The cider jug was heavy, but I did not let Marcus see my arm shake as I tipped it into his glass.
He sat at my oak table with a single sheet of paper laid out flat between us.
“The old man knew it was coming, Clara,” Marcus said, leaning forward.
“This is a direct translation of the sixteen hundred five texts he spent his final years analyzing.”
I touched the silver bee pendant resting against my collarbone.
My late husband, Donald, had bought it for our thirty-fifth anniversary.
“Donald never spoke of doom, Marcus,” I said, pausing between my words.
“He spoke of patterns.”
“He called this the rising of the dark swarm,” Marcus said, tapping his finger on the photocopied page.
“These old verses seem to describe our very orchard, Clara.”
“He was a scholar, not a fortune teller,” I said.
“A scholar who saw a total collapse of the soil, starting with the hives, right here in Madrid,” Marcus said.
