Chapter 11 Abilene
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Abilene
Monday
If there’s one thing more exhausting than worrying about a wildfire, it’s worrying about a wildfire while keeping two six-year-olds entertained.
I probably shouldn’t have agreed so fast.
But when Jesse showed up on my porch, smoke smudging the horizon behind him and concern carved into the corners of his eyes, asking if I could watch the twins while he, Marshall, and Wyatt went to see what was going on with the fire…
Well.
There are very few things I can say no to. Jesse asking, “Can you keep them safe for a little while?” is not one of them.
So now my living room looks like a toy store and a honey shop had a noisy baby.
“Okay, bees,” I say, hands on my hips as I survey the mess. “Roll call.”
Eliza pops her head up from behind the couch, a blanket tied around her shoulders as a cape. “I’m queen bee.”
Caleb is under the coffee table with my old wildflower field guide.
“I’m a worker bee,” he says solemnly. “I do all the work.”
Eliza snorts. “You do none of the work. You ate all the crackers.”
“Worker bees need snacks,” he argues.
I try not to laugh. “You both need snacks. That’s why we had apples and cheese and exactly two honey sticks each.”
I get matching looks of heartbreak.
“Could we have three honey sticks each?” Eliza asks sweetly.
“Four,” Caleb counters.
I hold up two fingers. “How many fingers is this?”
Eliza squints. “Two.”
“Right. Two honey sticks each. That was the deal. Your dad will never trust me again if I send you home made entirely of sugar.”
They groan in unified six-year-old despair.
“Can we go outside?” Eliza asks.
I hesitate.
Through the front window, the light looks wrong again. Too orange, too hazy. The smoke is hanging lower now. If you listen closely, you can even hear the fire from out here: a distant, low roar, like someone turned the valley’s volume knob to “danger.”
“Not today,” I say gently. “The air’s not good for your lungs right now.”
Caleb makes a face. “But inside is boring.”
“I’m not boring,” I protest.
Eliza dramatically flops backward on the couch. “Miss Abilene, we already colored. We already did bee facts. We already played queen bee and worker bee. We already had snacks.”
“And you already tried to turn my toy cat into a dragon,” I add.
“To be fair,” Caleb says very seriously, “she was angry, like a dragon.”
“That’s just her face,” I say. “She always looks like that.”
They dissolve into giggles.
My own anxiety flutters somewhere under my ribs like a trapped moth, but the twins are gravity—get close enough and they pull you out of your own head.
“Okay,” I say, clapping my hands once. “New game.”
Two little heads snap toward me.
“What game?” Eliza asks.
“The floor is lava?” Caleb guesses hopefully.
“Absolutely not. That sounds dangerous.”
He grins. “It’s awesome.”
“No structural damage games,” I say. “Try again.”
Eliza scoots closer. “So what game then?”
“Beekeeper training,” I announce.
Caleb gasps. “Is that a real thing?”
“Oh yes,” I say, dropping into my best serious tone. “My grandmother trained me when I was about your age.”
Eliza’s eyes go wide. “Did you have to fight giant bees?”
“No,” I say. “But I did have to learn three very important skills.”
They both lean in.
“Number one.” I raise a finger. “How to move slowly and gently so you don’t scare the bees.”
Caleb immediately starts moving his arms like he’s underwater. Eliza vibrates harder.
“Okay, we’ll work on that,” I say. “Number two, how to listen with your whole body. Bees tell you how they’re feeling, if you listen.”
Eliza cups a hand to her ear.
Caleb shuts his eyes and makes an exaggerated humming noise, basically meditating.
“And number three,” I go on, “how to name honey flavors in the fanciest way possible. Because bees work very hard, and it’s rude to just call their honey ‘honey.’”
“What do you call it?” Eliza asks.
“Well…” I sink down onto the rug and pat the floor. They scramble over, knees and elbows everywhere. “Some honeys taste of flowers. Some taste all sunshiney. Some taste like thunderstorms.”
“Thunderstorms don’t taste like honey,” Caleb says skeptically.
“Have you ever licked a thunderstorm?” I ask.
He pauses. “No.”
“Then you don’t know.”
He narrows his eyes at me, then cracks up. “You’re silly.”
“I can’t help that,” I say.
I get up, go to the kitchen, and come back with a small tray: three tiny jars and three tiny tasting spoons. The kids bounce as if I just brought treasure.
“Okay, trainees. Tiny taste of each. Then you tell me what to name them. Deal?”
“Deal!” they yell.
I unscrew the first jar and let them dip their spoons. They taste with exaggerated seriousness.
“Flowers,” Eliza says instantly.
“Warm toast,” Caleb decides.
Clover and blackberry, I catalog automatically. Mild, comforting, high nectar flow that week.
“Morning Meadow?” I suggest.
Eliza wiggles. “Ooh, yeah. That’s pretty.”
I open the second jar. Darker, late summer honey. I know this one already: a mix of wild mint, thistle, and the faintest edge of smoke from distant burns.
Eliza tastes it and scrunches up her nose. “Spicy.”
“It tastes like the woods,” Caleb says. “Like when we go with Daddy to check fences.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Pine, earth, and a little smoke. How about… Forest Ember?”
“Em-ber,” Eliza repeats, testing it. “Like fire but not scary fire.”
“Like campfire,” Caleb says. “When you’re safe.”
“Perfect,” I say.
The third jar is my experiment. The bees foraged this from a little wild patch near the old cottonwood at the back of the property, where my grandmother used to sit and write.
The flavor’s been puzzling me for days. Floral, but with something bright and old and wild underneath.
“Careful with this one,” I warn. “It’s special.”
“How’s it special?” Eliza asks.
“It’s from new flowers,” I say. “Ones my grandmother loved.”
They taste.
Eliza’s eyes go huge. “It’s like… like magic juice.”
Caleb nods vigorously. “Like when you wake up from a bad dream, and it’s not bad anymore.”
My heart twists.
I take my own tiny taste and let it cling on my tongue, parsing it the way Grandma taught me: first impression, mid notes, finish.
Bright, soft citrus at the front, wildflower in the middle, something deeper at the end. Hope that doesn’t quite trust itself yet.
“New Dawn,” I hear myself say quietly. “Because it tastes like starting over.”
“New Dawn!” Eliza says, delighted. “That’s when the sun scares away the monsters.”
“Yeah,” Caleb says softly. “Like that.”
“New Dawn it is,” I say.
We go through the jars again, the kids arguing good-naturedly about which one is best. It’s impossible not to smile when they’re acting this way, earnest and alive.
My anxiety doesn’t vanish. The fire still burns. The letter from this morning still sits on the coffee table.
But this is life too.
Laughter. Honey. Two kids who think I’m magical because we had beekeeper training together.
A little while later, after I’ve bribed them into washing hands and faces with the promise of a story, there’s a knock at the door.
“Daddy!” Eliza gasps.
They rocket for the entryway. I follow, wiping my own honey stickiness on a dish towel as my heart kicks up.
I open the door to find all three men on my porch.
Jesse, ash-smudged and tired, but still managing a grin for his kids. Wyatt, glasses slightly crooked, shirt wrinkled. Marshall, tall and solid in the strange orange twilight, tipping his hat in greeting.
“Ma’am,” he says.
That simple hat tip sends a little flutter through my stomach every time. Maybe because no one has ever bothered to be that gentle with me before.
“Hey,” Jesse says, catching Eliza as she hurls herself into his arms. Caleb wraps around his leg. “You two behave for Miss Abilene?”
“They were perfect,” I say. “We had beekeeper training.”
Caleb beams. “I’m a worker bee.”
“I’m the queen,” Eliza adds.
“I could’ve guessed that,” Jesse says.
They cling to him, relief obvious even in their chatter, steering him toward the open door.
A tightness inside me eases a notch.
They’re safe. He’s safe. They all made it back.
Wyatt gives me a small, tired smile. “Thanks for watching them.”
“Of course,” I say. “How bad is it?”
The smile fades.
Jesse glances at Marshall. Marshall looks toward the horizon, where the smoke still clings to the sky.
“Bad,” he says simply as the twins wander inside again, their chatter trailing behind them.
I step out onto the porch and pull the door mostly closed behind me so the twins aren’t between us.
“How bad?” I ask again, quietly.
Wyatt shoves his hands into his pockets. “Fire jumped a ridge. Crews are running themselves ragged. Mayor’s talking about evacuations for folks closest to the tree line, just in case the wind shifts.”
My mouth goes dry. “Evacuations.”
Jesse nods. “They don’t think we’ll have to leave Willow yet. But we’re not waiting around to see how brave the fire feels. We’re moving the animals farther out, away from the forest side.”
My mind goes straight to the hives.
“My bees,” I blurt. “If the wind changes…”
Marshall’s gaze sharpens as it lands on mine. The hard edges of his face soften. “We’re not gonna let your bees burn, Abilene.”
“If it keeps creeping this way, they’ll be right in the path,” I say. “The apiary is basically a stack of wax and sugar. It’d go up like—”
“Kindling,” Wyatt finishes quietly.
I nod, throat tight.
“Then we move them before it gets fully dark,” Wyatt says, as if it’s obvious. “We can set them up on the far side of Willow, near the creek. Less brush, better fire break.”
“I can move a hive or two on my own,” I say automatically, beekeeper brain spinning through logistics, “but I’d need to strap the boxes, close the entrances, secure the frames so they don’t shift…”
“You’re not doing it by yourself,” Wyatt says immediately.
Jesse lifts his hand. “Doc Tucker just volunteered. I will personally supervise from a safe distance and provide snacks.”
“Heroic of you,” I say dryly.
He points at me. “I have other strengths.”