Flight Patterns Read Online Free Page A

we’re one hundred percent correct when assigning values.”
    â€œI’ll call my grandfather,” I repeated, my higher voice sounding panicky, and I hoped they hadn’t noticed.
    Mr. Mandeville frowned. “But if the piece doesn’t turn up, I want you to go look for yourself. You’re very thorough, Georgia. It’s what makes you so good at what you do.” His frown morphed into a fatherly smile that made him look like an executioner holding an ax.
    I felt James’s presence beside me, watching me closely, making it impossible for me to tell my boss exactly why I hadn’t been back to Apalachicola in ten years.
    â€œI’m sure your family would love a visit from you, too,” he added.
    Impotent anger pulsed through me, forcing me to close my eyes so I could focus on breathing slowly to calm down, just as Aunt Marlene had shown me when I was a little girl and the world had stopped making sense.
Breathe in; breathe out.
The air whistled in through my nose and out through my mouth, sounding more and more like the drone of hundreds of angry bees as I tried to force the word “no” from my lips.

chapter 2
    A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides. It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.
    â€”NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL
    Maisy
    APALACHICOLA, FLORIDA
    M aisy Sawyers followed her mother to the back porch. She peered into the late-April morning sunshine toward the backyard and the apiary, the air sweet with the scent of sun-warmed honey and filled with the low drone of bees. She stiffened at the sight of a bee flitting above her mother’s gold hair. Maisy hated the little flying insects almost as much as her grandfather, mother, and half sister, Georgia, loved them. Maybe it was because they loved them so much.
    She spotted her ninety-four-year-old grandfather wearing only a long-sleeved shirt and baggy dungarees on his tall, thin frame, walking down the middle of his ten bee boxes, five on each side. He was getting ready to move eight of his hives into the swamps around the Apalachicola River, where the white Ogeechee tupelo trees were beginning to blossom. There was only a small window of time betweenlate April and early May when the trees bloomed, and if a beekeeper wanted the much-sought-after pure tupelo honey, he had to make sure his hives were in the right place at the right time.
    Turning to her mother, she said, “It’s still pretty cool outside and there’s a nice breeze. I thought we’d sit in the shade of the magnolia for a bit if that’s all right.” She watched her mother as she considered. By all estimations, Birdie was most likely in her mid-seventies, but looked a decade or two younger, owing in part to good genes and an almost fanatical aversion to letting any sun on her skin.
    Birdie tilted her head to the side and began to sing, her voice still as clear and pure as a girl’s. It wasn’t a song Maisy knew, but that wasn’t a surprise. Her mother had studied voice since she was a child, accumulating a repertoire that spanned decades and styles. And it had been the only sound she’d made for nearly ten years.
    Maisy followed her mother down the steps from the back porch and then through the yard of sandy soil and sparse grass toward the majestic tree that had held court over this part of the yard since she and Georgia were little girls.
    Her thoughts skittered over memories of her half sister, something she rarely allowed them to do, and she wondered whether Georgia remembered the tree and the old swing—gone since Hurricane Dennis—or thought about her home at all. Or the people she’d left behind, frozen in time. In the nearly ten years since Georgia had left, nothing had really changed.