Chapter 1 #2
"I am extracting honey samples for a customer who asked a question about crystallization rates," I said, with dignity, holding a jar up to the light in a manner that was absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent about crystallization rates and not at all about tracking a specific leather cut through a crowd of Saturday shoppers.
"Sure," Ruth said.
"I don't even like him."
"Sure," Ruth said again, and went back to her tomatoes, infuriatingly unbothered, and I stood there holding my jar up to a light I did not need, furious at a woman who hadn't even argued with me, because the worst part — the actual worst part, the part I would not have admitted under torture — was that Ruth was right, and I knew she was right, and knowing it didn't make the traitor feeling go away.
He showed up twenty minutes later. Grinning, obviously, the way he always grinned, like the day had personally rewarded him just by continuing to happen.
"Hazel Dunmore," he said, like it was a greeting and a small celebration at once.
"Finn," I said, and if my voice came out flatter than usual, sharper, more clipped — that was strategy.
That was defense. That was a woman shoring up a wall she'd felt shift, just slightly, six inches under the foundation, the night before, for no reason she could identify, lying awake at eleven p.m. thinking about a joke a man had made about buckwheat honey.
"You look thrilled to see me," he said.
"I'm always thrilled to see a customer."
"I'm not a customer today. I mean, I am, I'm buying honey, obviously, but I came by to ask you something."
My stomach did something unpleasant and involuntary. "What."
"There's a spring festival planning meeting at the clubhouse next month.
Market vendors, local business owners, that kind of thing — figuring out routes, booths, all the boring logistics nobody wants to do.
Nadia's running it. She asked me to invite the honey lady specifically, on account of the honey lady being, and I quote, 'a pillar of this town's supply chain that nobody's bothered to loop in properly for a decade. '"
"I don't do meetings."
"I told her you'd say that."
"Then why are you telling me?"
"Because she said to tell you anyway, and because," he said, and here the grin dropped a half degree into something quieter, something that unsettled me more than the grin ever had, "I think you'd hate every second of the meeting and somehow still be glad you went.
That's kind of your whole thing, from what I can tell.
You do the thing you claim to hate and it turns out fine and you'll never admit it turned out fine. "
I stared at him.
He had, in one sentence, described roughly forty percent of my entire personality with a stranger's casual accuracy that felt, honestly, like an invasion. Like he'd walked into my house without knocking and started rearranging the furniture into an order that made more sense than mine had.
"I have hives to check," I said, which was not a no, and we both heard that it was not a no, and he did not point that out, which was, in its own irritating way, a kindness.
"See you next Saturday, Hazel."
"Don't count on it."
"Always do."
He walked off toward the coffee stand. I watched him go — for structural reasons, obviously, checking that he'd actually left the row, purely logistical — and Ruth, without turning around, said, "Sure," for the third time that morning, and I very seriously considered putting a bee in her tomato display out of spite.
I didn't. Mostly because I like Ruth's tomatoes.
Market wound down at noon. I packed the truck the way I always do, crates stacked by weight, empty jars nested inside each other, the cashbox locked and wedged under the seat where it's ridden every Saturday for eleven years.
Ruth helped me lift the last crate, because she always does, and because she knows better than to comment on it.
"You didn't answer me," she said, hefting her end.
"I answered you plenty. I told you I don't do meetings."
"I didn't ask about the meeting."
"Then what did you ask."
"I didn't ask anything. I said 'sure' three times and you got progressively more annoyed each time, which tells me everything I need to know without asking a single question. That's a skill, by the way. Not answering things and still answering them. You should charge for it."
"I'm going home, Ruth."
"Say hi to Mustard."
I drove the six miles back to the farm with the windows down, spring air coming in warm and green and smelling faintly of someone else's woodsmoke, and I did not think about Finn Archer, except in the specific sense that not thinking about something requires knowing exactly what you're not thinking about, which meant he occupied a very precise, very irritating amount of real estate in my skull the entire drive.
The hives needed checking. They always need checking — that's the beauty of bees, the thing I chose them for two decades ago without fully understanding I was choosing it: they need you every single day, rain or shine, good mood or bad, and in exchange for that need they give you the one thing that never wavers.
Consistency. You do the work, they do the work, and nobody has to like anybody for the arrangement to hold.
I suited up — veil, gloves, the smoker lit and puffing gentle gray curls into the afternoon — and worked my way down the rows the way my grandmother taught me, the way her mother taught her, three generations of Dunmore women who all, as far as family legend goes, preferred bees to people and never apologized for it.