She finally looked at him, but it was like she didn’t really want to see him. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here.” She sounded like she was really tired, but he didn’t see how she could be, since she didn’t do any work.

“Then why don’t you leave?” he said.

“Because your grandmother left me this place and made me your guardian and I haven’t figured out what to do about that.”

“You don’t have to do nothing about it. You can go. I can take care of myself.”

She picked up her cigarette pack and stared at the honey house. It was like she’d lost interest.

He stomped past her and followed the flagstone path around the side of the house. Why wouldn’t she go away? He could get himself to school and cook his own meals and wash his clothes and all that other kind of crap. Hadn’t he been doing it ever since Gram got sick? Even those couple of weeks he’d stayed with Mr. Wentzel after the funeral, he’d done stuff. Gram believed in keeping to herself, so she didn’t have a lot of friends except Mr. Wentzel and Big Mike, who used to drive her to the doctor’s. Toby was the one who took care of about everything else.

He reached the front of the cottage. Him and Gram had painted it three summers ago—robin’s-egg blue with light gray trim. Gram had wanted to paint it this purple color, but he’d talked her out of it. Now he wished he’d let her paint it any color she wanted. Just like he wished that he’d never talked back to her or tried to make her feel bad about not buying him a new game system or any of the other stuff he’d done.

He grabbed the bottom branch of the biggest tree in the front yard, a maple that Gram had said was older than she was. As he climbed he scraped his knee on the bark, but he kept going because the higher he climbed the farther he was from her and from the bees and from thinking about the lady in the Remington house. And the closer he was to Gram and to his dad in heaven. His mom, too, but she’d left him when he was a baby, and he didn’t think much about her. Gram said she’d loved her daughter, but that she’d been sort of worthless.