Chapter 20
Daisy
Ifled Max’s house the best a seven and a half months pregnant woman could, too upset to wonder if I looked ridiculous or not.
Harper called that she was coming right behind me, so I didn’t stop. Let her talk to her brother. I couldn’t…didn’t have anything else to say right now.
Outside, Harper’s yellow Volkswagen bug looked ridiculous next to Max’s big truck. A spot of sunshine parked alongside a giant white bull. My silent prayer was answered when her car was unlocked when I reached it.
I sank into the passenger seat and closed the door.
Since the beginning.
I squeezed my eyes tight and whimpered. Even here I couldn’t escape his answers…or my questions. How could he not say something…anything to me? How could he try to keep Todd and me together, given how he felt? How could he plan my wedding to his best friend and say nothing?
Because Todd was safe.
I swatted the thought from my mind before it took hold.
Harper appeared and jogged to the driver’s side. “Sorry.” She closed the door and started the engine. “Ready?”
I nodded and tried to work down the lump in my throat that kept floating like a buoy to the top.
Especially when Max stepped out the front door and stood there, watching us turn around and drive away. I was no better, staring at the side view and the man inside it until he was too small to see.
“Are you okay?” Harper asked once we turned onto the main road, drawing me back to where I was and who I was with.
Okay…what did that word even mean anymore?
Okay that my ex-almost-mother-in-law tracked me down and threatened me?
Okay that my convenient husband made me feel things last night I never thought were possible?
Or okay that my convenient husband confessed to having feelings for me for years—for the whole time I was his best friend’s girlfriend?
“It’s just been a…shocking twenty-four hours.”
“I can’t even imagine,” she said, driving cautiously. “I can’t believe Todd’s mom showed up at the apartment like that. What a psycho.”
Her appearance at the store felt like it had happened a decade ago rather than less than twenty-four hours ago. So much had happened between then and now. I couldn’t even find my anger with her on my radar right now.
“Yeah,” I murmured, unable to tear my eyes from the window as she stopped at the end of Max’s drive. And then I saw the holes in the ground where the For Sale sign had been.
“Is Todd really who you see yourself living in it with?”
Max had bought this house because of me. He was selling this house because of me.
Harper turned onto the road, letting me forget about that for a little while.
“How far is your farm from here?”
“Just a few minutes up the road.” She pointed her finger ahead. “It’s a lot closer to Max’s house than Stonebar.”
I responded with a wordless nod, watching the trees stagger past us, one after another after another, until they turned into a blur and my breathing started to steady. Slowly, I felt the tension start to drain from my body. Time kept marching on, and this, too, would pass.
“Do you think she’ll come back?”
“I have no idea, but if she does, at least I won’t be there.” I sighed and then reasoned. “I don’t think she will, though. Not after what Max said.”
The foreign sensation of a smile tugged up one side of my mouth, remembering how Max had put her in her place…and the look on her face when he’d done it.
“What did he say?”
My smile fell as I attempted to tamp down the warmth flooding my chest when I recalled his words. My wife.
“That she had no right to be there, and he’d press charges if she tried to harass us—me again.”
Harper snapped her eyes over and then back to the road. “Did he tell her you were married?”
My mouth opened and then shut as I opted for a nod as an answer. Better not to say too much now that everything with Max was so…complicated.
“Finally.” She turned off the road onto a gravel drive, the car rocking over the unsteady ground.
My neck swiveled. “What do you mean finally?”
“Oh, Daisy.” Harper slowed in front of a good-sized shed, older but with a fresh coat of navy paint and the Harper’s Honey logo sprayed in warm yellow on the wall.
Harper put the car in park and fanned a pained smile in my direction. “I’ve known for a long time how Max felt about you.”
Well, that made one of us I wanted to tell her, but something stopped me. Had she been the only one? Or had I just ignored what I didn’t want to see…what I didn’t want to feel?
Harper was out of the car before I could say anything else.
“Welcome to Harper’s Hives.” She beamed, handing me a beekeeping suit to put on and then ducking back into the shed to grab a suit for herself.
“Are you sure this is going to fit over my stomach?” I asked, sliding one foot and then the other into the legs.
“It should. It’s a men’s large.”
That explained why the arms and legs were too long, but at least the zipper went up easily over my front.
“Why do you have a men’s large?”
“Because I’m waiting for my Prince Charming to show up in apiary armor,” she quipped with a chuckle and then explained, “Sometimes my brothers or Dad help me with the hives, so I got a suit for them.”
Right. I’d tack that obvious answer squarely in the pregnancy brain column.
“Hat is next.” She took a wide-brimmed hat off one of the hooks and placed it on my head before carefully unrolling the fine netting that draped around the rim.
“And then gloves.” After plopping her own hat on her head, she handed me a pair of thick gloves.
“You can wait to put those on until we get to the hives.”
Wordlessly, I took the gloves as she gathered her tools and led the way.
As we walked, Harper dove right into telling me about her growing honeybee business, how it started, when she moved to this parcel of land that once belonged to her aunt’s farm, how many hives she began with, how many she maintained now.
I was more than happy to listen and ask questions…
anything to give me a little distance from Max.
I was surprised by the path to the hives.
I’d expected them to be close by the shed, and maybe they were.
Maybe it just felt farther because the incline was noticeable, and I moved slower nowadays.
But it wandered through a thicket of loosely packed trees, sprigs of flowers blooming along the footpath and at the base of the trunks.
If there was any real place that could’ve served as the inspiration for Taylor Swift’s folklore, this little grove could’ve been it.
“Why aren’t the hives closer to your shed?” I finally decided to ask.
“The shed was already there when I decided to put a bee farm on the property, but it’s always shady here.
Hives do best when they get some sun, but shade to block out the extreme heat, so the best spot for them was through the trees over there.
” She turned over her shoulder, and I could see her smiling under the fine black netting.
“I like coming out here and having nothing in sight except me and the bees. It’s… you’ll see.”
The thicket dissolved a few feet later, and Harper stopped a couple of steps out of the clearing, and I came to stand by her shoulder.
I did see.
Wildflowers of every pastel stretched as far as the eye could see. A sea of serene color lined on either side of us by two rows of narrow but tall box-like structures. The hives.
“Told you.” She nudged my elbow. “All right, let’s go check on my bee babies.”
My hands went to my stomach, feeling my own baby buzzing under the surface.
“Jamie built me these supports for the hives.” She pointed to the base that lifted the hives about a foot off the ground.
“I was using wood pallets that I attached legs to, but he wanted to make me something custom. You want to keep the hives off the ground, and having an open framework is good for airflow.”
“That was nice of him.”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “All right, gloves on.”
I followed her lead, sliding on the thick elbow-length gloves.
“Yeah, Aunt Ailene let me lease this property. Jamie built these stands. Dad helps me manage and harvest when he can. Frankie uses my beeswax for some of her candles. Lou serves my honey at the inn.” She turned and faced the flowers. “And Max helped me grow the field of wildflowers.”
I stiffened. “How many hives did you say you had?”
If she noted my obvious change of conversation, Harper didn’t let on. “Sixteen right now, but I’m going to probably add a dozen more next year. Hopefully.”
“Why hopefully?”
The bubbly happiness she carried dimmed a little. “I’m just nervous to expand with everything going on.”
“You have so many people supporting you, Harper. I’m sure it’s going to be just fine.” I buried the twinge of jealousy at just how many people…how much family she had supporting her.
But it wasn’t just how much family support she had, was it? No, I admitted. It was who that family was that really made my chest tighten.
All this time…I could’ve been a part of this family too. If Max had just said something…
“Thanks.” She reached for the top of the first hive. “Sometimes, the internet makes me feel like I need some kind of personal PR campaign to turn my reputation around.”
“Not a chance,” I assured her. “Unless you do end up with a Prince Charming in apiary armor. Then, I think it could be worth it.”
That got her to laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Harper carefully lifted off the hood of the hive and propped it carefully on the ground. Immediately, she reached for the small dome-topped metal spray can she’d brought out with us.
All I could think of was that it looked like the oil can the Tin Man carried around to grease himself up in The Wizard of Oz.
“The smoke puts them to sleep.” She sprayed on top of the slat inserts stacked in the box, like files in a filing cabinet. “The guard bees usually roam on top of the frames, so we smoke them right away. The others in the middle of the cluster rarely sting.”