Queen Bee (Lowcountry Tales #12)(107)

What of Momma and Suz? If laughter and happiness were the best medicines, then Suz was going to keep Momma alive on this earth forever. I’d never seen her so happy. And oh, interesting side note, all those pounds on Momma just melted away. Suz had her walking all over the island and the result was astounding. Her doctors told her to ditch her blood pressure meds and her statin. She was delighted. And there had been no recurrence of tumors.

“I feel so much better!” she said every time someone told her how great she looked.

I prayed that the good Lord would give her plenty of time to be together with Suz. She deserved happiness. We all did. I just never believed that we, the crazy bunch of outliers that we were, would find it so happily and completely.

It became obvious that I needed to go to the hospital to deliver our baby at about four in the morning on May 14. My back had been killing me all week. My ankles were swollen, and I was just generally uncomfortable all over. I labored until around noon and then, by the grace of God, I delivered the most exquisite baby ever born.

“It’s a boy!” my doctor said. “A little fat guy, and he’s perfect!”

Ted cut the cord and fainted. He was out cold on the floor of the delivery room and had a small cut in his forehead.

“I thought he was the chief of police!” a nurse said.

They revived him, got him up and into a chair, and gave him a cold cloth and a Band-Aid.

“What are we going to name him?” Ted said.

“He’s Theodore, my love. He looks just like you.”

“Okay,” he said. “Theodore. I’ve always wanted a son.”

I was just so glad I’d have two Teds to love. What could be better? We brought him home and laid him in his bassinet and I thought my heart would burst from all the love I felt for my little Ted. I stared at him for days on end and walked around in a fog of joy.

I could go on with this story forever. You know it wouldn’t be hard. There will always be shenanigans to entertain you from the islanders like Leslie, Momma, Suz, well, all of us, and our friends, too. That’s what it is to live in the Lowcountry. The colors are a little brighter. The air is a little sweeter. Jokes are funnier, love runs deeper, and life overall is richer. But I have a baby to feed and a gorgeous husband who’ll be wanting dinner, too. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be back another time. Remember Tolstoy? He said something pretty clever. He said, “One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care.” Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we took that tiny bit of advice? The hive has many lessons to teach us. This was only one of them.





Acknowledgments

There was an unusual amount of enthusiasm for this book from the very beginning. Many people gave me their thoughts and wisdom to make Queen Bee, we all hope, worthy of your time. The world around me is suddenly filled with beekeepers, honey bee keepers to be exact, all of them filled with hope that Queen Bee will gently enlighten and inform my readers on the importance of honey bees to our food supply and the beauty of the natural world while I’m telling you a story about human frailty and cowardice confronted with unstoppable and sometimes very unlikely love and devotion.

I began my research with BUZZ—The Nature and Necessity of Bees, a recent work of nonfiction authored by Thor Hanson. I bought a copy and was given two more. If your curiosity leads you to only read one book on the subject of honey bees, it has to be this one. I read it in two days, took copious notes, and quickly came to understand that honey bees have much to teach humanity. In fact, a lot more than I thought.

Then, as my list of questions grew, a dear friend and former beekeeper, Dawn Durst of Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, introduced me by phone to Jerry Freeman of Hamburg, Arkansas. Jerry had a saintly patience in all our conversations until I finally came to understand the risks our honey bees face and what might be done about it. He is the inventor of the Freeman Beetle Trap, a remedy to hive beetles. His website also offers plenty of sound information on Varroa mites and on beekeeping in general. You can visit Jerry at www.freemanbeetletrap.com.

And finally, in the category of Things Bees Do to Amaze Us, I owe a word of thanks to Allan Perry Hazel and his charming wife, Judy Hazel, of Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, and Ted Shrensel and his lovely wife, Bettie Frank-Shrensel, of Montclair, New Jersey. Both of these beekeeping couples had some hilarious stories to tell about hive personalities and the personal habits of bees. So, thanks to y’all, some of the funnier aspects of beekeeping will reach lots of people.

There’s another huge acknowledgment owed to Emma Waters and all the fine folks at the Savannah Bee Company first for having such a wonderful and informative website and for your generous sponsorship of my Fan Fest 2019, but perhaps most important for your generous support of The Bee Cause project that brings bees into classrooms all over the country to teach children about the critical importance of honey bees in our lives and in the environment. And also to Tamara Enright of The Bee Cause. Part of the proceeds from books sold during my book tour this year will support the work of The Bee Cause as well. My team from William Morrow is mighty proud to know you and to congratulate your fine work. In addition, special thanks to J. L. Napolski and all the nice people at Dixie Vodka for their support of book tour and Fan Fest. You have most definitely put the fun back in book tour. Ahem.

For years I have offered various nonprofits around the country the opportunity for one or more of their patrons to appear in my books as a character as a way for them to raise money. The winner never knows if they’ll be a good guy or a bad guy. They take their chances. This year the Naples, Florida, Friends of the Library brought two of their supporters to immortality. Holly McNee Jensen and Leslie Stevens. Holly and Leslie, I gave you both starring roles and I hope you enjoy this crazy duo. And Carin MacLean, who generously gave to my old grammar school, Stella Maris/Christ Our King in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, I hope you enjoy your pedestal and I’m sorry, well, I should’ve sent flowers. Last, I’d like to thank Stubble the dog’s owners for their generous support of the Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey. Although I have barely met any of these kind and generous souls, and Stubble not at all, I am sure they are nothing like the characters they portray. What we do know about them is that they support the arts, literacy, and education, a worthy pursuit all around. And so I salute y’all and thank you again on behalf of these fine institutions. On a side note, my sister Lynn tells me she was stopped by a friend at her bridge club who said her daughter was very upset because she was supposed to be a character in this book or last year’s (details were unclear) and I asked her to find out who this was and I’d take care of it right away. Well, that never happened. So if you are that person, please contact me on Facebook or Instagram with a little bit of validation and we can remedy the situation.