“Yeah, Andy. We call him Skippy. It riles him up. We go out for wings at this restaurant near the stadium all the time, the four of us.” Allie shot him a quelling look, but he ignored her. “And I’ve been shopping with May a few times at the antiques places to help her find furniture for her and Dan’s place.”
“Oh, you like to go antiquing?”
“Absolutely.” Ben tried to think of something else to say about the imaginary antiquing he’d been doing with May. “She’s got a great eye for accent pieces, but she’s no good at haggling. I’m in charge of arguing.”
“She’s lucky to have you to help her.” Nancy looked past him to her daughters in the kitchen. “I was worried about her after that business with Dan.”
“I’ll bet.”
“But now that I see her, I think it will be okay. She’s always been the sensible one. I’m sure as soon as she sees Dan again, she’ll come around.”
“You think?”
“I’ll admit, that proposal did throw me for a bit of a loop. Why couldn’t the boy have written the words down on cards or something, if he was going to botch it so badly? But we all know Dan and May are meant for each other. She’s always seemed so settled with him, you know?”
Settled. The last thing May needed was settled. Her house looked like it had been decorated by a committee of people who hated one another.
Oh, you want the blue couch?
Fuck that.
Fine, then how about brown? Nobody objects to brown.
Only if I can have carpeting the color of misery.
If that was how May expressed herself when she was feeling settled, she needed a hell of a lot more excitement in her life.
Nancy seemed to take his silence for agreement. “So tell me about you, Ben. You’re a—what did they call it?”
“A PA,” he said smoothly. “But that’s just to pay the rent. You want to know what my real interest is?”
“What’s that?”
“I keep bees.”
Ceramic clattered against the linoleum floor. May was kneeling, reaching for a plate she must have fumbled. She poured dry dog treats onto it from a box, her expression stricken. Was he not supposed to be a beekeeper? Who did she want him to be?
Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be here at all. He was supposed to have conveniently disappeared.
Nancy opened her mouth to say something, but Allie got there first. “A beekeeper!” She said it with so much enthusiasm, he might have told her he was president. “I’ve never met a beekeeper before. I wouldn’t have thought … Where do you put them in New York?”
“All over,” he said. “Rooftops, backyards.”
“Is there any money in that?” Allie came around the counter and set an enormous mug of coffee in front of her mother, its contents so light, they were nearly white. Half coffee, half creamer.
“Sugar?” Nancy asked.
May carried in a sugar bowl with a spoon.
“Not much money, no,” Ben said.
“He sells the honey for thirty-five dollars a jar at the farmer’s market in Union Square,” May said.
She took the seat on his left, opposite her mother, and Allie sat down across the table from him with her own mug of coffee. The dog’s claws clicked against the kitchen floor. It made low growling noises in its throat as it devoured the pile of dry treats.
“Thirty-five dollars!” Nancy made May’s whip-mouth—an eerie duplication. “Who would pay thirty-five dollars for honey?”
“It’s really good honey,” May replied.