I’d been the one to insist on separation. A clean cut was better, I’d thought.
So why does it all still hurt?
Chapter 4
Eva
By the time Eva gave up swimming her anger away, her fingers had shriveled to prunes. She tromped back up to the house. A piercing quiet heavied the air, making every noise feel overly loud as Eva toweled herself dry and wriggled into an old T-shirt and sleep shorts. She had to bite her lip to keep from crying out when she stubbed her toe on the bedpost. Eva crawled under the covers with Izzy, and her older sister turned and curled like a sickle moon around Eva’s spine.
The silence was at odds with the buzzing in Eva’s ears, her thoughts spilling like honey from uncapped comb. Tucked in the safety of her sister’s arms, Eva could pretend.
She wasn’t brittle. She was safe. She was soft.
Sleep took her in snatches, never giving any real relief. At the rooster’s cry, Eva flipped the blanket off her legs and padded to the kitchen. She rifled through tins of flour and sugar, anxious energy running through her. After a fitful night of sleep, she needed comfort food to stave off her most unpleasant self, and there was nothing more soothing than sweet and sticky food.
Pancakes would do. At least with batter, she got to whip something.
Hyssop meowed loudly at the back door. Eva opened a container of tuna and filled another with water. The latest litter scattered when she opened the door and set the plates out for the kittens and their mother, scratching the furry old queen behind her ears.
Back inside, Eva washed her hands and cut off a square of butter. When it sizzled to a lake in the hot pan, she plopped in three gloopy circles of batter.
Hey, bee girl.
Arthur hadn’t looked like himself. He was taller, leaner, rimed in scruff. A frisson shivered down her spine as she pictured his new face, and the soft plea in his eyes.
When bubbles formed in her batter, Eva flipped on autopilot.
She wasn’t upset he was back. She was just surprised. Arthur had stayed away so long that after years of no contact—no letters, no calls—she’d assumed he’d never return.
Pressure built at the bridge of Eva’s nose. She shook herself, aborting the train of thought entirely. No, she wasn’t upset that Arthur had come home.
Comeback. That was what she meant.
No, this was about the bees. The hives were more than her family’s occupation. Every queen, nurse, and drone was part of a deeper legacy that stretched back generations. They were the Moreaus’ history and future. They were magic. They were home.
Charlotte Connoway didn’t deserve them.
Telling the bees about the passing of a beekeeper or one of their loved ones was a sacred, ancient custom, labeled by some as mere superstition. Not Dad, though.Heaven’s not a place in the sky,he would always say. It was deeper. Weightier. Real as the soil underfoot. When Mama died, Dad had said the bees would guide hersoul back into the earth that had created her, and then he had tied a black ribbon onto the hive box and knelt in the grass, as though it were an altar.
When he had told the bees that Mama was gone, something in Eva unclenched. She could breathe again. It hurt, and she cried, with Izzy holding her far too tight.
But she could breathe.
That’s what men pounding their pulpits would never understand. Sacred things didn’t hide in churches—they lived in the gentle hum of good, bright creatures, and in anything trying to make life more beautiful for others. At the end of the day, humankind was no more lord of the earth than the tiniest mayfly.
Some cultures centered honeybees in their creation stories. Others, like her family, honored their connection to death, revering the honeybee as a bridge between the natural world and whatever came after a person died. Fields of wildflowers, perhaps, or a bright blue, always-humming sky.
One thing Eva knew for certain, though. There was something special about her bees, somethingmore.And maybe it made her petty and mean, but even in death, Eva didn’t want to share them with Charlotte Connoway.
“Your pancakes are going to burn.”
Eva’s gaze snapped to the doorway where Arthur sagged, hazel eyes drunk with exhaustion. His night clearly hadn’t been any kinder than hers. Gritting her teeth, she stuck her spatula beneath the bubbling cakes for a peek.Damn it, he’s right. Her usual perfect gold had darkened while she’d stared on, lost in distraction.
Eva smacked the back of her spatula against a pancake, a wild fizzing in her chest as she pushed the cake deeper into the heat of the pan. She could let them burn. Let him eat them charred.
“Don’t look at me like that, Ev.”
How dare he call herEvwith so much ease, as though the intimate nickname he’d given her years ago was some kind of claim, some proof that he still knew her. How dare he look so tired and indefensible when all Eva wanted was battle. She wanted his armor, so they could fight, but the rough scratch of his morning voice and those sad, bruised eyes hardly made for a fair opponent.
