Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
But nothing highlights the differences more than the fact that I’m standing behind the counter at Nobody’s Bees-Ness, minding the shop, totally isolated with the scent of beeswax, honey, and loneliness.
I didn’t know Ros hasn’t opened the shop in days until one of the locals called the home line saying she’d been by to pick up her order for a baby shower and found the shop closed every time.
Ugh.
I’ve tended the family business before, but it was different then.
Minding the register while Mom took a lunch break or ran cash over to the bank.
Keeping an eye on the register while she was in her cluttered workshop in the back, her delicate fingers working over a special personalized custom order.
Making Ros sit in the break room and do her homework while Mom was out talking to suppliers, and my brat of a sister doing everything she could to test my patience.
God.
Even when this shop was empty, I never felt alone here.
I always knew Mom or Ros would be back soon.
We were together, even when we were apart.
Now, that feeling is gone.
It’s the same homey scent, the same oasis of cute wax goods, but the vibe has shifted.
There’s just me, basking in the silence of the golden lights and willing myself to believe it’ll all be okay in the end. Somehow.
The hole in my chest feels big enough to fall into.
Sighing, I slip away from the empty storefront into the back.
It’s both a storeroom and a workshop, the shelves lined with rows of bottled honey, jars with bits of honeycomb, plus larger wedges and sheets delicately wrapped up and kept in temperature-controlled coolers.
A long, weathered oak table runs the entire length of the back wall, still covered with my mother’s tools. It’s like she was only here yesterday, lovingly hunched over her creations.
There’s a massive industrial stove kitty-corner to it.
My mother’s worktable is half sculptor’s workbench and the rest mad scientist’s lab. The shelf perched over the table is filled with dried herbs in mason jars, along with more drying flowers hanging in bunches from strings overhead.
Their faded scent adds to that honey-beeswax aroma like a wish I can’t quite capture.
This was Mom’s home as much as our little place in town.
She did everything here.
New ways of distilling beeswax and essential oils, always playing with crafting little beeswax sculptures carved with needle-fine details. Crafting small hand-rolled sticks of lip balm littered with vibrantly colored petals that turn them into masterpieces.
There’s still a half-finished project sitting there—a beeswax candle rolled from an entire sheet of solid honeycomb, carefully formed to keep the hexagon sheets from warping.
She was delicately building tiny people inside each open block of the honeycomb, using bits of flower petals and glue with tiny tweezers to craft a scene.
Everything from a little flower person mowing the lawn to another watering their garden, another knitting. As the candle burned down, it would slowly expose the little scenes before burning these precious things away forever.
Just like Mom’s time on Earth, melting away as quickly as wax.
She’s burning away right now.
An incomplete masterpiece just like this.
A life left unfinished.
Not again.
I’m not going to cry over my mother’s worktable.
Absolutely not.
I’ve done enough crying in the last few weeks for several lifetimes.
Sucking in several deep breaths, I focus on tidying up, always keeping an ear out for the jingling bell over the shop door.
No one’s dusted back here since Mom went into the hospital. So I wipe down the shelves and organize, telling myself I’m getting it ready so it’ll be in perfect condition when she gets better and comes home.
There’s not much else to do.
Though we have a good glut of tourists at the moment, they tend to get their shopping done in the early days of their long visits so they can spend the rest of their time exploring the outdoors or trying out local restaurants.
It’ll pick up again around Christmas when people want rustic gift baskets to give away.
The big-city folks love that, proudly announcing that they found some handmade kitsch in a cute little shop in backwoods North Carolina. I just wonder who’ll be running the store for the holidays.
If Ros doesn’t get better...
Oh, here we go.
The hoarse sob braying out of me hits me like a baseball bat to the face.
I drop my rag and clap both hands over my mouth.
I can’t think of still being here at Christmas.
I can’t think of what it’ll be like with just me alone in that house and Ros swept off to God knows where with Aleksander Dickhead like nothing else matters.
Mom gone.
What do I have to keep me here if she passes?
Grant?
Yes.
But also, no, it’s too soon.
He has a life here I can’t just intrude on permanently with my heart torn and bleeding.
...and am I honestly thinking of staying in this little red-gabled hellmouth just because my childhood crush suddenly likes me back?