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“It’s for the bees who don’t live in the hives, or the ones who are too tired to fly home.”

“So it is.” I smile at the ladder system built from spaghetti and the paint-smeared fingerprints. “And the roof keeps the rain off.”

“Will they like it?”

“Of course. I’d live here if I was small enough.”

“Everyone was little once,” Aras tells me solemnly. “Even tėtis.”

I frown at the unfamiliar word.

“Papa,” Oscar supplies, appearing beside us. “Aras, it is time to go.”

“Did you make Po dinner again?”

Oscar smiles. “I brought him dinner. But we should leave him to work if he’s going to have time to eat it, no?”

No.

I don’t want them to leave. But he’s right about me having a lot to do. And…I can’t think of a coherent way to ask him to stay. So I take Aras to install the bee hotel by the wildflower beds near the orchard, and then I carry him back to his dad.

Oscar takes him from me, murmuring something I don’t catch, but I’m not sure I’m meant to.

I don’t see his car. “Are you walking home?”

“I am.” Oscar holds Aras under one strong arm. “Aras is staying with Hanna.”

“You’re sailing tonight?”

Oscar’s brown eyes flare. “Not until the morning.”

There could be any number of other things he’s doing to fill his time between then and now. Singing with the masses, sleeping alone, or whatever else he does when he’s not with Aras.

I want to know.

I want him to come back after he’s put Aras to bed and come to bed with me.

To fuck.

To sleep.

Both.

But I can’t find the words to say any of that. And so I say nothing, and Oscar leaves.

And I think that’s it.

I go back to work. Lose the sun and work under the moonlight until the cloud drives me back to the yard. Edna needs refuelling before the morning and her rear light is loose again. I can’t hear the rattle as I cross the lower fields, but I know it’s there.

Just like I know Oscar isn’t.

Because I didn’t ask him to be, and I don’t know if he’d have said yes.

I roll Edna close to the barn and wrestle the rogue bulb into its socket. Not a hard job, but it’s fiddly; it takes time, and I’m tired. And I don’t like the sensation of the world closing in on me when it’s this dark.

Turn on the lights.

The ones my brother installed for nights like these—because he knew—but for whatever reason, I don’t. I endure the shadows swallowing the edges of everything I look at and let my thoughts keep me company instead. I let Oscar keep me company, even though he’s not here. I picture him sitting on the fence in the evening sun, a chicken tucked under one arm as he watches Aras plant lettuces with me. He’s smiling, but every time I glance up, I see my own bemusement reflected back at me, and instead of comfort, I find myself more agitated than ever.