he walked over to me, stepping in close so I had to tip my head back to see his face.
“Well, make sure you do, because the corned beef hash is amazing,” he said before he bent and kissed my forehead.
He then turned to Anne. “Really, the hash is excellent.”
“Thank you, Sam,” she said, beaming up at him. “It’s the specialty of the house. Do you have any in your house?”
It was strange. Because she was nice to me, nice to him, made us all feel welcome, but still, right then, she had a tone. Like almost a dare but not quite. And it was one of those things that happened on occasion. When the kids were younger, when I’d meet their parents, there was sometimes that moment when our family dynamic was tested in strange ways. Like the women over the years who asked Hannah if she missed having a mother when she started her period, or the men who’d asked Kola if anyone at home could teach him to hit a ball, or now, if there were things that I could cook. It was small biases, microaggressions, cloaked in innocuous-sounding questions. And while most people didn’t ask out of anything more than curiosity, still it pointed out differences. For many, if there were two men or two women in a relationship, how were tasks divided up? Who mowed the lawn and who cooked? As though those things were not interchangeable. Like who shoveled the drive at our house when it snowed. A new neighbor had actually asked that, and I had thought of all the women I’d known who had snow blowers and all the men who baked, and it was hard to imagine people still tying tasks to gender in 2024.