Honey

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Melody’s Nail Polish Names

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Knock-knock!” Teeny Nelson called through a knothole in the high wooden fence that separated the Nelsons’ yard from the Bishops’.

  Melody pretended not to hear. She was on a mission. She had a serious sweet tooth and her personal candy fund was running dangerously low. That morning at breakfast her father had offered to pay her a nickel for every dandelion plant she could pull out of the lawn. Her plan was to try to earn enough money to buy herself a pack of Wild Berry Skittles — maybe even two.

  “For your information, when I say ‘Knock-knock,’ you’re supposed to say ‘Who’s there?’” Teeny instructed.

  “For your information,” Melody told her, “I’m busy.”

  “Doesn’t look like you’re busy,” said Teeny, putting a big blue eye up to the knothole. “Looks like you’re picking dandy-lions. Can I help?”

  It was a Saturday morning in May. The weather in Royal, Indiana, had been unseasonably warm for weeks, and the promise of summer hung in the air. A pair of cardinals was busy building a nest in a rhododendron near the northeast corner of the Bishops’ house, and somewhere down the street a lawn mower droned like a giant bumblebee.

  “You’ll need to use the weed fork,” Melody’s father had explained. “You have to get out the whole root, otherwise the dandelion will grow back.”

  The good news was the front yard was chock-full of dandelions. The bad news, Melody quickly discovered, was that she had significantly underestimated how stubborn a dandelion root could be. She had already been out in the yard for half an hour when Teeny showed up, and had yet to successfully pull out a single plant with the root still attached.

  “I said, can I help?” Teeny repeated.

  She had scrambled up the fence and was hanging over the top now. Her round face made her plump pink cheeks look like two dinner rolls sitting on a plate.

  Melody sighed.

  “Maybe your mother needs help with something at your house,” she hinted.

  One of the many annoying things about Teeny Nelson was that she couldn’t take a hint. Another was that she asked too many questions.

  “How come you’re wearing gloves?”

  “Because I don’t want to get my hands dirty,” Melody answered.

  “How come your hair’s so short?”

  “ ’Cause I like it that way.”

  “Aren’t you scared people will think you’re a boy?”

  “I don’t care what people think,” Melody said.

  Teeny Nelson had on a white tank top with pink lace trim, and her long blond hair was pushed back off her forehead with a sparkly plastic headband. Melody didn’t own anything sparkly. She wore jeans in the winter and cutoffs in the summer, sneakers year-round, and on top, either a T-shirt or one of her father’s old button-down shirts, untucked with the sleeves rolled up.

  Melody jammed the weed fork into the ground beside a large dandelion as Teeny taunted, “I know something you don’t know.”

  “Good for you,” Melody told her as she worked the weed fork back and forth to loosen the root.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about you,” said Teeny, hoping to entice her.

  “Still no,” said Melody. She couldn’t imagine what Teeny Nelson could possibly know that would be of any interest to her.

  “Mama says you don’t have a mama,” Teeny blurted out, unable to hold it in any longer.

  Melody snorted.

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I’m just saying,” said Teeny. “Mama says you don’t have one.”

  Melody set down the weed fork and looked up at Teeny.

  “Not that it’s any of your beeswax, but my mother died when I was born. So I did have a mother, I just don’t anymore.”

  It was not a particularly sensitive subject for Melody. The fact that she didn’t have a mother was simply that: a fact. She and her father were very close, and it had always been just the two of them.

  “Do you miss your mama?” asked Teeny.

  “How could I?” Melody answered. “I never even met her.”

  “Who cooks dinner for you?”

  “My dad.”

  “Who tucks you in at night?” asked Teeny.

  “No one,” said Melody. “I’m too old to be tucked in.”

  “Guess how old I am.”

  “I don’t have to guess. I know how old you are — you’re six.”

  “No I’m not,” insisted Teeny. “I’m going on seven.”

  Melody gathered a handful of leaves and began gently pulling, trying to ease the dandelion plant out of the ground without breaking off the root. No such luck.

  “Impudent weed,” she muttered, throwing the broken plant down on the lawn, which was already littered with a salad of leaf bits and decapitated yellow dandelion heads. Melody was aware that most ten-year-olds didn’t use words like impudent, but her father was a high school Humanities teacher. She couldn’t help it if she had an unusually large vocabulary for someone her age.

  “Why don’t you pick the flowers instead of trying to pull out the whole ding-dong thing?” Teeny asked.

  Melody didn’t feel like having to explain the dos and don’ts of pulling dandelions to a six-year-old.

  “Are you sure your mother doesn’t need you for something at home?” she asked Teeny.

  Teeny crossed her eyes and made a rude noise with her tongue, then let go of the fence and dropped back down into her own yard with a soft thud. Melody heaved a sigh of relief. With Teeny out of her hair, she could turn her full attention to her work. If things didn’t pick up soon, she wouldn’t be able to afford a single Skittle, let alone two packs of them.

  Not long after, Melody’s father came out to check on her progress.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Let’s put it this way,” she told him. “The dandelions are winning.”

  Her father laughed. “I’m going to walk down to Wrigley’s to pick up a few things,” he said. “Want to come along?”

  “Absolutely, Boris,” said Melody, jumping up and pulling off her gloves.

  “As in positively, Doris?” her father asked.

  “As in affirmatively, Boris,” she shot back.

  “As in unequivocally, Doris?”

  It was a silly word game they’d invented called Boris and Doris’s Thesaurus. Melody quickly racked her brain for another synonym.

  “As in … unilaterally, Boris?” she said uncertainly.

  Her father shook his head.

  “Nice try, Mel. Unilaterally means something done without the agreement or participation of other people it might affect,” he said. “Come on — I’ll race you to the end of the driveway. Loser has to do the dishes tonight.”

  Melody was pretty sure her father let her win the race, but she didn’t care. Lately he’d been
so distracted he burned everything he cooked, and with all the pots and pans that needed extra scrubbing, doing the dishes had become a real chore. And his tendency to burn things wasn’t the only unusual thing she’d noticed about his behavior lately. He’d been whistling “You Are My Sunshine” pretty much nonstop for weeks, and just that morning he’d let the bathtub overflow for the second time. More than once Melody had walked into a room and caught him staring off into space with a goofy-looking grin on his face. When she’d asked him what was going on, he’d acted like he had no idea what she was talking about. But Melody knew her father better than anyone. Something was definitely up.

  “Have you ever noticed that most people say ‘I could care less,’ when what they really mean to say is that they couldn’t care less?” Melody’s father asked as they walked into the grocery store together.

  He was always pointing out things like that, which was why, even though she was only ten, Melody knew that it was champing at the bit, not chomping, and that the expression the proof is in the pudding was actually the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

  “What do you want me to get?” she asked her father.

  They always split up the shopping list to save time. There were only a few things on it that day, so while her father headed off to the dairy aisle to get milk and grated cheese, Melody went in search of spaghetti.

  “Oh, and we need cereal, too,” he called back over his shoulder. “Nothing too sugary, okay, Mel?”

  She was reaching for the Raisin Bran when she noticed an eyelash stuck to the tip of her finger. Carefully transferring the eyelash from her fingertip to the back of her left hand, she closed her eyes, made a wish, and blew.

  When she opened her eyes, a woman in a tight black dress was strolling by, pushing a shopping cart. She glanced over at Melody and stopped short.

  “I’d know that face anywhere!” she exclaimed, and proceeded to march right over and throw her arms around Melody.

  Melody had never seen this person before in her life, and was debating whether to punch her in the stomach or scream bloody murder when her father showed up with a gallon jug of 2 percent milk in one hand and a container of Parmesan cheese in the other. The minute the woman caught sight of him, she let go of Melody and threw her arms around him instead.

  “There you are, you handsome devil, you!” she cried.

  “Here I am,” Melody’s father said, awkwardly holding the jug of milk out to one side and trying to pat the woman on the back with the hand still clutching the cheese.

  “I’ve missed you, Henry,” the woman said, hugging him even tighter.

  When she finally let go, Melody’s father made the necessary introductions.

  “Mel, this is Nancy Montgomery, an old friend of your mother’s and mine. Nancy, this is —”

  “Melody,” the woman said. “I knew it the minute I saw her.”

  “How do you do,” Melody said, extending her right hand, partly to be polite but mostly to make up for the fact that she’d come very close to punching this woman in the stomach a minute ago.

  Instead of shaking Melody’s hand, Nancy burst into tears.

  “You were just a wee little thing the last time I saw you, and look at you now, all grown up and wanting to shake hands.”

  The way she said it made Melody feel like a dog.

  “Even with that short haircut,” the woman went on, “I knew who you were. You’re the spitting image of your mother.”

  Melody’s father shifted uncomfortably.

  “There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think about your mother,” the woman said, breaking into a fresh round of tears.

  “Please, Nancy,” Melody’s father said quietly.

  “I’m sorry.” The woman pulled a tissue out of her purse and blew her nose. “She was so young, and I remember how much she was looking forward to having —”

  “Please, Nancy,” Melody’s father implored, “this is neither the time nor the place.”

  As far as Melody could tell, her father never felt it was the right time or place to talk about her mother. Melody had once asked him to tell her about the day her mother had died. It was the first time she’d ever seen him cry, and she’d never brought up the subject again. Meanwhile, Melody’s father wasn’t the only one who avoided talking about her mother. She’d been the closest thing to a celebrity Royal, Indiana, had ever known, but nobody ever mentioned her name anymore — at least not around Melody.

  Having recovered her composure, Nancy informed them that the reason she was in town was because her family was having a reunion.

  “The theme is Cherished Moments of Yesteryear. The name was my idea,” she said proudly.

  Nancy and Melody’s father made small talk for a while. Then, after promising to keep in touch, they said their good-byes, which resulted in more awkward hugging.

  “You don’t hear that expression very often anymore,” Melody’s father said later as they left the store with their groceries.

  “Cherished Moments of Yesteryear, you mean?” asked Melody.

  Her father laughed.

  “No. Spitting image. There’s an ongoing debate about its origin. One side claims it was originally spit and image; the other insists that spit is actually a Southern pronunciation of spirit.”

  Melody considered asking her father if he thought she looked like her mother too, but decided against it. They had reached the corner, and were standing side by side on the curb waiting to cross the street.

  “Why is this light taking so long to change?” Melody complained. “There’s hardly even any traffic.”

  “Patience is a virtue,” her father said.

  Melody rolled her eyes. “I knew you were going to say that,” she told him.

  The light changed and they started across.

  “So you think I’m predictable, do you?” her father asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Wild Berry Skittles.

  “Hey!” Melody exclaimed. “Where did those come from?”

  “I had the cashier ring them up when you weren’t looking. What do you think of your old man now?”

  Melody’s father handed her the candy, clearly pleased that he’d been able to pull off the surprise. He, more than anyone, knew how hard it was to keep a secret from her.

  “Can I eat them now?” she asked. “I promise it won’t spoil my appetite.”

  “Far be it from me to stand between a girl and her Skittles,” he said.

  After they got home and had put away the groceries, Melody set the table while her father got dinner started. They were having spaghetti with canned Chef Boyardee meat sauce, one of a grand total of three meals Melody’s father knew how to prepare. As he placed the pot of water on the stove to boil, he suddenly remembered something he’d been meaning to ask.

  “Did you get your math test back today?”

  Melody groaned. “I was hoping you’d forgotten.”

  Her father opened the drawer and started rummaging around.

  “Mel, have you seen the —”

  “It’s over there,” she said, pointing to the can opener, which was in the silverware section of the dish drainer.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said as he cranked the opener around the metal rim of the can. Chef Boyardee looked on approvingly from the label.

  “It was all Miss Hogan’s fault,” Melody said.

  Melody’s father was used to hearing her complain about her teacher. Thanks to Miss Hogan, the only positive thing Melody had to say about fifth grade was that it was almost over.

  “I got a seventy-three,” Melody said as she opened the cupboard and handed him the bottle of olive oil.

  He twisted off the cap, poured a few drops into the water, and passed it back.

  “Seventy-three?” he said. “How did that happen?”

  “ ‘Mary used one cup of sugar to make two cherry pies. How much sugar, on average, did Mary use in each pie?’ ”

  “What was your answer?”

&n
bsp; “I said that, on average, Mary used half a cup of sugar in each pie.”

  Melody’s father furrowed his brow.

  “Huh. That’s what I would have said, too.”

  “Then you would have been wrong, because the answer is zero point five.”

  Something sputtered on the stove. Melody grabbed a wooden spoon off the counter and handed it to her father.

  “I’m no mathematician, but isn’t zero point five the same thing as one-half?” he asked as he lowered the flame and stirred down the sauce.

  “Miss Hogan told us all the answers had to be in decimals,” Melody explained. “But she didn’t use decimals in some of the questions. She was trying to trick us.”

  “Did anybody else fall for it?”

  “Nick did,” said Melody. “He tried to talk Miss Hogan into changing his grade by telling her that he watches the Food Network all the time and no one ever says zero point five of a cup of anything in real life.”

  “We could use someone like him on the debate team,” said Melody’s father, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

  “You may think it’s funny, but I don’t. I hate word problems,” said Melody. “And I hate Miss Hogan even more.”

  “You know how I feel about that word,” Melody’s father said sternly.

  “I know. But Miss Hogan doesn’t like me either. She doesn’t get any of my jokes and she thinks math is fun. I wish I could have had Mrs. McKenna again this year.”

  Her father nodded. “No doubt about it, you two were a very good fit,” he said, rinsing out the empty sauce can and tossing it into the recycling bin. “But I’m sure Miss Hogan has her virtues, too. Did you know that she and Mrs. McKenna are good friends? I always see them sitting together at district staff meetings.”

  “Really?” asked Melody.

  “Ask her yourself,” he said. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you ask her if you can retake the test or do some extra-credit homework to bring up that grade? I’m sure she can be a very nice person if you give her a chance.”

  Melody suddenly smelled something burning.

  “Dad! The sauce!”

  The smoke detector started screeching and Melody’s father swatted at it with a dish towel until it stopped.

  “I’m glad I’m not the one who has to scrub out that pan,” said Melody.