Like a Bee to Honey by Jennifer Beckstrand

time.”
    The barn door creaked open again. Rose stood at the opening, her eyes dull with fear and sadness. “Lily, it wonders me if you would walk me to the house.”
    Josiah held perfectly still as Lily put her arm around her sister and they walked out of the barn together. He struggled for breath. Rose was frightened and unhappy, and he ached to make everything all better for her.
    If only she’d let him.
    If only he knew how.

Chapter Six
    Rose set the brake, slid out of the buggy, and picked up the cake in both hands as if she were holding a shield in front of her. She’d made a small cake because Josiah lived all by himself, but now she wondered if she should have made a bigger one. The coconut cake looked so insignificant sitting on the dinner plate. Much like Rose felt at this very moment.
    Her pulse raced so fast she could have been a hummingbird in flight. How had she ever talked herself into thinking this was a gute idea? Josiah didn’t need a cake. She didn’t need to see the butterfly garden. They didn’t need to talk ever again.
    She stood up straight and tall—which wasn’t all that impressive since she was only five feet three inches—but she had to talk herself into being brave. Aunt Bitsy said that if she wanted to overcome her fears, she should do things that frightened her. She’d come all this way to bring Josiah a cake. All she had to do was hand it to him and say good day. She didn’t have to stay for more than two minutes.
    A week ago, Rose had just about decided that she didn’t need to overcome anything. She could be perfectly happy living out her days on Honeybee Farm, baking cookies and sewing quilts. But the night in the barn had changed her mind. Dan and Luke and Josiah had been willing to sacrifice sleep and time to make sure she never found out about the buggy. How selfish she was!
    Her sisters suffered inconvenience after inconvenience for Rose’s benefit, and soon their husbands would be pulled into it as well. She couldn’t let them sacrifice themselves or their future families for her. It wasn’t fair of her to ask her sisters to give over their lives to Rose’s fears. She didn’t deserve it. She never had.
    She was more determined than ever to overcome her fear of men. And her fear of talking to people. And her fear of troublemakers coming in the middle of the night and tipping over the honeybees. Aunt Bitsy said to pretend that she wasn’t frightened and soon she would begin to believe it, but it was hard to pretend when her knees knocked against each other and her hands trembled.
    None of that mattered. She had to be more courageous if she didn’t want her sisters to end up resenting her.
    She looked down at the cake. Josiah had come to the barn to help fix the buggy. He had driven her home one night and then walked all the way back to his own house. He’d been so concerned when he’d rescued her in the honey house too. She had embarrassed herself, but he hadn’t laughed at her or even lectured her for getting all worked up over nothing. He deserved a cake for that reason alone.
    She tiptoed across the grass and climbed Josiah’s porch steps. The house looked like it had been painted recently and there were even some flowers growing in the bed below the window. Boys didn’t usually think about flowers.
    Josiah had lived alone in the white clapboard house since his mamm had died four years ago. Rose felt lonely just thinking about Josiah wandering through the empty rooms, longing for his parents’ company. They were both orphans, but at least Rose had Aunt Bitsy and her sisters.
    Josiah’s sister, Suvilla, lived not a quarter mile down the road in the house her husband, Andrew, had built when they married. Suvie’s three children kept her busy, and Andrew and Josiah worked Josiah’s parents’ farm together. Josiah and Suvie were the only two siblings left in the family.