with cake in front of him and put his dinner plate in the sink with mine. Things were not going as planned.
I was out in my apiary singing to my bees, “Honey bee! You stung the heart of me . . .”
Hunter and Tyler popped up, giggling.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re singing and dancing!” they said.
“Go ask your daddy to play the Supremes for you.”
Chapter Ten
Holly Grabs the Mike Back
I couldn’t believe what Leslie told me about last night. She grilled the hell out of him and laid the guilt on as thick as Momma likes her pimento cheese on a Ritz. Worse, Leslie couldn’t believe Archie was immune to her charms, however genuine they may or may not have been. The situation was a lot worse than I thought. No man, as far back as I could remember, had ever passed on ooh-la-la with Leslie. And, in my mind, I could see Archie heading to the chapel. I just knew it.
I was in the yard, working my flowerbeds, and had already pulled enough weeds to fill a large paper grocery bag. That amount of volume was usually a whole morning’s work, but I’d done it in under an hour. I was in overdrive, and if I didn’t get a grip on myself, I’d be so sore tomorrow I wouldn’t be able to do a thing. I decided to stop. I made a note to buy Epsom salts at Publix when I went in to work, just in case I needed them later. God, I was turning into such an old woman.
The water pans in my apiary were empty. I turned on the spigot and filled a watering can. Then I put it on the ground and went to my shed to put on my beekeeper suit. As much as I loved my bees, I wasn’t taking any chances. If they got a whiff of my pheromones that morning, they might panic and swarm.
Archie was a lost cause as the object of my affection, but the boys weren’t. Still, if and when he did marry Sharon, it might be awkward to try and maintain the frequency of my encounters with them. Besides, the decent thing to do was to give her the chance to endear herself to them. She wouldn’t be able to do that if I was around all the time. I owed them all some space and time.
I told my bees the whole story of Leslie and Archie and Sharon, and waggle dancing ensued once again. They were telling each other something, but it seemed different than usual.
There were so many interesting things about bee communication within the colony. In the morning, they send out scouts for food sources. On finding it, they drink a bunch of nectar and return to the hive. On reentering the hive, the scout walks straight in, shakes her tummy like mad, and makes a buzzing sound with her wings. The duration of the dancing and shaking and flapping of her wings tells the others how far away the food source is. Next the scout regurgitates the nectar and it’s gobbled up by other bees, sort of like a wine tasting. I’d read somewhere that the scouts are also covered in the scent of the flower, which helps the bees know which flowers are the grand crus in the garden. It all makes perfect sense. In fact, life seemed to make more sense in the world of honey bees than in ours.
“What am I to do?” I asked them. “She’s a truly dreadful woman of biblical proportions. I’m not kidding. She’s so definitely the wrong queen for their hive. I know I only met her once, but she’s so wrong for Archie and she’s going to absolutely ruin what’s left of the boys’ childhood. Wasn’t it bad enough to lose their mother? A stepmother should be a buoy, a source of strength, but also a chance for those little fellows to have more joy in their lives. Sharon is anything but joyous. The only consolation is that at least they’re just next door, so I can still keep an eye on things. But don’t worry. I’m going to be very careful around her. I’ve got to be. She would shut me out if she thought I was doing the least thing to undermine her position. I know that. What do y’all think?”
They just buzzed all around me and then left me to forage. There seemed to be no solution.
Momma had her appointment with Sharon that