Mad Honey: A Novel Read Free Page B

her safe for a couple of days while they all get used to the new home. But it also guarantees that the colony won’t abscond. Sometimes, bees just up and leave with their queen if they don’t like their circumstances. If the queen is locked up, they will not leave without her.
    I let a puff of smoke roll over the top of the box, again hoping to calm the bees. I try to set the queen catcher between frames of comb, but my fingers are stiff with the cold and keep slipping. When my hand strikes the edge of the wooden box, one of the worker bees sinks her stinger into me.
    “Mother fucker. ” I gasp, dancing backward from the hive. A cluster of bees follows me, attracted by the scent of the attack. I cradle my palm, tears springing to my eyes.
    I tear off my hat and veil, bury my face in my hands. I can take all the best precautions for this queen; I can feed the bees sugar syrup and insulate their new brood box; I can pray as hard as I want—but this colony does not have a chance of surviving the winter. They simply will not have enough time to build up the stores of honey that the bear has robbed.
    And yet. I cannot just give up on them.
    So I gently set the telescoping cover on the box and lift my bee kit with my good hand. In the other, I hold a snowball against the sting as a remedy. I trudge back to the farmhouse. Tomorrow, I’ll give them the kindness of extra food in a hive-top feeder and I’ll wrap the new box, but it’s hospice care. There are some trajectories you cannot change, no matter what you do.
    Back home, I am so absorbed in icing my throbbing palm that I don’t notice it’s long past dinnertime, and Asher isn’t home.
----
    —
    THE FIRST TIME it happened, it was over a password.
    I had only just signed up for Facebook, mostly so that I could see pictures of my brother, Jordan, and his wife, Selena. Braden and I were living in a brownstone on Mass Ave while he did his Mass General fellowship in cardiac surgery. Most of our furniture had come from yard sales in the suburbs that we would drive to on weekends. One of our best finds came from an old lady who was moving to an assisted living community. She was selling an antique rolltop desk with claw-feet (I said it was a gryphon; Braden said eagle). It was clearly an antique, but someone had stripped it of its originalfinish, so it wasn’t worth much, and more to the point, we could afford it. It wasn’t until we got it home that we realized it had a secret compartment—a narrow little sliver between the wooden drawers that was intended to look decorative, but pulled loose to reveal a spot where documents and papers could be hidden. I was delighted, naturally, hoping for the combination to an old safe full of gold bullion or a torrid love letter, but the only thing we found inside was a paper clip. I had pretty much forgotten about its existence when I had to choose a password for Facebook, and find a place to store it for when I inevitably forgot what I’d picked. What better place than in the secret compartment?
    We had initially bought the antique desk so that Braden could study at it, but when we realized that his laptop was too deep for the space, it became decorative, tucked in an empty space at the bottom of the stairs. We kept our car keys there, and my purse, and an occasional plant I hadn’t yet murdered. Which is why I was so surprised to find Braden sitting in front of it one evening, fiddling with the hidden compartment.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    He reached inside and triumphantly pulled out the piece of paper. “Seeing what secrets you keep from me,” he said.
    It was so ridiculous I laughed. “I’m an open book,” I told him, but I took the paper out of his hand.
    His eyebrows raised. “What’s on there?”
    “My Facebook password.”
    “So what?”
    “So,” I said, “it’s mine.”
    Braden frowned. “If you had nothing to hide, you’d show it to me.”
    “What do you think I’m doing on Facebook?” I