Chapter 33
“And that is a day in the life of a honeybee. Any questions?”
Penny blew a strand of hair out of her face, her forearms aching from the strain of holding up the frame of bees through her presentation. It was her second one of the day, with a stint at the table selling honey in between, and she was exhausted.
But she wouldn’t trade it for anything. She was exactly where she was meant to be.
A few hands shot up in the assembled crowd, about fifteen people whom Winter had rallied from around the festival, promising them that they didn’t want to miss this really cool demonstration.
Their seats were placed across the bee yard from the hive she’d opened, and she’d been projecting through the netting of her suit for the last twenty minutes.
The demonstrations had been Winter’s idea. “How cool is this?” He’d beamed, tumbling from the back seat of Mallory’s car. “Everyone is gonna come here! Penny, now that the festival is here, you can show everyone the bees!”
She’d just blinked, shaken her head, and lowered herself to a seat in the grass before finally speaking. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
Because everyone had something to do, Zander brought her up to speed. He sat beside her, telling her how her mom had suggested relocating the festival to their properties.
“She called the vendors, and a lot of them were on board, so we got to work. My job was to distract you this morning to keep you away a little longer.”
“The Greendale thing.”
“Yeah.” He’d laughed. “The Greendale thing. I kind of failed.”
“In your defense, I didn’t make it easy on you. Why the big secret?”
He’d only raised his brows.
“Let me guess—because I would have taken over and tried to do all the work myself?”
“Because it’s not always your job to save the day. Because everyone wanted to do this for you, Penny.”
Then they’d walked around, watching the festival take shape.
There were three rows of tables where festival vendors were putting the finishing touches on their sales displays; a pavilion for community organizations under one big tent; and a kids’ station under another, complete with books, a therapy dog for kids to read to, and Hula-Hoops and bubbles just for kicks.
Janine Gregory had parked her coffee and lemonade truck in Zander’s driveway, and Zander’s kitchen was already filling up with all the salvageable supplies intended for the culinary tent.
Mallory’s parents organized people to put up signs downtown, directing them to the new location, and once they finished the manual labor portion of their day, guys from the hockey team would shuttle people to the festival from a nearby lot.
It was chaotic and bright, messy and joyous. Not unlike the festivals she’d attended as a girl, when it was still her grandmother’s small passion project, not much more than a glorified block party. It had a cozy feeling, the vibe as relaxed as the sway of flowers in the August breeze.
“Not everyone could come,” Zander had told her gently, walking her to the bee yard where they’d set up more tables to showcase the Becker Farms products.
Back on a blanket in the kids’ area, Winter was making signs to advertise Penny’s beehive demos.
“And there’s no telling how many people will actually see the signs downtown or hear that the festival wasn’t canceled after all. ”
Penny knew what he was saying: this wasn’t the Honey Festival she needed to save the farm. It wasn’t even close.
But god, it was beautiful.
And if it couldn’t last, if she couldn’t find a way to avoid default, at least she got to have this day.
Especially as she took it all in with Zander’s fingers entwined with hers.
Whenever she glanced his way, he was watching her, a peaceful smile on his face.
She’d promised to talk more about their relationship after the festival, and every second that ticked down squeezed her lungs a little tighter.
Penny knew what she wanted to do, and she knew what she should do, and she had no idea how to square the two.
But that moment wasn’t here quite yet. First, she had some questions to answer.
She tugged at the canvas sleeve of her bee suit as she surveyed the raised hands.
One was bouncing up and down in the back of the crowd as a small girl peeked through elbows, eyes glued to the frame of bees in Penny’s hands.
She’d had this posture through the whole demo, eyes wide at Penny’s every movement.
It wasn’t a stretch to see a younger version of herself in the girl’s eagerness.
Penny nodded to her, smiling through the netting of her hood. “Let’s start in the back.”
The girl’s eyes went even wider as she fiddled with her ponytail. “The queen bee is in charge, right?”
“Actually, no,” Penny answered. “No one in the colony is in charge. They all just sort of know their role.”
The girl frowned. “The queen isn’t the most important, then?”
Penny laughed. “No. She’s just doing her job like everybody else. Her job is to lay eggs. And it’s the job of a lot of the other bees to make sure she can do that. They keep her clean and bring her food, not because she’s telling them to, but because it’s part of keeping the colony alive.”
The girl’s little nose scrunched. “Do they like doing all of that?”
Penny paused, shuffling her feet as she considered the question. “That’s a hard question to answer. It’s their role in the colony, but I don’t know if you could say they like it. I guess we’ll never know.”
Penny slowly slid the frame back into the hive, then replaced the lid.
“A lot of the time when we talk about the lives of bees, it’s tempting to compare ourselves to them.
” She stayed focused on the girl. “And in some ways, bees have some stuff to teach us, right? About working together and about cooperation.”
She paced away from the hive. “But in a colony, when a bee isn’t useful in the hive, it’s kicked out.
If a queen isn’t laying eggs anymore, they make a new queen and get rid of the old one.
They’re not trying to be cruel to each other, but for the colony to survive, each bee has to have its function. That’s why they each exist.”
Penny looked back to the girl, then let her gaze drift across the crowd. She saw familiar faces and new ones, and there, in the back, leaning against a beech tree, her mother, looking as beautiful as she ever had.
For most of her life, Penny had treated her bees as her role models. They had perfect systems, miraculous organization, and a work ethic that put other creatures to shame.
But her own life was much messier. It was fly-by toast with her mom and Mimi, warm greetings at the farmer’s market, and spa nights with RJ. It was a perfectly organized event sinking into the ground, only to be resurrected by the sheer love and grit of the people around her.
And the beautiful woman standing under the tree, the one who Penny looked just like, who’d helped create a life for her family not by sheer will and sole determination, but by letting people help her. By trusting the universe.
Penny blinked back the heat building behind her eyes as she tore her gaze from her mother.
“Luckily, we get more leeway as people, right? We get to rest and have fun. We get to dip our toes in a cold lake, and we get to sleep in on Sundays. We get to take care of our most vulnerable, give our elders a break, and spoil our children. We get to rely on each other.”
She looked across the bee yard, where a now-familiar path cut through the grass.
“We get to fall in love.”
She brought a shaky hand to her face, only to have it blocked by the netting. Penny was breathing hard. No, she wasn’t breathing at all. She had to get out of there. For one of the first times in her life, the bee yard was the last place she wanted to be.
“We’re going to have to end it there for now. Sorry to cut things a little short. Make sure to visit all the vendors while you’re here. Thanks for coming!”
She speed walked past confused onlookers, brushed shoulders with her smiling mother, and sprinted down the trail Zander had started down that very first day. The one she was counting on to lead her to him now.