Greta scooped a fingerful of honey off the comb and tasted it. A flavor more complex than the honey she was used to burst on her tongue. It was sweet and floral and herbaceous and fresh. It tasted like nature. Alive.

“Damn.”

“Right?”

“I knew how honey is made, but there’s something wild about seeing how it’s made.”

Veronica nodded. “When I started, I did all this research. My grandpa had kept bees when I was little, but I never knew how to do it. I looked up everything, thinking I wouldn’t do it right. But then when I started, it was like I didn’t really need to do anything. The bees do it all. They know what to do and when and how, and I just needed to not fuck up collecting what they made.”

“Nature! It’s so magical,” Greta crowed, overwhelmed with elation. “That’s how it should be. So I’m really into plants—all plants, but I love carnivorous plants. And in nature, they know just what to do. Then my dumb ass has to live in Maine, where no carnivorous plant would ever want to grow because it’s winter for, like, half the year.”

Veronica shuddered at the idea and made a face Greta wholeheartedly agreed with.

“I know. I hate it. So I have to do all these things to try and mimic nature, basically, to just keep them alive. But like, if a Venus flytrap were growing right here, it would thrive. I wouldn’t have to do anything, because it would be in the place it was meant to be, and…yeah.”

“Girl, just move here,” Veronica said.

“I wish it were that easy.”

“It is that easy, if you let it be. You know moving somewhere doesn’t mean you have to cut all ties, right? You can still talk to your family, still visit.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So what’s the deal? And if it’s that you don’t wanna freak Carys out, do not worry. She’s learned better than anyone that shit ain’t about her.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you try growing up with a narcissist mother who blames you for everything. She’s done some deep work.”

Greta was torn between wanting to ask a hundred follow-up questions and not wanting to seem like she was pumping Veronica for information. She decided that no matter how much she wanted to know more about Carys, it was Carys she wanted to hear it from.