The Wedding Bees by Sarah-Kate Lynch Page B

makes something delicious with it. He made this Moroccan lamb stew the other night—oh my goodness, just the smell of it drove me so crazy I had to knock on the window and find out what it was. He cooked it in the cutest little dish with a funnel that came up out of the middle, served it with couscous, and was kind enough to share it with me. I had to go and look Morocco up on the map afterward just so I could be sure where such a heavenly thing came from.”
    â€œAre you, like, dating him or something?” Ruby asked.
    â€œHeavens, no! He’s too young for me. And I’ve only just met him.”
    â€œYou don’t have to know someone for long for them to be a boyfriend. Sometimes it’s instant. It happens all the time in my scrapbook.”
    Sugar cleared her throat. “Well, I can hardly be considered an expert in that field because boyfriends and I don’t traditionally work out real well.”
    Ruby looked at her. “Boyfriends and I don’t traditionally work out real well either,” she said. Indeed, she’d never had one. Not even come close.
    â€œI’ve found bees to be far less complicated,” said Sugar. “Now, where’s my queen?” She pulled out another frame, this one laden with even more bees, and carefully turned it around in her hands, looking for Elizabeth the Sixth.
    â€œHow can you tell her from the other ones?”
    â€œShe’s bigger than them, and she has an extra touch of class, just like a real queen. I usually have no trouble spotting her anyway but—oh, look, here she is.” She pointed out Elizabeth the Sixth, who was perched half in and half out of a brood cell. “See, she’s longer than the rest although it’s hard to tell because of where she’s sitting.” She waited for Betty to lay her egg and move to the next cell, but Betty did not.
    â€œHm, that’s strange,” said Sugar. “She’s taking a while on this one. Best I stop disturbing her, I suppose.”
    She slid the frame back into the hive and put the lid back on.
    Ruby perched herself on one of the gingham cushions, holding her scrapbook in her arms, a sad but hopeful look on her face, like she wished she didn’t want what she wanted. Bees were obviously not the tonic for her that they were for Sugar, and if Ruby needed anything, Sugar thought, it was a tonic. In the interests of being helpful, she was going to have to suck up some more marital bliss.
    â€œNow what say I make us an iced tea,” she suggested, “and you read me some of those stories of yours?”
    â€œWhat’s in iced tea?”
    â€œJust tea and lemon, there’s probably not even half a calorie in a whole jug.”
    â€œOK,” Ruby said.
    â€œJust OK?”
    â€œWhat else would there be?”
    â€œSometimes it’s nice to add a little sweetener.”
    â€œI’m not interested in sweetening anything,” said Ruby.
    Sugar left it at that, but when she made the tea, she put half a teaspoon of Jacksonville ocher in it because if Ruby needed anything it was sweetening. The honey was subtle yet slightly tart and Sugar knew the tannin from the tea and the spike of the lemon would camouflage its taste.
    She was sure she saw Ruby’s cheeks pick up a bit of color as she drank. It was like watching a wilted flower start to straighten and bloom after a summer rain shower.

17 TH
    T he next time she saw Theo, Sugar was selling ice cream at the Ronnybrook Farm stand at Tompkins Square greenmarket. She’d volunteered at the market information booth three weeks in a row and the market manager had then recommended she spend a while working at someone else’s stand before setting up her own.
    Marcus Morretti from Ronnybrook had begrudgingly let her help him although he’d had volunteers offer to help out before and generally they went for coffee about nine A.M. and never came back. Tompkins Square did not have