After a quick shower, she made her way downstairs. Evvie was seated at the table, scanning the morning’s copy of the Chronicle through a pair of bright-blue drugstore readers. She twitched the corner of her paper down as Lizzy entered the kitchen, giving her outfit a quick once-over.
“Better,” she said flatly. “Like you belong here.”
“Thanks. Is there coffee, by any chance?”
“Just tea,” Evvie said, retreating behind her paper. “And a plate of eggs in the oven.”
Lizzy didn’t have the heart to tell Evvie she usually skipped breakfast. Or that she didn’t function particularly well without her morning coffee. She pulled the plate from the oven, eyeing the mound of scrambled eggs and home fries with dismay. It was more food than she was used to eating in a day, let alone for breakfast.
Evvie eyed her with raised brows. “You don’t eat eggs?”
“No, I do. I just don’t usually eat breakfast. And this is a lot of breakfast.”
“Hmmm.” Evvie looked her up and down again. “Could do with a bit of meat on your bones, if you ask me. Don’t they feed you in New York?”
Lizzy let the remark pass, opting to change the subject as she sat down with her plate. “Tell me your story, Evvie. How you met my grandmother and ended up living here.”
Evvie plucked the readers from the end of her nose and laid them on the table. “My bees.”
“Bees?”
“Look out the window.”
Lizzy craned her neck to peer out the back window. It took a few seconds, but eventually she spotted a trio of pastel-hued boxes to the left of Althea’s greenhouse. Apiaries, she believed they were called. “You raise bees?”
“Don’t raise ’em. Just look after ’em. I make jewelry too. Bracelets mostly.”
Lizzy nodded, trying to imagine what taking care of bees might entail, then realized Evvie hadn’t actually answered the question. “What have bees got to do with my grandmother?”
Evvie pushed back from the table, crossed to the stove, and put the kettle on. “My sister,” she said, pulling a mug from the cupboard. “Can’t remember why now, but she was up here a few years back and stumbled onto your gran’s shop. When she came home, it was all she could talk about, the kinds of things she made and how special it all was—how special she was. So I wrote to her about putting some of my honey in her shop, and she said yes. After that, we wrote back and forth.” She paused, smiling wistfully. “That woman loved a good letter.”
Lizzy smiled too. “Yes, she did.”
Evvie reached for the kettle as it began to whistle. When she had finished brewing the tea, she carried two mugs back to the table and produced a small jar of honey from her apron pocket. “Moon Girl Farm Honey,” she said proudly. “From right out back.”
Lizzy accepted the jar, stirring a spoonful into her mug as Evvie settled back into her chair. “You were telling me how you got to the farm.”
“Two years ago, she invited me for a visit.” She paused, shrugging as she spooned a hefty dollop of honey into her own mug. “I never went back.”
“Back where?”
“Baton Rouge.”
“But the accent—it’s not just Southern. There’s something else.”
“Kréyol la lwizyàn,” Evvie pronounced over the rim of her mug. “Creole. My mama’s people came from the West Indies.”
“Do you still have family there? In Baton Rouge, I mean.”
Evvie shook her head. “Not anymore. My sister remarried. Moved to Texas, of all places. Then my husband passed. Wasn’t much reason to stay after that.” Her face darkened briefly, and she looked away. “So here I am with my bees and my beads, getting on with what time I have left. And you—why are you here? The real reason. Last night you said there were some personal things you wanted to take care of, but I expect there’s more to it than that.”
Lizzy looked at her barely touched breakfast. She’d been hoping to keep her plans to herself awhile longer, until she had a firmer grip on the logistics, but under the circumstances that didn’t seem fair. Evvie deserved to know what was coming, so she could make plans.
“I’m here to put the farm on the market,” she said quietly. “I’m going to sell it.”
“I figured as much.”
“It isn’t about the money, Evvie. There’s just no reason for me to hold on to it. I know what Althea wanted, but what would I do with a farm?”
“Same as she did. Grow things. Make things. Help folks.”
“I already have a job—one I worked hard to earn—and it’s in New York.”
Evvie folded her hands on the table, lips pursed, as if deliberating what to say next. “Your gran told me about you,” she said finally. “How you were something special. She couldn’t stop bragging about you—not just your gifts, but who you were and what you’d made of yourself. You had a dream, and you chased it. She was proud of you for that, even if it did mean leaving her. She knew you had some things to work out, but she never lost faith that you would work them out one day. And that you’d be back.”
Lizzy set down her mug, determined to make herself clear. “Yes, I’m back, but not the way you mean. There’s nothing for me here.”
Evvie grunted, a sound Lizzy was starting to recognize as skepticism. “You came all this way just to stick a sign in the ground, and then scurry back to New York?”
Lizzy didn’t like the word scurry, but couldn’t argue with the premise of the question. “Yes. Mostly.”
“You have someone there?”
“Have someone?”
“Someone,” Evvie repeated. “Someone who makes you soup when you’re sick, holds your hand when you’re sad. Someone who means something.”
Lizzy considered lying, but knew better than to think she could get anything past Evvie. “No. I don’t have anyone who fixes me soup.”
But then that was the deal she’d struck with herself. No one to fix her soup also meant no one to ask awkward questions about her family, or wanting things she wasn’t free to give. No strings. No hassles. No baring her soul. She’d never learned the art of opening up to another person. Alone was what she’d learned instead, and what she’d gotten good at. Alone was safe.
“I’m too busy for a relationship right now,” she told Evvie evenly.
Evvie responded with another grunt.
The gesture irked Lizzy. “I know you and Althea were friends,” she said, pushing back her plate. “But there are things you don’t understand about the Moons. We’re not like other people. We don’t do the whole love-and-marriage thing.”
“That right?”
“Yes, that’s right. I don’t expect you to understand—”
Evvie stood, collecting Lizzy’s abandoned plate. “I understand more than you think. I also hear what you’re not saying—that this is none of my business.”
“No,” Lizzy shot back. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying there are things you don’t know. Things we don’t talk about.”
Evvie clamped her lips tight, swallowing whatever she’d been about to say. “How long you planning to stay?”