Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“This is the cap.” Veronica pointed at the wax. “Once the honey is made, the bees put this beeswax cap over it to keep the honey in. It’s got a lower moisture content. To get at the honey, we gotta scrape it off. Hand me that?”
Greta handed her the tool she was pointing at. It looked like a cross between a bread knife and a machete.
Veronica positioned the frame over a metal bucket and slid the instrument along the wood, slicing off the wax cap. Golden honey glistened underneath, shining in the morning sun.
“Wow,” Greta breathed.
“Taste it,” Veronica said. She ran a finger over the fresh honey and brought it to her mouth. With closed eyes, she savored the honey. “It’s my favorite taste in the world.”
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.
“It’s not that. Not really. My parents moved to Maine when they got married. Neither of them got along very well with their parents. We’re the only Jewish family on Owl Island. Key word, island. And it’s not like people were openly anti-Semitic, mostly. We’re not really religious or anything—well, I’m not at all—but when I was little, it was all Christmas this and Santa that as the default. Growing up, anytime there was a holiday, everyone else celebrated it and we never did, and vice versa. One of the first times I remember realizing my family was different was when my older sister Sadie started school and came home really sad because everyone exchanged Christmas cards and she realized no one was going to mention Chanukah.”
She remembered Sadie’s face. She’d been so little, but she had set her shoulders and said maybe she should make Chanukah cards for everyone instead so she could teach them about it. Their parents had told her she certainly could do that if she wanted, and Sadie, ever stubborn, had. She’d come home crying two days later because her classmates hadn’t wanted the cards or the explanation that went along with them.
By the time Greta’d gotten to school, she’d expected it and hadn’t bothered correcting anyone. Who cared what her classmates thought anyway? But Sadie had been angry with her, accused her of erasing her identity. Of course, what Sadie hadn’t known—what even Greta hadn’t understood at that time—was that there were pieces of her identity more fundamental that weren’t out in the open yet either.
“I don’t mean to make it a bigger deal than it was, but there were all these times when it was just us—every Easter, every Christmas, blah, blah, blah. We just were always the only ones who knew what that was like. We were our own little group. And it happened naturally, so I never thought about it until I was older. I don’t know if that’s how it started or what. But we’re all really used to being together, to having each other’s backs. Only now, it’s like… I didn’t really choose it, and it’s grown into something that feels stifling instead of supportive.”