Ray Voss, 62, retired highway construction foreman, leaned against the dented tailgate of his 2012 Silverado, one boot propped on the rusted hitch, paper plate of vinegar-drenched pulled pork and slaw in one hand, lukewarm light beer in the other. He’d driven 20 minutes to the small-town fire department pig roast solely to dodge the new neighbor who’d moved into the old cottage down the dirt road from his farm three weeks prior. Grief had left him rigid, unyielding; he’d refused every social invite, every offer of help, every kind smile since his wife Linda passed eight years earlier, convinced any crack in the routine he’d built would equal betrayal of the woman he’d spent 34 years with. That flaw had kept him lonely, but safe, or so he told himself.
The twang of a country cover band’s take on an old Alan Jackson track cut through the hum of conversation, and he looked up at the sound of a laugh that had been drifting through his open kitchen window every morning for the past three weeks. Marnie Hale, 54, the beekeeper who’d turned the cottage’s side yard into a cluster of rainbow-painted hive boxes, stood 10 feet away, holding a heaping plate of ribs, a smudge of pale beeswax stuck to her left forearm, silver streaks in her chestnut hair catching the golden hour sun. She spotted him immediately, raised her beer in a quick toast, and walked over before he could duck behind the truck bed.
She stopped so close the scuffed toes of her work boots nearly brushed his. He could smell cedar and wild clover honey on her shirt, mixed with the faint smoky tang of the grill 50 yards away. She held his gaze steady, no polite flick away to the ground or the crowd behind him, and he felt his neck heat up, equal parts flustered and annoyed at himself for not leaving 10 minutes earlier. “I’ve been trying to catch you,” she said, grinning, and when a mosquito landed on the side of his neck, she reached out without thinking to swat it away, her fingertips brushing the sun-warmed skin there for half a second. He flinched hard, not from the contact, but from how soft it was, how long it had been since anyone had touched him with anything but the perfunctory handshake of a hardware store clerk or old coworker.
The disgust hit him fast, sharp, coiling in his gut. What was he doing, standing here letting a stranger touch him, letting himself notice the flecks of green in her brown eyes, the way her cutoff denim shirt gaped just a little at the collar when she leaned back to laugh? He was half a second from making an excuse to leave when she nodded at the empty hive boxes he’d dragged behind his barn three years after Linda died, the ones he’d never had the heart to throw out or fix up. “Saw those behind your place last week when I was walking my dog,” she said, voice softer now, no teasing edge. “Linda kept hives, right? I heard from the guy at the feed store.”
He froze. For a minute he couldn’t speak, could only hear the crinkle of his paper plate, the distant roar of a motorcycle going down the main road. He’d not said Linda’s name out loud to anyone who wasn’t her old nurse in six months. He found himself telling her about the hives, about how Linda had kept them for 15 years before her rheumatoid arthritis got so bad she couldn’t lift the frame boxes, about how he’d left them to rot because every time he looked at them he could hear her singing old Patsy Cline songs while she checked for queen bees. Marnie didn’t push, didn’t offer empty condolences, just nodded, sipped her beer, and when he trailed off, she said “My ex left me 10 years ago, right after I got diagnosed with that weird bee allergy that makes my throat swell up if I get stung more than twice. Everyone told me I was crazy to move out here and start a beekeeping supply shop. Turns out crazy feels a lot better than being stuck in a house that feels like a tomb.”
She pulled a crumpled napkin out of her back pocket, scribbled her phone number on it in blue ballpoint, and held it out to him. When he reached to take it, their knuckles brushed, and this time he didn’t pull away. “If you ever want to fix those hives up, I’ll help. No pressure. I’ve got extra frames, extra queen stock, whatever you need.”
He walked her to her beat up forest green Subaru when she said she had to head back to check on a hive that had swarmed earlier that day. She leaned in before she opened the driver’s side door, pressed a soft, quick kiss to his cheek, and he could taste the peach pie she’d eaten for dessert on her breath when she pulled back, grinning. He stood there in the dust of the parking lot until her taillights turned onto the county road, the napkin crumpled in his palm, the spot where she’d kissed him still warm. He pulled his flip phone out of his jeans pocket, punched in the number before the voice in his head that said he didn’t deserve this could get loud enough to stop him, and held the phone to his ear as it rang.
