"The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd, Chapters 12–14

As is, she is shy and skittish, possibly because she never leaves the hive, but spends her days confined in darkness, a kind of eternal night, perpetually in labor.

And yet, this is something of a mockery because of her lack of maternal instincts or the ability to care for her young.

The Advanced Language of Beekeeping, Apiary Science, Bee Pollination, Bullfinch’s Age of Fable, The Myths of Greece, The Cultivation of Honey, Bee Legends Around the World, Mary Through the Ages.

“You knew she was my mother all along,” I said, uncertain whether I felt anger, or betrayal, or just plain surprise.

I wanted you to have a chance to get yourself on solid ground, get your heart bolstered up first. There’s a fullness of time for things, Lily.

Deborah had a friend from high school who’d just moved to Sylvan. She was the one who convinced Deborah it was a good place to be. Told her there were jobs and men back from the war.

I meant to shout it, but it came out unnaturally calm, low and raspy like the sound of cars crunching slowly over gravel.

I’d spent my life imagining all the ways she’d loved me, what a perfect specimen of a mother she was.

I had the urge to unwrap her, but of course that would have ruined the whole reenactment August and the Daughters had going.

I told myself not to get up in the night and walk across the floor unless I wanted to cut my feet to smithereens.

She sounded exasperated, like she wanted to take me by the shoulders and shake me till my teeth fell out.

You don’t see Rosaleen looking dumbfounded that often, but that’s the look she had now.

You’d think they would use the wagon again, something a little more dignified than this.

While trying not to think, I spent twenty minutes on this fascinating question: if you could have one miracle from the Bible happen to you, what would it be?

I closed my fingers around it, then walked on my knees over to Rosaleen’s bed and placed it alongside the pocket mirror and the brush, moving them around like I was working on a collage.

“One last thing,” she said, and she drew out a small oval picture frame of tarnished silver.

A queenless colony is a pitiful and melancholy community; there may be a mournful wail or lament from within.

I plucked leaves off the elephant ear plants and fanned my face, sat with my bare feet submerged in the trickling water, felt breezes lift off the river surface and sweep over me, and still everything about me was stunned and stupefied by the heat, everything except my heart.

Lunelle had been commissioned to make her a wedding hat, which I thought was very courageous of June.

“She must’ve told me a hundred times I was being stubborn about Neil. Oh, God, August, why didn’t I do it sooner, while she was still alive?”

She said, “Regrets don’t help anything, you know that.”

She smoothed her hands down the front of it, looked at the clock on the stove, and reached for an old white vinyl purse of May’s that she’d inherited.

Rosaleen came home, a bona fide registered voter in the United States of America.

I think it was on to drown out all the commotion the pink Lady Kenmore washer was making on the porch.

They would stop work and go around completely demoralized.

And when you get down to it, Lily, that’s the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love—but to persist in love.

Not a smile of sweet adoring, I hasten to say, but the fat grin of a man who has been rabbit hunting all day long and has just now found his prey backed up in a hollow log with no way out.

I stood, immobilized, while he looked her over.

My hand went up involuntarily and touched the little rhinestone spout.

His chin quivered slightly, and for the first time it hit me how much he must’ve loved her, how it had split him open when she left.

I’d heard the grunt of exertion escape his lips as the blow landed, seen the momentary bulge of his eyes.

He seemed crazy with anguish, reliving a pain he’d kept locked up all this time, and now that it was loose, it had overwhelmed him.

He looked away, toward the window, like he was contemplating the road that had brought her here.

I made her my apprentice beekeeper, and she’s learning the whole business and helping us out with all her hard work.

August says she goes into the holes life has gouged out of us.