The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin (free ereaders txt) 📗

more people tired her, and he seemed fine. Still, she wished he would say something. Harry was silent, pulling apart the empty hive and peering in at the frames. He lifted the cover on and off, turned it around in his hands. The seconds ticked by. Alice was impatient to get back to work and annoyed that he didn’t seem to be listening. She cleared her throat.

“So? Any questions about the job, Harry? I imagine it seems fairly—”

“Why don’t you make the entrance at the top?” he interrupted. “It’s like their front door, right? If the grass and the snow blocking the entrance is a big problem, then it seems like you should just move the front door to the top. That one over there has a top door. Why don’t the rest of them?”

Alice followed his gaze to one of the new splits she’d created and returned to the apiary. The front entrance, she realized in exasperation, was choked with crabgrass. The bees were flying in and out of a gap in the top where the brood box was cracked and the cover hadn’t seated properly.

“What the hell—” she grumbled.

Alice grabbed her hat and veil, pulled on her gloves, and opened the hive, drawing out a middle frame. It looked just like it should—layered with brood nest and honey and pollen. She put it back, careful to leave the cover tipped to keep that entrance open. Her thoughts whirred. She’d never heard of anyone doing a top entrance on a Langstroth hive, but she couldn’t think of a reason it wouldn’t work. And if it did work, the kid had just eliminated countless hours of maintenance.

She walked back over to the boys, as she was already calling them in her mind, and smiled.

“When can you start?” she asked.

That evening after work she sat at the kitchen table going over the hive calendar and looking at her banking statement as she willed herself not to scratch her itchy forearms. Her budget would be tight, but she’d only be paying Harry for twenty hours a week. She shook her head. He was an odd duck—either silent or blurting paragraphs. She had to laugh at herself. Alice Holtzman with an awkward part-time employee and teenage roommate. Who’d have thought?

Alice opened a bag of Nutter Butters and looked out the window at Jake, who was slowly rolling the perimeter of the yard. With his black hair back in its crazy spikes, he resembled a Roman sentry. She sighed and munched a cookie. She had a teenager living with her. Alice the introvert. Alice Island. He and his friends had managed to convince her to let him stay for a while. She smiled, recalling how she’d barreled through the door ready to battle Ed Stevenson and instead found three teenagers and a pot of burned rice.

After the smoke had cleared and Alice had stopped yelling, she’d met Jake’s two young friends—Noah and Celia—who’d rearranged her furniture, which was disorienting. But they’d also made her dinner. It would have been impolite to refuse, she knew. She sat down to eat with them, begrudgingly, and told Jake they had things to discuss after dinner. Alice’s dark mood settled over the table. The silence was broken only by the sounds of forks on plates and chewing.

“These young people are guests in your home, Alice!” she could hear her father’s voice hissing in her ear. She sighed and put down her fork.

“This is really delicious,” she said, forcing a smile. “Thank you, Celia.”

Celia jumped in like she’d been waiting for an opening.

“Actually, Mrs. Holtzman, Jake made dinner. I just helped him with the recipe. He did all the work.”

She looked at Jake, who looked down at the table.

“I asked them to help me organize your kitchen so I could reach the cooking stuff,” Jake said. “We’ll put it all back. Don’t worry.”

Alice glanced at her rearranged living room, understanding. She took another bite of the chicken enchiladas, which were quite good. So were the beans. The kid had made a salad, for God’s sake. Alice couldn’t remember the last time she had a home-cooked meal or a dinner she hadn’t eaten over the sink. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth on her napkin and stood.

“Show me,” she said.

Jake explained Celia’s thoughtful reorganization of the cooking and baking utensils. Tentative at first, his confidence grew as he saw Alice was intrigued. His friends stood behind the counter, interjecting like his cheerleading squad.

“Show her the pantry stuff,” Noah said. “And how we hung the skillets so you could reach them.”

“And the ice cream maker is way up high there with the canning stuff, Mrs. Holtzman,” Celia said.

Alice nodded, impressed. After all, Holtzmans admired initiative and organization. She was also won over by their teenage enthusiasm, which was unfamiliar to her. There it was, a force to be reckoned with.

“Well,” she said. “Nice work. I’m impressed. Thank you for dinner. Now I have a little work to do. Can you three handle the dishes before Noah and Celia head home?” she asked Jake.

She excused herself and went to her room so she could pretend not to see them high-fiving each other and celebrating. That had been two weeks ago, and she was surprised by how she had grown accustomed to having him there.

Hiring Harry had solved her labor problem. As for Jake, he would be her guest for the time being. From the kitchen table, Alice watched him pause at one of the new hives. After his friends had left that night, she talked to him frankly about the physical demands of the job she was hiring for, and he agreed it was more than he could do. His face had fallen, and Alice felt her stomach plummet.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” she said. “I should’ve been clearer about it.”

He shook his head and tried to smile, saying he knew she was just trying to help. Sitting there looking into his young face, she could not bring herself to send him