Mad Honey: A Novel (21 page)

The whole panorama makes me realize how small I am, in the grand scheme of things. How insignificant my problems are when you zoom out and out and out and see the whole of the world.

“Okay,” I say to Maya. “I get it.”

“No,” she says. “You don’t. Keep looking.”

So I keep on trying to take in the mountains and the lakes and the light. It’s so quiet up here. I watch the eagle circling around and around. I feel the wind.

“All right, so it’s beautiful,” I say, grudgingly. But what possible difference does the beauty of the world make to me?

Whatever is good about nature is something I can never be a part of. I’m tired of being forced to see how great the universe is, actually. It’s never done me any favors.

“Lily,” says Maya. “Stop looking into the distance. Focus on what’s in front of you.”

Of all the eye-rolling things Maya has said so far, this is the worst. But I look over her shoulder at the wall of this rusted old tower. In silver paint is a heart, with two names inside it:
Asher + Jeannie.

But also: the heart has a big X over it, in red paint, and a more recent update:
FUCK ASHER FIELDS FOREVER
.

“Who’s—
Jeannie
?” I ask Maya.

“She was two years ahead of us in school. She and Asher were a thing, sophomore year. Then he dumped her, and she thought her life
was over. But she’s fine now. Every now and then I hear from her. She’s at Columbia. She’s gonna be a doctor.”

“And you’re showing me this—why?”

“To prove that the world goes on without Asher fucking Fields!”

Will it?
I wonder.

I run my finger under the ring of the friendship bracelets I wear as camouflage.

I’m not so sure I want it to.

“A year from now you’re going to be at Oberlin,” says Maya. “Or Berklee, or Wesleyan, or somewhere. I’m going to be at NYU. And Asher, and Adams, and all of this, is just going to be some hazy memory.”

That eagle circles over our heads, and the cold wind blows in my face again. “I want that to be true,” I say, quietly. “But all I do right now is hurt.”

As I stand there looking at the Sandwich Range, Maya puts her hand on my back, and for a single moment I feel my spirits rise. A little.

“You won’t always,” says Maya.

I hold my arm out straight toward the setting sun, trying to summon my courage.

“Okay.” I point an invisible sword at the universe. “
En garde,
” I say.

OLIVIA
5

MAY 5–6, 2019

Five months after

May is prime time for bees and beekeepers. But starting tomorrow, I will be in court. Jordan has explained that there’s no way to know how long the trial will take—it could be weeks. So on Sunday, I pay a visit to all my colonies to prepare them for my extended absence.

It takes all day, because some of my pollination contracts are an hour from my house. The last colonies I visit are strategically arranged to collect pollen from the fruit trees at an organic orchard. Worker bees run back and forth. Others are busy unloading pollen from the baskets on their legs and packing it into empty cups in the comb with their heads. More bees are building out the honeycomb from the wax foundation so the cups are deep enough to store honey; drones are lazing around. It’s like the aerial view of a city, with all the denizens deeply invested in their individual jobs and errands and families, unaware that there’s a whole cosmos beyond.

I add an empty super to the top of a hive, so they have space for more honey.

Nectar is produced in waves. Spring wildflowers, the first stop on the supply chain, are replaced by honeysuckle and clover, then apple and pear and peach trees, and—after a July dry spell—finally goldenrod and asters. It takes a dozen bees to gather enough nectar to make a teaspoon of honey, each of them alighting on roughly 2,600 flowers and flying 850 miles back and forth. A worker bee weighs little more
than a breath—around 100 milligrams—but she can carry half her body weight in nectar.

One of the bees starts moving in a figure eight, a crazy little rumba meant to tell the others where her food source is. Using the sun as a compass, her moves are a code: the direction of the dance is the route toward the food; the length of the dance is a measure of total distance. Several other bees watch, too, and then fly away, armed with GPS choreography.

This waggle dance is also used when a colony swarms. Some foragers will come back and waggle-dance to describe a new location they’ve found. The jazziest dances get the biggest response. If more bees are impressed, they join in the waggling. There may be several factions competing in this dance-off, each advocating for a different home, but once one of those groups has convinced about fifteen bees, democracy wins.

People think of a beehive as a monarchy because there is a queen, but in reality, a colony has a hive mind—knowledge is shared, opinions are offered, decisions are made collectively.

I can only hope Asher’s jury is as enlightened.

THE MORNING ASHER’S
trial begins, his last stitch dissolves. While we eat breakfast in nervous silence, I notice the two matched rows of divots in the unbandaged skin of his wrist. Running down the center is a thin red line. But by the time Asher changes into his too-small shirt and suit, he has covered up the scar with a watch that used to belong to my father.

It makes me think of how Lily always had scrunchies on her wrist, or a collection of woven bracelets. I wonder if Asher’s trying to hide his suicide attempt, too.

Or maybe the reason they covered their scars has nothing do with other people’s impressions, and everything to do with their own. Maybe Asher can’t bear to spend the day looking down at a memory of a moment of weakness.

I used to have sartorial armor, too. Long sleeves in the summer,
brimmed hats that hid a bruise on the cheek, high-waisted jeans that covered the purple shadow of a kick to the lower back.

Selena is back in Portsmouth with Sam, so it is just Jordan, Asher, and me driving to the superior courthouse. Jordan keeps giving Asher reminders:
Don’t talk, unless you’re explicitly asked to. That doesn’t just mean in the courtroom, it means outside it, too. Remember, the whole point of a trial is that it’s an adversarial process. We’re supposed to attack each other, in the hopes that the truth is the only thing left standing after the carnage. I’m going to do the best I can, but there are going to be moments where the best looks like we’re losing.

“Jesus, Jordan,” I say, only partly joking. “He’ll never get out of the car.”

Asher’s face is pressed to the rear window. “Actually, that sounds like a solid plan.”

I look outside and see news trucks from as far away as Connecticut and New York. A row of reporters is lined up outside the courthouse, with a second row of camera people filming them, a macabre version of an English country dance. When Asher gets out of the truck, someone calls his name and he makes the grave mistake of turning to the sound. Immediately, we are surrounded by media, shoving microphones in our faces and hurling questions like stones in a trebuchet.

“Asher! Over here! Did you do it?”

“Are you sorry?”

“Is the reason you tried to kill yourself because you know you’re guilty?”

Asher freezes, trapped in the web of their words. I sidle closer to him as a digital recorder is waved under my chin. “Has your son showed previous signs of violence?” a woman asks.

“No comment,” Jordan says, slipping between me and Asher, grabbing both our arms and pulling us firmly into the building.

The court staff takes us straight into the courtroom. Jordan escorts Asher past the bar to a table on the left. At the prosecutor’s table, Gina Jewett is already arranging files and notes.

I sit behind Jordan so that I can see Asher’s face in profile. “
Remember,” he murmurs to Asher, “they get to go first. Don’t freak out, we’re going to have our turn eventually. I’ll be sitting here with a poker face. That doesn’t mean I don’t have questions or emotions inside. You should have the same poker face. If you have a question, or want me to ask a question, use this pad and pen. Do not frantically scribble all trial, though, because it will be distracting as fuck.”

Then, to my surprise, he turns around and hands me a blank Moleskine notebook, like the ones he used to record all his notes in during our dozens of meetings with Asher in jail. “In case
you
think of something for me to ask,” Jordan says.

I raise a brow, dubious, because Jordan knows my mind doesn’t work with the same precision as his. “Be honest. This is just to keep me busy while the grown-ups are working, right?”

“You’re going to get angry every time something about Asher is intimated that you disagree with. Every time Gina opens her mouth, for sure. Instead of letting it show on your face, open up this notebook and write something. Anything. Your grocery list. The lyrics to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ Draw the prosecutor with a sword sticking into her chest. Or all of the above. Whatever calms you down. Because Asher’s not the only one that the press will be looking at.”

The bailiff, a round little barrel of a man, steps forward. “
Oye oye,
the Superior Court of the State of New Hampshire for Coös County is now in session; the Honorable Rhonda Byers presiding.” The judge enters from her chambers, this time with her locs braided into a crown. I check; she is wearing shoes. She sits down at the bench, bangs her gavel, and opens the file.

“We are here today in the matter of the State versus Asher Fields.” Turning to the bailiff, she adds, “We have a jury of twelve plus two alternates impaneled…can you have them seated?”

Jordan has warned me against this, but as they file in, I try to scrutinize their faces. They certainly do not look like a jury of Asher’s peers—they are all at least twice his age. The lady who seems to be in her seventies, with the frizz of white hair and the embroidered sweater—she will be able to see the good in Asher, won’t she? And the three middle-aged women—are they mothers? Will they believe
what Jordan says, or will they only see Ava Campanello’s grief? The man frowning, like he is too harried to waste time on a civic duty…will he vote to convict just to get back to his pressing business?

They settle into two rows of seats, blinking out from the nest of the jury box like hatchlings. The judge addresses them, thanking them for their service and explaining how the trial will proceed, and then turns to the prosecutor. “Ms. Jewett, is the State ready?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Gina says.

“Mr. McAfee? Is the defense prepared to proceed?”

“Yes, Judge.”

She nods. “Ms. Jewett, you may make an opening statement.”

I knew women like Gina Jewett. They were fellow residents, with Braden, back in the day. Their lives were finely tuned machines that balanced how to be the best mother, doctor,
and
partner simultaneously. They held their careers between their teeth like pit bulls guarding a bone, daring anyone who came near enough to challenge their commitment, ability, and sheer balls. They were so busy holding their shit together I think they lost sight of being themselves.

Gina is wearing a tailored blue suit that looks expensive, though I bet she got it at T.J.Maxx and had her aunt hem it. Her hair is a pair of knife edges framing both sides of her chin. She gets to her sensibly heeled feet and steps in front of the jury. “The defendant, Asher Fields, is charged with the murder of his girlfriend,” she says bluntly. “The evidence will show that the defendant and Lily Campanello were students at Adams High School who met in September through a mutual friend, Maya Banerjee, and began a typical teen romance. Lily would go to the defendant’s hockey games. He went to her orchestra concerts. They went out to dinner, saw movies, studied together. They also had disagreements that became arguments…but unlike typical teen romances, those arguments got increasingly violent.”

She looks at each juror in turn. “You will hear evidence of how the defendant grabbed Lily in anger and yanked her hard enough for her to cry out. You’ll see the bruises on Lily’s arms, bruises her best friend noticed, and worried about.”

My hands squeeze the notebook Jordan gave me so hard that my fingernails leave little moons on the soft cover.

This is a lie.

This is not Asher.

Asher, who as a little boy had whispered to whitecaps on the Connecticut River during a windy day—
It’s okay. You just need to calm down
—because I told him the water looked rough.

“In fact, in the week leading up to Lily’s murder, the defendant and Lily had had a heated fight to the point where they were not communicating. No talking, no texting, Lily even tried to keep the defendant away from her at school. He grew increasingly frustrated. He could not bear the thought of Lily cutting him off. And so the defendant texted her in a way that left no doubt as to his anger, and went to her house to teach her a lesson.”

As she lists the evidence she is planning to produce, the buzzing in my ears grows so loud that I think I may pass out. I can hear the scratch of the reporters’ pens behind me. By tomorrow, everyone who reads a paper or watches the news will assume Asher is the villain. I am guilty of this myself, every time I read a negative movie or book review and decide it’s not worth the trouble of making up my own mind. People believe what they are told.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the prosecutor finishes, “this was a volatile relationship that ended with a beautiful teenage girl dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. For the crime of first-degree murder to be proven, the defendant has to think about the act for only the briefest moment before he commits it. We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew exactly what his endgame was when he insinuated himself into Lily’s house. That the squeaky-clean teen he pretends to be is just that—a sham. Do not let Asher Fields fool you, as he fooled Lily Campanello. He is a violent abuser, a liar…and a murderer.” She bares her teeth in a smile. “Thank you.”

The jury is rapt, having listened to her like she is Moses coming down from the mountain with the tablets. I open up the notebook. I press so hard with the pen that I leave a blot four pages deep.

“Thank you, Ms. Jewett,” the judge says. “Mr. McAfee?”

Jordan is a magnet, every pair of eyes on the jury drawn to him. As he stands, he doesn’t rush to fill the silence, instead making them hungry for his words. He smiles at them like he is their next-door neighbor, their cool cousin, the candidate you want to have a beer with. “You know, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, as if they are midconversation. “I’ve been married for about twenty years now. This morning, my wife nearly took my head off because I put too much detergent in the washing machine.”

This is not true. Selena was a hundred miles away this morning, with their son.

“I mean, is there a wrong way to do the wash…if I’m doing it at all?” He grins, and so do the men on the jury. “The point is, there are times my wife and I have really nasty fights with each other…but you know what? We work through it. You can be in a long, committed, mature relationship and still occasionally get intensely angry with each other…yet it doesn’t mean you get violent.” He claps a hand on Asher’s shoulder. “The evidence will show that Asher and Lily were dating. He supported her, she supported him. They had disagreements sometimes—as all couples do—but
he loved her.
”

He strolls toward the jury box. “At the beginning of the week, after a disagreement, Asher gave Lily her space. But he grew increasingly concerned when she wouldn’t respond at all. He just wanted to make sure she was all right, and that she knew he was there for her if she needed it because—as I said,
he loved her.
When his friend Maya told him that Lily was sick, he was worried—because when someone
you love
is sick, you worry. So he went over to her house after school to check on her—and he got the shock of his life. The girl he loved was dead when he arrived.”