“I said don’ttouchme!”
The girl startled to a stop. The look on her face reached through my cloud of pain. Shame hooked in my chest.Shit.I’d scared her.
I should apologize.
“I don’t like to be touched,” I said instead.
“Oh.”
When her eyes widened, the monster pawed at my ribs, almost feline.“Can you get a little closer?”
I groaned internally.
“She’s got freckles.”
The girl turned her palms up in surrender. “It’s okay. I’ll stay right here.”
A honeybee flew past my ear and landed on her braid. I blinked, surprise flicking through me as I took her in more fully, now that the shock was wearing off.
She was covered in bees.
I counted seven on her overalls alone, more on her braid. One even crawled out from behind the shell of her ear.
The corner of her mouth tugged upward in a smirk. “They won’t hurt you. If you’re nice.” She coaxed one onto her fingertip and held it out for me to see.
The monster leaned in, holding our breath.
“I’m Eva,” the bee girl said.
Chapter 6
Isobel
The way Arthur wrapped the black funerary ribbon around his knuckles put Isobel in mind of a boxer preparing to fight.
A fence marked the boundary between her family’s property and the Walkers’ pear orchard. Heavy golden bulbs swayed in the breeze, the smell of harvest thick in the air. During the transition into fall, it was common to see one of the orchard hands out between the rows, twisting pears into tightly woven buckets.
Isobel cast her eyes over the property, searching for the familiar shape of Dane Walker between his pear trees. She hadn’t seen him all week, which wasn’t usual for them, and though she missed him, just now a part of her hoped he’d stay busy a little longer.
Eight years had passed since the Walkers had laid eyes on Arthur. Eight years of her lying.
Closing her eyes, Isobel let her concerns about that reunion slide away, donning the mask that would help her through today. It wasn’t hard. Izzy was a persona she wore often. Izzy the older sister, the daughter, the family glue. It was the role they expectedand needed her to play, and since it was a close fit to who she wanted to be anyway, it wasn’t hard to slide into.
Stepping forward, Isobel carefully unwrapped a blue scarf from around the wooden box Dad had swept Charlotte’s ashes into. The design on the ornately carved lid resembled a beautiful dark bird.
Arthur would like that.
“Here.” She held it out. Arthur took the box, appearing resigned. Isobel bit her lip. “I’m so sorry about your mom.”
She’d spent a lot of time thinking about mothers. Her own was long gone, taken by a tumor they hadn’t caught in time. Isobel had been young, Eva younger still. Their mother hadn’t been there for most of their milestones, but she still held a place of reverence in their home. Their love was a harvest of memories and warmth.
Arthur’s relationship with his own mother hadn’t been like that. The love between him and Charlotte—if you could call it love—had more closely resembled a variant of orchard blight.
Isobel wanted to tell Arthur that Lottie had been proud of him, but she was a little afraid that the words would stick on her tongue. Sometimes polite words were more empty than kind. And maybe the threat of their neighbors appearing at any moment had put into her mind all the lies she’d upheld with a smile, or maybe she was just sick of false platitudes, because in that moment, all she wanted was to give Arthur something real.
So instead, she said, “I missed you, you know.”
Arthur’s eyes widened. “Oh.” His jaw worked. “I… um…”
