“Yeah. Listen, Holly. You’re my little sister and I don’t want to see you get hurt. Archie has a Ph.D. in world religion from Harvard Divinity School, for God’s sake. You’re a nice girl and all that, but he’s light-years out of your league. Can’t you see that?”

Two could play this game.

“Jesus, Leslie! I made chicken and mashed potatoes, not lobster and caviar. And I did it mainly for his boys. They hardly ever get a home-cooked meal. Do you know how many pizza boxes are in their garbage?”

“So now you’re looking through their garbage cans? Oh, Holly. This is so sad I don’t know what to say!”

“No. It is not sad. And no, I do not go through their garbage. They’re sticking out of the top of the can, and when I roll ours out to the curb on pickup day, there are the boxes poking out of the cans like a cry for help.”

“Oh, okay then. Sorry. Charlie says I always jump to judgment. Maybe he’s right. That was nice of you to make them dinner. Did they have a good time?”

“I think so. There’s not a crumb left. And they did the dishes.”

“You know, Archie’s hot. You know that, right?”

“Yes, for an old dude. I’m not blind.”

“Don’t let him take advantage of you, Holly.”

I wanted to say, Why not? Everybody else does. But instead I said, “Oh, please. What’s a little chicken between friends?”

Chapter 3: Buzzing Along

Archie was staring at my apiary. “Ever read David Foster Wallace?”

“No,” I said. “Should I?”

“Why not? He said, ‘Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.’”

“He’s right. They flap their little wings two hundred and thirty times a second to hover.”

Chapter Three

Buzzing Along

Our old house was a classic clapboard island cottage, painted white some years ago, with a silver tin roof and porches around the front and the back, their floors slanted for runoff during the horrific rains that regularly saturated all the islands. We had working shutters on every window and slim French doors with their original glass from 1860. There was a Pawleys Island hammock, four rockers, and a glider from the 1950s on the front porch. They had more mileage than my sister. A table and four chairs stood on the back porch that no one ever used, along with garbage cans and an old Weber grill. You would say it was comfortable, and it was.