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He mirrors the gesture. “Until tomorrow, Audrey Beacon.”
The van finds its own way home along the blacktopped roads. My emotions ricochet between giddy and guilty, Juliet’s delight replaced with Ophelia’s despair. I can only hope the sky above my head was clear when Sam and I kissed. I’m ashamed to imagine David’s cloud looking down on me in that moment.
Joe’s truck is heading my way along Ridgetop Road. He slows down as our vehicles come abreast, his left elbow hanging out the open window. It’s an upstate ritual for neighbors to brake for a visit as they pass each other on a country road. The last thing I want is to make small talk with Joe, but convention dictates I stop, so I do.
“Just came from your place,” Joe says. His right hand is resting on the steering wheel, tapping along to a country tune. “Reckon your lawn will be good now until next year.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting you today, though. Mind if I pay you tomorrow?”
“That’ll be fine. I’ll plow you out in winter, too, same rate as mowing.”
“That sounds good. Hey, what happened to your eye?” I ask, noticing the red welt that’s squeezing his eye half shut.
“Damn wasps,” he says. “Don’t worry, I’m not one of them snowflakes who’ll sue you over every stupid thing. Anyway, I took care of ’em for you, no charge.”
My guts turn a sickening somersault. “What do you mean, you took care of them?”
“They get ornery this time of year, but like I said, no charge.” He lifts his fist from the steering wheel in a truncated wave, then eases off the brake, letting the truck roll forward. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
An ice bucket of anxiety pours over me. I speed home in a panic, tires spitting gravel as I swerve up the driveway. Throwing the van into park, I leap out and run past the house toward the oak where the swarm settled. The air around the tree is ominously still. A chemical smell hits my nose.
“No no no no no no!” I race across the freshly mown lawn, screaming. At the base of the tree, there’s a cairn of yellow-striped insects, fuzzy bodies heaped up like swept trash. I drop to my knees. With open palms, I scoop up dead bees, their brittle wings crumbling at my touch, their black legs still wearing fluffy pants of pollen. Great heaving sobs erupt from my gaping mouth. Dropping the bees back onto the pile of bodies, I wrap my arms around my stomach and rock back and forth, keening.
I’m no stranger to heartbreak. I’ve been grieving since I was ten years old. I’ve experienced crippling guilt and anxiety so consuming it took a razor’s edge to bring relief. But I’ve never before felt pure rage. It burns my blood and besieges my senses, supplanting both guilt and grief in an ecstasy of hate.
“Hysteria” is a word men hurl at the women they have wronged. I’m beyond hysterical. I’m in a fury, and it’s all Joe’s fault. With an animal roar, I charge back to the van, its door agape and engine running like a war horse ready for battle. Ridgetop Road flashes past in a blur. All I can see through the red mist of my rage is a target drawn on Joe’s stupid fucking face.
The van careens up a paved driveway, past a woodcut sign proclaiming, welcome to the sprague’s. The misplaced apostrophe adds to my fury. I slam on the brakes, the van’s fender inches from a bed of pink begonias bordering a white-painted porch.
Blasting the horn, I throw open the driver’s door and barricade myself behind it. Joe comes onto the porch, armed not for combat but wearing an apron and waving a spatula. In a sweep, his eyes take in the crazily parked van, my contorted face.
“What’s happened? Are you hurt?”
“You fucking murderer!” The words shoot from my throat, hot as a dragon spewing fire.
Joe drops the spatula and stumbles back as if struck. “What?”
The screen door opens behind him. Nancy barrels through it. Half the size of her husband, her blond hair a helmet atop her pink face, she pushes past Joe and stomps down from the porch, grabbing hold of the van door as if to slam it shut on my kneecaps.
“What are you screaming about?”
I point an accusatory finger. “He poisoned my bees!”
Nancy shakes her head. “I keep telling Joe he ought to ask first, but that’s how he is, always doing for others. You’ve got no right to throw accusations at him.”
“But he killed them. He’s a murderer!”
“Don’t you dare use that word,” Nancy hisses through clenched teeth. She reaches around the open door and clamps her hand on my upper arm with shocking strength, forcing me into the driver’s seat. “Rhonda told me your husband died and all, but you’re not the only one around here who knows loss.”
“But he’s always killing things I don’t want him to.” My voice has curdled into a bullied child’s whine. The sound of it sickens me.
“You won’t have to worry about that from now on because I won’t let Joe lift a finger to help you ever again.” Nancy glares at me. “Now, you get yourself the hell off our property before I grab my shotgun, you hear?”
I back down the drive, nauseous and trembling. Halfway home, I pull over and vomit up that Presbyterian chicken sandwich on the side of the road. My righteous rage is spent. In its place, the darkness of those locked-down days engulfs me like a black wave. Everyone I love dies: my mother, my dad, David. Colton was smart to get out when he could. That cyclist in Central Park is lucky to have survived. The bees’ tragic flaw was befriending me. The barn cat is sure to keel over should she ever cross my threshold.
Wiping my sour mouth, I manage, somehow, to drive home. Before getting out of the van, I leave Maeve a message to bring the goats on down to the barn in case I’m not home when she comes by tomorrow. Everyone else I know is too busy with their own stuff to drop by unexpectedly. That leaves Sam as the last loose thread to tie off.
I compose a text saying things have moved too fast, that I don’t feel the same way, that I need him to leave me alone. I block his number right after I send it, ghosting the guy who had no idea he was kissing a dead man’s wife.
