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“Iris Jo,” Mama scolded, though she fought a smile. “I cannot believe how rude you were.”
“Really? I threw an egg at him on live television two days ago. Was I really supposed to pretend like I was happy to see him in my kitchen?”
“Well, no, but you could have at least told him off politely.”
“I can’t even believe you entertained him.”
“What were we supposed to do, send him off when he came here being so nice?” Mom asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Oh, relax,” Poppy said. “I put a laxative in his coffee.”
Mom spun around to face her with her mouth open. “Poppy June—you did not.”
Poppy shrugged. “No, I didn’t. But I thought about it.”
“Am I the only one who thinks he’s dangerous?”
“He’s only dangerous if you give him power,” Daisy said, hooking her arm in mine. “So don’t.”
I sighed. “Fine. But don’t let him in the house again. You’ll mislead him into thinking he’s got a shot at our rights.”
“He brought an awfully big number with him,” Mom said as she cleared his place. “Lots of zeros. Enough zeros to make us rich.”
“And kill our business. If Grandpa didn’t sell to oil in the fifties when the farm was actually in trouble, why would we do it now when things are fine?”
“I didn’t say we should,” she noted.
I made a derisive noise as Daisy towed me toward the coffee pot, ignoring the prick of fear that I didn’t have as much of a say as I liked to think I did. Mama owned fifty-two percent, and we each got a split of the remainder when we turned eighteen. At the end of the day, all we could do was tell her what we thought and what we wanted. And though I knew she’d listen and honor our wishes if she could, it was still up to her.
Daisy leaned against the counter as I poured myself a cup.
With the jerk of my chin toward a vase of fresh flowers on the counter, I asked, “Did Billy or Bobby Jenkins send those?”
She sighed. “Billy. It’s been five years those twins have been courting us. They just won’t learn. And I don’t think they’ve discovered the line between persistent and creepy.”
“Listen, any boys dumb enough to think that if they came after all three of us at the same time, one of us would cave, deserves every Tuesday’s bouquet rejection.”
“I just feel bad, but they won’t take no for an answer. If they weren’t a couple of sweet little puppies, I’d worry.”
Poppy snorted a laugh. “I’m pretty sure I could take them both at once. They can’t weigh more than two fifty combined.”
The truth was, Billy and Bobby hadn’t addressed a single bouquet to me in a year. And as much as I’d like to say that it was because they’d somehow focused their attentions, the truth was that in most cases, none of the town boys came after me anymore. I’d become the prickly, unapproachable sister when it came to suitors, now directing my attention at warning everyone off who wasn’t worthy. Which was all of them.
But somehow, it’d only isolated me from my sisters a little bit more.
“How’d it go at Crowe’s?” Daisy asked.
A smile flickered on my lips. “Oh, man—you should have seen it. The colony had set up inside the rusty carcass of an old ’74 Super Beetle. It was huge. I filled two full brood boxes. I thought Old Man Crowe was gonna have a coronary right there on the spot.”
Daisy laughed. “Well, the sight of you scooping up handfuls of bees without gear on can be alarming to the unpracticed eye.”
I shrugged, taking a sip of my coffee. “Well, we are the Blum bee witches, aren’t we?”
“How we didn’t burn in the pioneer days is beyond me,” Poppy said. “Although we did end up cursed, so I guess we didn’t escape unscathed.”
The joke was an old one, and we laughed automatically, though I wasn’t sure we even thought it was funny anymore. Our men suffered one of two fates—desertion or death. But despite being the town Black Widows, Poppy and Daisy were still pursued by the same boys who tried to date us in high school. We seemed to be the only ones who took it seriously.
I didn’t mean to say we believed in actual magic, more like some deep and unbreakable bad luck that followed us around like a thunderhead waiting to strike. If we didn’t fall in love, everyone was safe. Our hearts were safe.
Loneliness was preferable to heartache any day of the week.
Of course, there was the pact we’d made a million years ago to stay single as long as Mama did. If she didn’t date, neither would we, and there was approximately zero danger of her dating, not with the same old town fare as she’d ever had. She’d devoted her whole life to raising us, and the thought of leaving her here alone disturbed us.
