Chapter Five #2
He was silent and she felt a sinking despair. It was too late, she’d squandered the chance to repair their relationship. All these years when she could have come and didn’t. She hadn’t even called very often. It would have taken so little.
Then, his hand closed around hers and the gentle pressure brought tears to her eyes.
Her mother was gone, but her father had been here all these years.
Sitting in this same chair, his hands smooth and warm and reassuring.
She could have come any time, and he would have been happy to see her.
In spite of everything he was happy to see her now.
They sat this way for a minute, and when he released her hand she felt a sudden loss. “Did you have a snack while I was out?” She collected an empty cereal bowl from the coffee table, swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat.
“Hmm?” He’d turned back to the TV and was absorbed in the news again.
She set down the bowl. “Dad?”
“What’s that?” He lowered the volume a little.
“We need to find another housekeeper now that Elena’s not coming anymore.”
“Who said she’s not coming?”
“You did.” As she’d suspected Elena did not have a sister, at least not one who was coming to clean.
“Someone who can do a little cooking too, the way Elena did.” Cassie’s secret plan, cooked up with Shelly, was to find someone who could transition into a caregiver as their father began to need daily help.
Do the shopping and drive him around. Who was she kidding, he was almost at that point now.
“Doing fine,” he said. That seemed to be his mantra. “I don’t need any help.”
“Not help in a big way. Just someone to keep the place tidy.” She shouldn’t have used the word help.
Help with the house, help with the bees.
She couldn’t blame him for being resistant.
He undoubtedly felt he was losing control of everything.
“We can talk more about it later.” Best to retreat for now.
“The beekeeper is going to be here soon with that hive.”
“The beekeeper?” He switched off the TV. “I’d better get ready.”
. . .
The beekeeper’s white truck bumped up the driveway, pulling over where it widened into a cut out, the gravel thinning to dirt. He had the hive bungeed into the truck bed so it wouldn’t bang around.
Cassie went down to meet him, and Marsden killed the engine and got out. “How’s your dad today?” he said by way of greeting.
“He remembered you were coming, at least.”
He smiled. He did, in fact, have a nice smile. “That’s encouraging.” He glanced at the sky. “It’s chillier than I’d hoped. We lost the sun. The bees don’t like it much when it’s cool like this; they tend to hunker down.”
She looked worriedly at the empty hive. “Will we be able to get them in there?” Her dad was still adamant about managing the bees himself.
She’d broached the subject again last night, hoping he’d softened, but he was still dug in.
“Piece of cake,” he’d said about transferring the new bees.
Somehow, she doubted that. Nothing with bees was a piece of cake.
“Should be okay,” Marsden said. “Might just take some doing, is all. I’m happy to help if your dad wants me to.”
“We’ll see,” she said dubiously. Her father was waiting on the porch with the box of bees, already dressed in his bee suit and veil. Cassie hopped into the truck so they could collect him.
“Did he feed them again yesterday?” Marsden said.
“Oh yeah, he’s been busy with the sugar water.” She glanced at him, curious. “So how do you happen to have an extra hive?” He’d mentioned bottling honey, but she had no idea what he did besides making house calls. How many bees did a beekeeper keep?
“I always have a few extra hives lying around.”
“Do you have a lot of bees?”
“About three hundred fifty hives, not that many.”
She turned to see if he was kidding, but he was serious. “Three hundred and fifty! That sounds like a lot to me. How do you have time to deal with your own bees when you’re taking care of other people’s?”
He slid her a look, not impatient exactly, more like he wanted to be sure she wasn’t trifling with him. “They’re pollinators. I rent them out to farmers during the growing season. Apples and peaches. Pears. Some apricots.”
“You can’t possibly truck all those hives around in this.”
He looked amused. “Not hardly. If I have to haul a lot of hives I rent a flatbed.”
“Do they mind being transported?”
He actually laughed at this, which softened his face in an appealing way and made her smile too. It was nice to hear a man laugh, even if she’d said something ridiculous.
“They don’t have much choice. And no, they don’t mind. It’s fine, it doesn’t hurt them and the forage is good. I only deal with organic farms.”
“How far do you take them?” She couldn’t remember seeing any farms in this part of Fairfield County, but she’d never paid much attention. She was always in a rush to get back to the city. Here was a life she knew nothing about.
“Up to Easton and Glastonbury. Southington. It’s a bit of a trip but not as far as some guys who truck their bees all the way out to California for the almond farms every year. I won’t do that.”
“Oh, that’s much too far.”
“Even if I lived out there I wouldn’t do it. Those big operations are factories. It’s all monoculture—just almonds. And the bees get stressed with the pesticides. I know several beekeepers whose colonies have collapsed.”
She’d heard more about bees in the last three days than she’d ever hoped to, but his enthusiasm was refreshing. As much as Cassie liked her job, it wasn’t a calling like bees apparently were for him.
She snuck another look at him. She’d expected someone more along the lines of a plumber, a handyman type who happened to be good with insects, who did his job, went home and had a beer.
But Marsden seemed more complicated than that, concerned about pesticides and the environment.
Even though she tried to eat organic, she’d never given much thought to how bees were connected to the food supply.
When they got to the house her father handed Marsden the box of bees, watching closely as he strapped them into the truck bed next to the empty hive.
“Why don’t I sit back there and hold them?” her dad said.
“No need, they’ll be fine,” Marsden assured him. “You can sit up here.” Cassie could just picture her father bouncing around in the back of the pickup with his bees.
Her dad lifted himself into the passenger seat, angling a shoulder to keep an eye on the bees.
Marsden looked at Cassie. “You coming?”
“I’ll walk down,” she said. Marsden had a nice way with her dad, seemed better able to defuse him than she could. Probably because they had no history.
Marsden bumped across the field and had the truck bed open by the time she made her way down the driveway. He paused before lifting out the box of bees. “Before we do this,” he said to her dad, “I just want to make sure you understand there’s a risk these new bees will get infected too.”
“They might not.”
Marsden raised an eyebrow. “Just so you’re clear. We can go ahead if it’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.” Her father’s mouth was set.
“Understood.” Marsden lifted out the box of bees then unloaded the empty hive. “Do you have a stand for this one?”
“A stand?”
“Like the others, to keep the boxes off the ground. Keeps them dry.” Marsden said this neutrally, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world her dad wouldn’t remember he had his other hives on concrete blocks. “No matter,” he said lightly. “You can always add one later.”
Her father had forgotten his smoker, so Marsden produced one and pulled out a wad of burlap from his pocket. He had on a fleece vest over his jeans and looked like he was ready to go hiking. No bee suit, just a veil he’d grabbed from the truck but hadn’t yet put on.
When she’d googled beekeepers, most of the pictures that came up were people encased in white hazmat suits so you couldn’t tell what they looked like.
Marsden seemed unconcerned with the risk.
He looked like someone you’d run into on a trail with a fifty-pound pack on his back and a cannister of bear spray.
A man who could handle whatever came his way.
“You don’t wear a bee suit,” she observed.
“I do.” He was puffing smoke at the bees, which made them retreat from the screen to the interior of the box.
“When I’m working a lot of hives I put it on.
I’ve been stung plenty of times, believe me.
It’s just that it’s easier to work without one, so for small jobs like this I don’t always bother. ”
“No gloves either?” She couldn’t imagine picking up a frame of bees with bare hands.
“They’re in the truck.” He turned to her dad. “Ready?”
Her father shuffled over. He didn’t move as well as he used to, and the bee suit made it even more awkward. It would probably take Marsden all of five minutes to transfer the bees, but he stood back, letting her dad take the lead.
Her father lifted the cover off the new hive and set it on the grass.
It looked like an empty condo, scrubbed clean by the previous owner.
He squatted to get his arms around the box of bees but the suit made everything difficult, and he managed only to hoist the box a couple of feet before it toppled to the ground.
The bees, which had been stupefied by the smoke, began to stir restlessly.
“Give them more smoke,” her dad barked.
Marsden obligingly puffed the smoker a couple of times and the bees quieted. Cassie wished he would take over, but her dad had made it clear he wanted to go it alone.
She didn’t see exactly how it happened, whether dropping the box loosened the screen and allowed a rogue bee to escape, or whether the attacker came from one of the other hives, drawn by the commotion.
One minute her father was trying to get a better grip on the box, the next he’d launched himself into the air and was batting frantically at his veil.