Mr Johnson set out his goat milk before dawn, but his eyes went to the empty space beside him. For years the honey seller had unpacked her jars there each market day. He knew her setup by heart: the small jars front left, the big ones stacked in back, a little bee painted on every lid. Now, for the third market in a row, the space stayed bare. He had wanted to court her for a long time. He had never found the words. Now she was gone, and he had no way to find her. He asked the woman who sold eggs. She only shrugged. He asked a man loading crates two stalls down. Nothing. Nobody knew where Jenni Honeycomb had gone or whether she meant to come back. Mr Johnson stared at her empty table and felt the market shrink around him. He had milked goats and stacked cheese and told himself there would always be next week. There was no next week now. He could stand here forever and never learn a thing. So he did the one thing he could do. He wrote a sign on a scrap of board. "Honey seller — please come back. Save me a jar." He propped it in her empty space and weighted it with a stone. Then he waited, half sure it would sit there until it rotted. Near noon a truck rolled up behind the stalls. A woman climbed down with a crate against her hip. Long blonde braids swung over a striped apron dotted with painted bees. She saw the sign. She stopped walking. "Somebody missed my honey," Jenni said. She read the board again, then looked straight at him. Her mouth curved. "Or missed me." Mr Johnson's throat went dry. "Both," he said. It came out plain and true. "You missed two markets. I didn't know if you were coming back." Jenni set the crate down on her table. Her hands moved on their own, small jars front left, the way he had watched a hundred times. "My bees swarmed," she said. "Took me a week to catch the queen. Then the truck broke." She glanced up. "You could've asked around." "I did," he said. "Nobody knew where you lived." She went still. Something in her softened. "You asked around for me." "I did," he said again. Jenni pulled a jar from the crate and set it in his hand. The bee on the lid smiled up at him. "On the house," she said. "But the next one you pay for. Over supper." He closed his fingers around the warm glass. For the first time in years, he knew exactly where she would be next week. He also knew he had somewhere to be Friday night, and no idea what to say when he got there.