By the fourth day after Panda had left, they were ripping up the ugly carpet in the gloomy den. “You got any more bread?” Toby asked as they finished the job.

“You polished off the last slice.”

“Are you gonna make more?”

“Not today.”

“You should make more.” He studied her newest accessory, a gorgeous dragon tattoo that curled from her collarbone around her neck with its fiery mouth pointing toward her earlobe. “How old are you anyway?”

She started to tell him she was eighteen, then stopped herself. If she wanted him to be truthful, she had to be straightforward. “Thirty-one.”

“That’s old.”

They moved outside, and Toby held the stepladder while she pulled away the vines that had grown over the den’s only window. Once this room wasn’t so gloomy, it would be a good place for her to start writing.

Through the window, she could see the warm, honeyed tones of the hardwood floor. From the moment she’d stepped through the doorway, the house had called out to her. Panda didn’t deserve this place.

BREE UNDRESSED IN THE TINY laundry room at the back of the cottage and dropped her dirty clothes directly into the washing machine, right down to bra and underpants. The smoker she used to calm the bees had left her smelling like she’d spent the day around a campfire. She wrapped a towel around herself and made her way to the bathroom shower. She’d never worked so hard in her life, and every muscle in her body ached.

For the last few days, she’d been outside from dawn until nightfall getting the hives ready for summer. Following the directions in the manuals she’d read, she moved frames, checked for queens, replaced the old brood comb with fresh comb, and added more brood boxes. She’d also cleaned the honey house from top to bottom, wiping the dust from hundreds of jars filled with last summer’s harvest. When that was done, she’d attached Myra’s labels.

Carousel Honey
Charity Island, Michigan

Bree had once dreamed of being an artist, and the illustration of the gaily beribboned carousel on the labels came from a watercolor she’d painted when she was sixteen as a birthday gift to Myra. Myra had liked the watercolor so much she’d asked to use it for her labels.

Bree dried herself off, working gently around the numerous bee stings she’d accumulated, the oldest of which were itching like crazy. But she hadn’t gotten stung once today. It was nice to feel proud of something.