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Story: The Garden

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Somebody had moved the beehive. Evelyn couldn’t understand how it had happened. It was at a slight angle to the others, like it had been shoved, and beneath each of its wooden feet there was a shallow red trench in the earth. An animal? A storm? It couldn’t have been. They wouldn’t have slept through a storm, and if they had they would now be under a foot of dust, along with the rest of the garden.

Evelyn pushed the hive back into place, clung to it for a moment, caught her breath. She felt the hum of the bees against her ribs. Perhaps they could tell her what had happened? She pressed her ear to the wood, warm and wind-smoothed, and listened. They droned on, not caring whether she was there.

She checked the combs for disease and mites, found the queens and counted the eggs. She tasted a little of the honey on her fingertip. The bees came and went like snatches of conversation. She brushed them from her ears, her hair, the backs of her hands. One of them stung her knuckle and she just nodded.

“I know, I know,” she said. “Keep your hair on.”

She replaced the roof of the last hive and went up the garden to the house, following the path past the willows, magnolias, rhododendrons. The hydrangeas had started to bloom, their flowers round and heavy like fruit. In the shadow of the house she went to her sister’s little vegetable patch and picked rhubarb and blueberries and put them in the pocket of her apron. When she passed the pond, she got to her knees and dipped her swollen finger in the water.

She trailed her hand back and forth among the weeds, noticed, with surprise, the tightness in her brow.

Had she moved the hive and forgotten? She knew her memory was not what it had once been. She was out of practice, remembering. There was no reason to remember anything, not really, not anymore—except when to water the plants, when to refresh the soil, when to check on the bees.

Perhaps Lily had moved it?

No. The hives weren’t Lily’s responsibility. They always laughed about how scared she was of the bees. And with Lily’s joints the way they were, she was in no fit state to be hauling heavy wooden boxes around.

Evelyn’s hand was numb now and turning white. The sun had gone behind the vast battlements of the house, the jagged shadow of its many gables and chimneys creeping almost beyond the edge of the lawn. She shivered and flexed her fingers and went inside.

Lily was in the kitchen, chopping potatoes in almost total darkness. Their old windup lamp lit half of her face, the edge of the knife, the pale yellow skins she’d discarded on the work surface. She was wearing their mother’s ball gown, and she shimmered like some black and bony fish raised from the deep. Behind her, the rest of the room seemed to go on for miles. It was kitchen, living room, bedroom, and storeroom to both of them, and still felt too large. The darkness echoed each time Lily’s knife struck the wooden board.

“Hello,” said Evelyn.

Lily turned and smiled. Evelyn went to her, held her, laid her head in the warm curve of her sister’s neck and shoulder. She heard Lily’s blood humming inside her, like the bees in the beehive.

“Your rhubarb is looking magnificent,” she said, taking the red stalks from her apron.

“You sound surprised,” said Lily. “I am not completely clueless, you know.”

“Blueberries are on the way, too. A bit sharp.”

Lily nodded and turned back to her potatoes. She cut a few more slices, then said, without looking up: “What’s the matter?”

Of course she’d noticed. She would have felt Evelyn’s discomfort before she even entered the house—had registered the slight change in the rhythm of her footfall, the tightness of her breath. She tucked a strand of long silver hair behind one ear, as if to hear Evelyn better.

“Did you move one of the beehives?”

“Me?”

“One of them’s moved.”

Lily laughed and scraped the potatoes into a dish. “Oh, yes, your little sister up to her old mischief. I hid all the honey, too, so I can guzzle it when you’re not looking.”

“Really?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t touch those things with a barge pole.”

“So you didn’t move it.”

“I’m surprised you suddenly think me so capable.”

“Then who did?”

“You probably did.”

“I didn’t.”

Lily shrugged. “You must have.”

And that was that.

Evelyn watched her sister hobble over to the stove and arrange the tinder. She fumbled with the flints for a moment, dropped them, cursed. Evelyn joined her and helped to rake through the cinders. She found the flints and began to strike them herself.

“I can do it,” said Lily. As if they were children still and Evelyn was offering to help her with a jigsaw or a drawing.

Lily snatched the flints back and tried again. Her hands shaking. The light from the windup lamp showed every line and knot on her long fingers. They were far more graceful than Evelyn’s, or at least they had been. A pianist’s hands. A magician’s. They were too good to spend their days thrust in the soil, but even so, they had conjured miracles from it. Now they were shaking.

We are old , thought Evelyn, without contemplating much beyond that simple fact.

The matter of the beehive wasn’t mentioned again. Of course Lily was right. It must have been Evelyn who had moved it because there was simply no other explanation. She’d moved it and forgotten. It had been silly to imagine anything different.

When the fire was lit, they had to wait some time for the stove to heat. It was a monumental thing—two hobs and four doors, all in cast iron. They had run out of coal a long time ago and heating it with wood required hours of attention and the temperature was wildly inconsistent.

They fried the potatoes with onions and herbs and ate them under a blanket, straight from the pan.

“We should have got something from the icehouse. For a treat.”

“You’d eat nothing but treats if you could.”

“Guilty as charged.” Lily shoveled another mouthful. “Well? It’s not too late.”

“It is too late. It’s nearly your bedtime.”

“It’s nearly your bedtime.”

They fell to eating again.

Evelyn had not visited the icehouse for some time. It was a few moments’ walk from the kitchen, a brick dome cool enough for curing and keeping meat all year-round, but she wasn’t sure its contents were getting better with age. What did? They hadn’t added to their meat store since their mother had gone, and she had been the only one who knew how to preserve things properly. Some of the stuff down there was positively ancient, but Evelyn and Lily still occasionally cut off the leathery strips and chewed at them like dogs. When the seasons conspired against them and the garden was barren, it was almost all they ate.

Lily finished first and licked her fingers.

“Do you remember Mama’s bacon and beans?” she said.

“I think so. No idea what the recipe was.”

“I suppose I could work it out. Dessert?”

“Always room for dessert.”

Lily got up to check on the rhubarb, which they’d left stewing on the hob. It was freezing outside the blanket. She prodded at the pot, tasted a little from the end of the spoon, and added some more honey from their stores. She brought back two bowls, and they both ate it too quickly, “hoohing” and “hahing” and frantically sucking in air to soothe their scalded tongues. They laughed. It didn’t stop either of them going back for seconds.

They curled up under the covers in warm, comfortable silence. Lily was snoring before the embers had gone cold, but Evelyn continued to stare into the darkness for a long while afterward, thinking. Her finger was still gently throbbing from where she’d been stung. Outside, the garden sang into the night.