The Change

by Kirsten Miller

She’d just grown to see romance for what it was—a sappy-sweet fantasy she’d entertained in her youth, like fairies or the Easter Bunny.

For decades, they’d been dutifully following the map the world laid out for them.

but as far as I know, Jesus never had a problem with the word fuck.”

“But one day your life will grow quiet, and that’s when you’ll be able to hear them again. Like my auntie used to say, the gift arrives after the curse ends.”

Her parents had helped her raise her daughters, and the time had come to help them die.

She’d left most of her friends back in the city, and without a job, she had no way to meet new people.

My life right now!

Out on the island without friends or family to anchor her, Nessa felt adrift.

Wisdom and maturity were supposed to go hand in hand.

Some forces in life are so strong that the only thing you can do is submit.

She’d discovered early on that if you stayed still and silent, people often forgot you were there.

How many years—how much energy—had she lost trying to control something that could not be controlled?

But the problem wasn’t her body. The problem was the companies that sold shitty sanitary pads. Otherwise reasonable adults who believed tampons stole a girl’s virginity. Doctors who didn’t bother to solve common problems.

That’s what rich women did when their marriages ended. They set off on spirit quests or death-defying adventures. They climbed Mount Everest. They ate, prayed, and loved.

That was one of many mistakes Harriett had made over the years. She’d let men take credit for her work assuming they would be grateful and her contributions acknowledged.

Only when her magic began to return did she realize just how much she’d given away.

grew up watching stuff that taught me that women who enjoyed sex were whores. That we should try to be who men wanted us to be—not who we really were. It fucked me up. It fucked up a lot of the women I know. Is that what you want for your kid?”

“Nothing ages a person like poverty and misery,” Harriett said. “Despite what all the ads claim, it’s not skin cream that helps some women keep their glow. The only true youth serum has two ingredients—luck and money.”

‘Witch’ is the label society slaps on women it can’t understand or control.

You don’t waste your time wishing when you got a job to do,

“You gotta know what monsters are after you if you plan to avoid them.”

A woman much like her had once loved a man who looked like him. Neither of those people existed anymore.

“Everyone you help’s gonna want a piece of you. Give what you can, but you’ll be worthless to all of them unless you stay whole.”

“The truth of it is, I don’t think most of them really question our intelligence or abilities—though they don’t mind us believing they do,”

“She was sure her beauty would last forever. So she didn’t bother looking for other sources of strength.

The rites and rituals of Christianity were familiar, but they weren’t her own.

“Anyone who needs a reward to be good isn’t good. They just like rewards. Good people do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.”

Justice may be slow, but she’s also relentless.”

Though most of the police officers she’d met did their jobs with the best of intentions, the system was designed to punish, not protect.

They knew Jo’s child was her weak spot. If something happened to Lucy, it would destroy her. That had to be why superheroes never had children.

What they’d done had felt natural, animal, elemental.

She knew that as strong as she was, she would have crumbled without him. If Jo was going to survive, she needed him back.

A girl who, despite having nothing, always had love and kindness to share.

But it didn’t seem to matter where a woman was—there was always someone waiting to shove her out of the spotlight and into a steaming pile of shit.

No one teaches girls how to take care of themselves. We train them to be pretty and kind and polite right before we set them loose in a world filled with wolves. Then we act surprised and horrified when some of them get eaten.

But she wanted the fucking option, and now, in an epic act of cruelty, the universe had denied her even that.

Her grandparents had looked to the Bible for God’s word, never realizing it was written on the world all around them.

Harriett knew she would never convince him of her sanity, so she found herself faced with a choice. She could either believe her own eyes—or she could see what the man told her to see.

“Now I know such feelings are pointless. I don’t hate anyone anymore, Mr. Shaw. I simply think Jackson Dunn is a blight on humanity.”

It was as close to a selfless act as Chase Osborne would ever muster. The species wasn’t entirely corrupt, Harriett observed. Once in a while, one of them would surprise you. Such actions never redeemed them completely, of course, but it did make Harriett wonder if they really deserved to be wiped off the planet.

She was thrilled to discover that John was a planner, too. It just never occurred to her that he would work toward his goal with such single-minded persistence.

Ashamed, Juliet begged for forgiveness. Divorce

confessed. Isabel squeezed Nessa’s hand. “This is what you were made for,” she told her. “Why do you think women are designed to outlive men? Why do we keep going for thirty years after our bodies can no longer reproduce? Do you think nature meant for those years to be useless? No, of course not. Our lives our designed to have three parts. The first is education. The second, creation. And in part three, we put our experience to use and