“I’m not interested,” he said. But underneath his dismissal, there was the slightest hesitation that he might have missedsomething. He handed back the paper. “Here, why don’t you give me a hand?”
“Me?”
“There’s no one else around.”
She swallowed, but that’s what she was here for, to help.
Her mother would have adored all this. She’d loved the idea of bees. The seed had taken root on her parents’ honeymoon in Greece where, to hear them tell it, they’d tramped through dusty olive groves and tasted honey straight from the comb. They’d come home enchanted with the idea of one day planting a few olive trees and raising bees on their acreage in Connecticut. The climate was wrong for olives, but they reminisced about Greece and those sunny hives.
But her mom had run out of time. So her father picked up the torch and carried it, faithfully tending the hives his Maggie had dreamed about but never got to see. His passion for the bees wrapped up in his love for her, until finally, there was no difference between them.
With a grunt, he lowered himself to one knee and began stuffing leaves and bits of sticks into a small can that gave off a faint aroma of wood smoke. “Having trouble getting this thing lit,” he grumbled. He struck a match, but the flame faltered in the breeze.
“Shouldn’t you be wearing your veil?” Cassie said.
He wasn’t wearing any protective gear, not even a baseball cap, and bees had started drifting around. “If I could get this damn smoker started, they’d calm down. They don’t like it when you open the hive.”
She flinched as a bee careened past her nose. “Then why did you?”
Her dad looked up. “Why did I what?”
“Open it.”
“Here.” He handed her the box of kitchen matches. “See if you can get this going.” The smoker reminded Cassie of the oil can fromThe Wizard of Ozwith a tiny bellows in back. She didn’t particularly like the idea of hanging around open bee hives, but she squatted next to him and struck a match, shielding the flame from the breeze. This time it caught, and the tinder sparked, sending up a satisfying flame. She smiled up at him, pleased she could help. “Now what?”
“Close it,” he instructed.
She quickly closed the top and pumped the bellows until white smoke issued forth like a signal to surrender. Her dad took the bellows and lumbered to his feet, puffing smoke in the general direction of the hive. Bees were everywhere, crawling all over the open box, with more flying around.
“So what are you doing?” she asked, stepping back to avoid getting a lungful of smoke.
Her dad pumped vigorously. “Need to see what’s going on in there.”
“Don’t they just do their thing?”
“I always open them up this time of year. Need to see how they came through the winter. It’s April, right?”
“Yes, it’s April,” she said, her heart catching that he didn’t know.
“Give me a little more smoke,” he said. He was attempting to lift one of the frames from the open box, which agitated the bees even more. Dozens of them boiled around his head.
She puffed the smoker, which cleared some of them, but her father was still having trouble freeing the frame. “I need that tool.”
“Which tool?” Cassie scanned the ground to see if he might have dropped it on the grass.
“That flat thing, you know…” He waved her off impatiently then gave the frame a yank and managed to pull it free. But helost his grip, and the whole thing, black with bees, dropped into the box with a sickening thud.
“Look out. They’re all over you!” Cassie steered him to a safer distance, her heart clamoring as she puffed smoke at a posse of pursuing bees.
Her dad seemed shaken too. He looked old, without the vigor she remembered. His hair thinner, the skin on his face and neck gone slack. Miraculously, neither of them had been stung.
“Maybe I’ll leave it for tomorrow,” he said. “They’re too riled up now.”
She heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s a good idea.”
...
She regrouped on the porch steps after her father went inside to rest. The house was a classic white colonial. Black shutters. Red door. Back in the day, painting the front door red had been a stroke of daring. Her mother, of course, was the instigator. She loved color, wrapped herself in flamboyant shades of orange and electric blue, blazing through their staid Connecticut town like a meteorite. Always nudging her buttoned up husband to step out. He’d repainted the door over the years, but like the hives, it was now a washed-out version of itself. The whole house needed a good going over. Bits of paint were flaking off, and moss crept along the siding, giving the wood a greenish cast.
