Here goes nothing…
He…decoratedthe sign?
Snow globes—at least a hundred of them—are positioned around the wooden frame, twinkling in the late afternoon sun. The familiar honeybee logo seems to glow, and beneath it, someone has hung a banner that readsFollow the Bees.
And there, attached to the signpost, is an envelope with my name on it.
It takes three tries to open it because my hands are dancing to their own beat.
Honeybee,
I’ve memorized all the letters you’ve written me over the years. Some I’ve read so often I had to ask Madi to help me laminate them before I lost them forever. You put yourheart on paper and sent it into the void, hoping somehow that I’d hear you.
I hear you, Honeybee.
And today I’m writing back.
Today, I’m reclaiming our story.
Follow the bees. Follow our story. Follow your heart home.
—V
I press the letter to my chest and look around. Sure enough, there’s a trail of small wooden honeybees—hand-painted, slightly lopsided in a way that’s achingly familiar—leading away from the sign and into the fair.
How many of our friends and family painted these three-inch bumblebees? There must be hundreds of them.
With tears in my eyes and hope in my heart, I follow the bees.
The first stopis a booth I don’t recognize.
It’s draped in golden fabric, and inside, arranged on velvet-covered tables, are books. My books. Every single one I’ve ever written, displayed like precious artifacts.
But they’re not new copies.
They’re his copies. The ones from his old apartment in Charlotte. Well-loved and covered in well-meaning damage.
Roman stands beside the booth holding Wrecks by the collar, looking deeply uncomfortable in a way that suggests he was assigned this post against his will.
“He wanted you to see them,” Roman says, gesturing at the display. “All the parts he underlined. All the words that felt like home before he knew why, but no one else is to touch them. Do you know how hard it is to keep Agnes’s grabby hands off something like this? Every time I turn around, she has a new plot to swipe one.”
I offer him a placating smile before picking upForgotten Scars—our story, even though I didn’t know I was writing it—and flip to a page now marked with a small honeybee sticker.
Seriously? We really need to discuss his proclivity for defacing literature.
But the underlined passage makes my throat close up.
She was the home he’d been searching for. Not a place. A person. A heartbeat that matched his own.
“Here’s the next letter,” Roman says, shoving an envelope into my hands. “I’m told the next stop is Betty’s booth.”
I take the envelope with trembling fingers.
Honeybee,
I devoured your stories without knowing why they felt like pieces of my own soul. Your books were breadcrumbs leading me back to you, even when I was too lost to know I was following a trail.
You saved me with your words long before I remembered your face.
