Chapter 6: Burned Hand

I did not ask Hank about March.

Hank drove me home from the clubhouse with the question sitting in the truck between us, and neither of us touched it.

He pulled up at the porch, and I said thank you, and he said it was fine.

Then I lay awake until two and gave up.

I drove to the shop, because it was the only place that had ever helped.

The town was in its ninth week without rain, and the night air was hot and dry and smelled like dust.

I turned on one light over the bench.

I set the blue helmet on a folded towel and looked at the crack across the bee's wing.

It was a hairline, about two inches long, and it ran through the gold and the blue underneath.

A good clear coat would hide it.

A good clear coat would also seal it in forever, and I did not want to seal anything in.

I wanted the bee whole.

I picked up a fine brush and a tube of gold enamel and worked at the wing for an hour.

At three, I tried to pop the visor off to get at the other side of the shell.

It slipped.

The edge of the cracked visor opened my left palm from the base of the thumb to the middle of the hand.

I said something I had not said since I was nineteen.

Blood ran down my wrist and dripped on the towel.

"Bree?"

I looked up.

Hank stood in the open bay door, still in his duty jacket, with his keys in his fist.