The train pulled into the Poughkeepsie station.
I got off. And drove straight to the farm.
When I got to Maxwell Farm I parked, raced inside the main barn, and started looking for Leo’s long and lean frame everywhere. I thought I spotted him when a Screaming Trees T-shirt came around the corner, but it turned out to be one of his interns.
People who knew me and knew of my relationship with Leo said hello to me, and judging by the way they said only hello and kept on walking, they knew I’d left him standing in the middle of the road. They were protective. I got that.
I headed into the farm store, but no Leo. I checked the barn, I checked the silo, and I checked the kitchen garden out back. No Leo.
“Looking for my dad?” I heard from behind me, and I turned to find Polly sitting on a wheelbarrow, sorting seed packets.
“I am, yeah. How are you, Polly?” I asked, kneeling down.
“How are you?” she asked pointedly. I reminded myself that she was only seven years old. But based on my actions lately, likely years ahead of me emotionally. “I heard you went away.”
“You did, huh?” I asked, wincing a bit. “I’m back, though. I just went into the city for a day or so.”
“You mean Manhattan?”
“Exactly. Have you been there?”
Shuffling the seed packets, she finally answered, “I have—it’s nice. Grandma’s apartment is pretty, you can see really far up that high! It’s fun running up and down the hallways and riding the elevator, but she was mad when I pressed every single button.”
“Oh, I bet. I did that too once, when I was a kid.”
“And I like going to the museums, especially the dinosaur exhibits. But . . .”
“But?”
“But I like it here lots better. Daddy grew up in the city, you know.”
“I did know that,” I replied, watching her look carefully at me.
“He loves it here. He says we’ll never leave here and live somewhere else.”
I swallowed hard. “It’s pretty great, isn’t it?”
“I saw you kiss my daddy.” She looked at me, unblinking.
I blinked. A bunch. “Um, yes. You did. Was that weird?”
“Yeah, at first it was. But now, I think . . .”
I held my breath.
She laid out some of the packets face up, arranged like a vegetable full house.
Leo was in for it with this kid. I smiled, hoping that I’d get to watch it happen.
The smile from me was what she needed.
She smiled back, her pensive face turning bright. “I’m going to go see the hogs. Daddy’s in the apple orchard.”
And then she was off, running pell-mell across the field.
And I was off to the orchard.
Parking next to Leo’s Jeep, I peered through the rows of trees, looking for him. I thought I saw something moving several rows down, so I entered the orchard and made my way toward him.
As I walked, I became aware of two things.
One, my skin tingled. I was excited to see him! I wanted to see his face and kiss his lips and hold him close and hear his voice in my ear and feel his hands on my skin, after I told him, ‘I’m here to stay if I can still be yours.’
Two, my skin crawled. I became aware of the second thing as I wandered through the Macouns and the Empires, the Honeycrisps and the Sansas. And when I moved into the late-summer peaches . . . that’s when I felt it.
First came a low, droning hum, almost like feedback from a very low bass speaker. I called out to Leo, who I could now see moving a few rows away. My call changed the hum to something more recognizable, a familiar sound that bumped into the corner of my brain. Something familiar enough to make my skin pebble.
And then I saw them.
Bees.
Everywhere.
The droning hum was a collective buzz, which announced itself to my brain in a wave of awful, realization crashing across my body in a cold sweat and an absolute sheer terror. I wanted to run. I wanted to freeze. I wanted to—
“Roxie?” a surprised voice asked, and I saw Leo underneath a peach tree, oblivious to the million-bee chorus announcing that I was here and ripe for the picking. To those who are about to die, we salute you.
“Oh!” was all I could manage—and then the internal screaming began. One buzzed my ear, one buzzed by my nose, and several bopped around my head. Their bee noses must be drunk on the fear coming off me in waves. My eyes flashed to his, and he saw I was surrounded.
But . . .
I came to this orchard to get my guy.
Or at least tell him I’d like to be his girl.
I took a step.
I took another step.
The bees went with me, a cloud of nightmares hovering just inches from me, talking among themselves about how best to torture me. I had a sudden vision of the flying monkeys carrying away Dorothy, her legs kicking in the air. I only hoped that when the bees carried me off, someone would make sure my mother got my chef’s knives.
Steeling myself, I tried to speak. “Hi. Leo.” My voice was cracked and shaky, bordering on panic. “I wanted to talk to you . . . oh! I wanted to tell you . . . shit, that was close! . . . I, I’d like to—”
“Jesus, Roxie,” Leo said, marveling at the sight of me standing in a bee cloud, trying to carry on a normal conversation. “Just breathe, okay?”
“Yeah, trying to do that, not working so well,” I said shakily. “Anyway, I’m here because I wanted to tell you that . . . Motherfucker!” I got stung. So much for the theory that if you ignore them they’ll ignore you. Fucking rogue bee. “Ow!” Annnd there’s another sting. One landed on my shoulder, another landed on my ear, and though I held it together through all of that, when one had the balls to land on my nose, that was it.