That felt too hard, so Eva shook her head.
“Lottie, then?”
Yes. That was an easier, simpler anger to face. Eva nodded into his chest.
“Oh, love.” Dad pulled back and cupped her cheek, his hand so large it swallowed half her face. “Does it bother you to share your bees?”
Her heart gave a needful tug forward. Yes, it bothered her. But even more, she didn’t like the way he asked, like she was a child learning to share.
“I don’t know.”
Eva had spent many afternoons talking out her worries as she leaned against one of the many painted hive boxes, her head tilted back against the wood. Sometimes she fell asleep to the sound of their hum and woke with a dozen or more bees perched on her body. They didn’t sting her. They simply let her melt into their world.
Dad clearly wanted more, but thankfully the teakettle saved her from having to answer. At the soft whistle, he stepped back and plucked her favorite teacup out of the cupboard. Her mother,always the artist, had painted a cluster of forget-me-nots on the pale white porcelain, to match the hive boxes outside.
“I don’t need tea, Dad. You should sit down and rest.”
He ignored her protest and reached for the honeypot on the top shelf. “You’ll feel better if you drink.”
Frustration flared in her. Dad always did this. He thought medicine was something found in roots and petals, and maybe it was, maybe it should be, but the feelings inside her wouldn’t be chased away by anything he could bottle up. She wasn’t like Arthur, who had always been so eager to accept her father’s remedies, putting his faith in their tinctures and balms. Peppermint for stomachaches. Feverfew for migraines. Calendula for bee stings. Arthur had been a sponge to all of it.
But more than anything, he’d loved tea.
“I wonder if he missed this,” Dad said softly as he slowly turned the wooden honey dipper over her teacup. When the heat made his glasses fog up, Dad lifted them off his nose and hooked them on his collar. Eva’s eyes tracked the movement.
Root. Skin. Flesh. Forest.
She ripped her gaze away. “I doubt it.”
Her father flicked her a look, securing the lid of the hinge-top jar back on. He’d cut himself shaving, leaving behind a tiny smear of red-green blood on his jaw.
Eva still remembered the day the sprout in his chest had broken skin. She’d been hanging herbs in the greenhouse when Dad had bellowed in pain. She’d found him, passed out, with blood smeared over his hand, as though he’d tried to dig it out himself.
Eva blinked, her vision blurring. Sometimes it was painful to remember what he’d been like before. Arthur’s reappearance hadunearthed old and tender wounds. A dark pool of blood staining hardwood. A body on the floor. Starlings in the rafters.
Her father, forever changed.
“Lottie loved this tea,” Dad said, his voice catching. “I named it after her, you know.”
“What?”
Dad seemed to catch himself. “Oh, never mind,” he said as he held out her teacup.
“But you just said—”
“I know,” he cut in. “But those are just memories, honeybee.”
She wanted to protest, to demand he go back and explain what he’d meant by that. He had named his blue tea after Charlotte? Eva thought it didn’t have a name.
Her father laid a hand on her arm. “Let it go,” he said. “I’m just sad today.”
Guilt shut her up quick. Of course he was.
Eva raised the teacup to her lips, her chest warming at the first sip.
“You and Arthur talk yet?” Dad asked.
She nearly spat out her tea. It burned up her throat to her nose. “What?”
