Flight Patterns

by Karen White

  My phone beeped and I reached for it to turn it off, but stopped when I saw that I’d received an e-mail from Henri Volant in France. I’d forgotten all about his promise to send me more information about Giles Mouton.

  I met my mother’s eyes. “The bee china was given to your father’s family as a token of appreciation for being beekeepers on the Beaulieu estate. James’s family would like to return it to you, since you’re the rightful owner.”

  She nodded, her gaze focused somewhere over the bay, and perhaps over an ocean to another apiary and fields of lavender.

  My phone beeped again, and I swiped my thumb over the screen and typed in my password, becoming one of those people I despised who couldn’t ignore her phone. But it was from Henri, and he’d been looking for information about Giles. My grandfather.

  I opened the e-mail and began to read. I read it twice, my eyes blurring so that I could barely see the words. And then I read it again.

  “Georgia? What is it?” Maisy asked.

  “It’s about Giles. The reason Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t find him after the war.”

  Birdie slowly turned to face me. “Read it,” she said, and there was no hesitation in her voice. I’d never considered my mother brave, but I was beginning to understand that bravery ran in our family. I cleared my throat and began to read.

  Dearest Georgia, I hope you are well. I also hope my previous e-mail was of some interest, as I am sure the following will also be of interest to you in the search for more information regarding Giles Mouton. As I mentioned, he is a local hero. The following excerpt is from a book published in France in 1968. It’s a short biographical listing of known members of the French Resistance during World War II. I have taken the liberty of translating it into English for you. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

  My eyes briefly met Maisy’s and then I resumed reading.

  Giles Mouton, a beekeeper and farmer near Monieux in the south of France, hid almost one hundred Jewish men, women, and children in his barn over the course of two years from 1941 to 1943, before he was exposed by a German national who had recently moved to the area. Mr. Mouton was part of an underground railroad, hiding families fleeing from the occupied zone in northern France and other Nazi-occupied countries seeking refuge in nearby Switzerland and Italy (which did not deport Jews at that time). He was captured in 1943 and interred at the Natzweiler-Struthof labor camp in the Vosges Mountains in the Alsatian village of Natzwiller (German Natzweiler) along with many other resistance fighters. The camp was evacuated in September of 1944 by the Germans, but records do not indicate that Mr. Mouton was evacuated, his death assumed to have occurred in the camp prior to 1944, although no death records are available. He has been posthumously granted the title of Righteous Among the Nations (Yad Vashem) by the State of Israel, and his name is commemorated on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem.

  A gull shrieked in the distance, a melancholy sound full of anguish and sorrow, interrupting the silence that lay thick and heavy between us.

  “Papa,” Birdie whispered, tears etching their way down her cheeks. “He didn’t abandon me. He saved me, too, didn’t he? He gave me to another family so I could survive.”

  Maisy was sobbing loudly, shaking her head. “And when he finally found you . . .” She stopped, unable to finish.

  Birdie bowed her head, the pale skin at the back of her neck looking as delicate as a child’s.

  “He loved you, Birdie,” Maisy said. “Enough to give you up once. He must have promised you that he’d come back, and he kept that promise.”

  Birdie looked up, her eyes shining. “We make difficult decisions for our children, Maisy. You and Georgia know it better than most, don’t you?”

  Both Maisy and I stared at our mother. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Becky told me. She found her birth certificate in all the papers you were going through in the china cabinet.”

  Maisy placed her hand over her mouth. “She’s known all this time and didn’t say anything?”

  “Why would she?” Birdie asked gently. “I told her that she was lucky, because she had two mothers who loved her.”

  Birdie leaned her head against the back of the wheelchair, and the sun slipped in the sky, illuminating the face of an old woman. Her eyes narrowed into dark slits as she regarded us. “I like to think that you both have a lot of Giles in you, because when I look at my daughters, I see two beautiful women who turned out to be quite extraordinary despite their mother. And if it’s too late to be your mother, maybe we can start again and try to be friends.”

  Sometimes all we need to do to forgive our parents is to understand their own childhoods.

  I must have said it out loud, because I heard Maisy’s sudden exhalation of breath, or maybe it was mine. It was as if all of our anger and hurt had been balled up and tossed away like so much garbage. I could still feel the phantom pain from where it had been, but it no longer lodged in the bottom of my airway, blocking my breath.

  I leaned forward and took Birdie’s hand in mine, feeling how small it was. How frail. How strong. I thought of the little girl Colette and all she’d survived, and how easily a person could shatter. Perhaps that was the meaning of strength—not the surviving, but the gluing together of all the broken parts to make a new whole.

  You will never change your life until you learn to let go of the things that once hurt you. Caroline had said that to me what seemed like a million years ago. I just hadn’t understood what she meant until now. “I want to try. We want to try.” I looked over at Maisy and didn’t see any resentment and recrimination at the word “we.”

  After a long moment, Maisy reached over and took Birdie’s other hand and squeezed. “I’m still angry, Mama. I probably will be for a long time. But I want to try.”

  Birdie smiled tiredly. “Could you please ask James to bring me inside? I’m rather exhausted from all of this.” She clutched the photograph and journal to her chest, and I knew she wanted to be alone for a while with her memories of people she had to learn to miss all over again.

  I waved to James on the porch, and he took control of Birdie’s wheelchair and began wheeling her toward the house. After a moment, Maisy stood as if to follow, but I called her back. I waited until they were on the front porch before facing my sister. I had no idea where to start, had not planned this at all. The only thing I’d been thinking about since being released from the hospital was how soon I could leave again. But now it seemed as if that person were somebody else I no longer knew. Somebody I didn’t want to be anymore.

  If you want things to change, you have to stop waiting for someone else to make the first move. I took a deep breath, no longer caring who went first. “I’m sorry, Maisy. For all the crap I did when I was a teenager that embarrassed you, or forced you to make excuses for me. But most of all, I’m sorry that I wasn’t the sister you needed me to be. That I wasn’t watching Lilyanna when I should have been. That I have been the cause of so much of your grief.” I paused, searching for the next words, afraid to stop, because then I might not finish.

  “For a long time I blamed my behavior on Birdie and how we were raised. But it’s not about Birdie anymore. It’s about you and me and where we go from here. I can’t stand the thought of you not being in my life. And you can tell me to go away and never come back, but I’m just not going to listen.”

  Maisy was trying very hard not to cry, always the little sister trying to be stronger so she could keep up. “Why are you apologizing to me? You gave me the biggest gift of all. You gave me Becky. And all this time instead of thanking you, I’ve been punishing you for something I know wasn’t your fault. You were always so good at taking the blame for everything, whether it was your fault or not. I was wrong, and I knew it, but you made it so easy, because I was hurting and I wanted you to hurt, too.”

  I didn’t bother to wipe the tears f
rom my face. “I loved her, you know. I still miss her every day.”

  She sat back in her chair and covered her face with her hands. “I know. And then when Lyle tried to defend you, I allowed it to drive this wedge into my marriage, let it fester all these years because I was too stubborn to admit I’d been wrong.” Maisy looked up at me with reddened eyes. “Why are we so good at pushing everyone away? After a while it became the only way I knew how to be.” She sniffed loudly and straightened her shoulders. “But you’re right. This isn’t about Birdie anymore; it’s about you and me. I want you in my life. In our lives. I don’t want another ten years without you.”

  She stood again and we faced each other for a long, silent moment, both of us sniffing loudly. Finally Maisy said, “Are you going to hold it over me for the rest of your life that you said it first?” I could tell she was only half joking.

  “Probably,” I answered, unable to stop the big grin that I couldn’t hold back.

  I hugged my sister without hesitation, and without wondering whether she wanted a hug or not, or whether I should wait for her to hug me first. She was my sister, the person I had always loved most in this world, and my name had been her first spoken word.

  chapter 41

  Although some varieties of bees can be aggressive and attack without provocation, the honeybee attacks only when it believes a legitimate threat to the colony exists. A honeybee’s sting is the ultimate form of self-sacrifice—its single blow serving only to protect others, as its delivery means its own death.

  —NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL

  Maisy

  “How do I look?”

  Maisy turned toward her daughter, who was dressed in her best church dress, the one with the satin sash and pretty sweetheart neckline. It had been Grandpa’s favorite. Georgia had French-braided her hair, and Maisy had allowed her daughter to wear a short strand of pearls—the ones Lyle had given to Maisy as a wedding present.

  “You look beautiful,” Maisy said, biting back her resentment of the word. It didn’t bother her as much now, not after the harrowing night when Becky and Birdie had gone missing. The night she’d discovered her mother’s past, and the person her daughter truly was. They seemed to have both discovered it, since Becky had barely stuttered in the days since that night. She had proven to herself that she was brave and bold, that she was somebody who could save a life when she forgot how scared she was.

  “You look beautiful, too, Mama,” Becky said.

  Maisy glanced in the mirror, feeling like a crow in her black dress and heels. “Thank you, sweetie. I’m sure Grandpa would approve of us both.”

  His funeral would be well attended by people in town he’d known his entire life, as well as several from the beekeeping community. She was sure the rumors swirled, but they didn’t reach the family. The truth was hard enough to live with.

  They would have a funeral for Giles Mouton in less than a month, burying him in the same cemetery near Ned and Anna Bloodworth. They had been inexorably connected in life, and Maisy and Georgia and even Birdie agreed that they should also be in death. Georgia and Birdie were avoiding reading the local paper, but Maisy assured her that Lyle had done a good job of disseminating the information regarding the circumstances surrounding Mr. Mouton’s death. He made sure that everyone knew of Giles’s heroism during the war, and how he’d sacrificed so much. And she, Georgia, and Birdie would make sure that his headstone commemorated his sacrifice.

  The niggling thought Maisy and Georgia shared was how their gentle grandfather, whose sense of justice and goodness had guided them for most of their lives, could have allowed Giles’s death to go unremarked for so long. They would never know now.

  Becky tilted her head critically. “Are you sure you don’t want to wear your pearls? Daddy likes it when you wear them.”

  “Yes, he does,” Lyle said, surprising them from the doorway. He was off duty and wearing a dark suit and tie, looking a little uncomfortable but devastatingly handsome.

  “I thought you were meeting us at the cemetery.”

  “I was. And then I realized I’d rather escort my two best girls.”

  Becky beamed up at him and Lyle smiled back. “Can you please go ask your aunt Georgia if she’d like to drive with us and then wait downstairs? Your mama and I will be down in a few minutes. We’ve got something to discuss. In private.”

  Maisy faced him. “Now just a minute . . .”

  As if she hadn’t said anything, Lyle said, “All right, Becky? Now go on. We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Is she okay?” Lyle asked after they heard Becky’s footsteps running down the stairs.

  “She’s fine. She’s amazing, actually. She misses Grandpa, and the bees, but she’s talking about it. I called the counselor at school and she said that was a very good thing. And Becky’s asked Florence to show her how to get new hives started.” She felt nervous at the way he was looking at her, and she tried to back away from him. “I need to get my purse. . . .”

  He took her arm and put his finger to her lips, silencing her. “Do you love me, Maisy?”

  She pulled her head away. “Why are you . . . ?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  Maybe if her heart hadn’t been so emptied out from the events of the last few days she would have found the words to deny it, or speak around it. To find a reason she didn’t deserve it. But she’d been scraped raw, down to the part of her that could see only the truth.

  “Yes, Lyle. I love you. I never stopped.”

  “And you know I’ll always have your back even when I don’t agree with you.”

  She didn’t bother to pause before answering. If she’d learned anything in the last few days, it was that life was about forgiveness, even when the one who needed it most was her. “I know that.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Without warning, he kissed her, a long, slow, deliberate kiss that he did so well and that he knew made her knees weak. She didn’t fight it; she might have even kissed him back, but she was too busy feeling happy to care.

  When he finally pulled away, he said, “I love you, too, Maisy Sawyers. I don’t want to get divorced, and I want to move back in and live with you and Becky as a family. I’ve already got my bags in the car, because I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “Aren’t you being a little—”

  He cut her off with another kiss so that she forgot what she was going to say.

  A door banged shut downstairs and then they heard Becky’s voice. “Mama! Aunt Georgia says she’s getting tired of waiting!”

  They pulled apart and Lyle’s eyes smiled into hers. “You and Georgia will need to sit down with Becky and talk about things eventually. Probably sooner rather than later. There have been too many secrets in this family, and I think it’s time to clear the air. And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject. The rest is up to you.”

  He kissed her again before she could say she had no idea where to even begin, then allowed him to lead her toward the stairs.

  epilogue

  In many Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, bees represented the human soul and its journey on Earth. The bee is an emblem of rebirth and is also associated with determination and willpower, due to the fact that a bee’s body is too large compared to the size of its wings, and it should not be able to fly.

  —NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPING JOURNAL

  Georgia

  MAY 2016

  I stood on the front porch steps, pausing to count the heads of people seated inside my convertible parked in the driveway. Three of Caroline’s children were already strapped into the backseat, while the youngest—Adam, a five-year-old dervish—chased after Becky, who seemed to enjoy the game despite the melted chocolate chips smeared down his face and fingers. Now that Lyle and Maisy were planning on adopting at least one more child, I figured it was good practice for
her.

  We were on our way to the Tupelo Honey Festival in Wewahitchka—finally. When Becky had asked that we all go together, she probably hadn’t imagined it would be such a large group. She and Emily—Caroline’s oldest—had become BFFs (Becky’s term) and were usually joined at the hip whenever Emily was in town.

  Since Caroline and her husband had purchased a second home on St. George, the general chaos of a large family gathering had become a familiar sight. As had the occasional presence of Caroline’s three sisters, their families, and James. Not that too much time separated the visits between James and myself. Mr. Mandeville had all of a sudden developed a huge interest in estate sales in the state of New York, and made sure that I was sent to all of them. And now that Caroline and I had started our own online vintage-clothing business, I was quickly accumulating a lot of frequent-flier miles.

  I spent a lot of time in Apalachicola, too, visiting my sister and my mother and my niece, watching Becky change and mature into the extraordinary girl I was only just discovering. I never once regretted any decision I had made. As Grandpa used to say, regrets were like porch swings: They kept you busy but didn’t get you anywhere. He’d been right about so many things. At least we had that.

  Birdie emerged from around the corner of the house, where she’d been working in the apiary. Her netted hat was tucked under her arm, and she wore a blousy top and harem-type bottoms, making her look like Katharine Hepburn on safari.

  The new hive boxes had been painted in bright colors—courtesy of Becky and Caroline’s children—and Birdie and Becky were enjoying their new roles as beekeepers. They’d been such avid pupils that Florence Love, their mentor, had given them their own pairs of swinging bee earrings. It was good to see the bees flying around the hives again, to see the grass grow back and the scorch marks recede. It reminded me that all adversity was temporary, unless we insisted on clinging to it with both fists.