“No more lullabies,” I said, shaking the jar as I went back to stand beside my poor father.

And then I unscrewed the lid and quickly put the mouth of the jar up against his temple where there was nothing between the bees and his brain but flesh and blood.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

At first, the bees simply tumbled across my father’s temple, looking for a way past the rim of the jar where it pressed against his skin, but when I rapped my knuckles against the glass and bent low with a quick shout, they both stung my father and died doing it, protecting a comb they’d already lost, their church-window wings going still, their fuzzy bodies broken, poor little unlucky things that they were.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I pulled the jar free and gently swept them away with my fingertip.

And, just like that, twin lumps rose up on my father’s temple.

I watched my father’s eyes, hoping they would roll, hoping they would open.

And that was when he groaned.

Not loudly. He didn’t wail. But the sound that came up out of him was the first one he’d made since the accident.

“Daddy!” I said, patting his cheek lightly. “Daddy, wake up.”

He groaned again as my mother came through the door.

“What was that?” she said as she hurried to the bed.

Which was when my father groaned again and turned his head just a little.

“What did you do?” she whispered.

“Bee sting.” Though it was more than those two words. It was every single thing I’d learned along the way.

I pressed the back of my hand against his cheek. He was not as cold as he’d been.

“Good Lord,” my mother said. “Good Lord, Ellie. I should be angry.”

I moved aside so she could come close to lay her hand on my father’s forehead. And then she kissed it and said, “Ethan? Ethan?”

But he was still and quiet again, though his eyes were crimped a little at the corners.

We waited, watching, barely breathing, but my father didn’t surface again.

I put the lid back on the honey jar.

Larkin looked at me.

“One more minute,” I said.

Nothing.

“I don’t know why he won’t wake up all the way. I don’t understand.”

My mother sighed. “It’s what the doctor said, Ellie. His body knows what it needs.”

But I knew that a person was more than just a body.

We waited.

Larkin said, “I’m sorry, Ellie, but we need to go now. Or I can take the honey and you can stay.”

I imagined Esther pulling apart the edges of the rotten wound while Larkin squeezed the honey into it.

“No, I’ll go with you.”

My mother frowned at me, clearly confused. “Just like before. You do something meant to wake him and then you leave.”