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Rosaleen gets arrested
Rosaleen (Lily's nanny and her father's housekeeper) wanted to go into town to register to vote and she asked T-Ray if she could take Lily with her; lying to him about the reason why she was going into town. On the way there, Lily and Rosaleen run into three racist white men that taunt Rosaleen. In anger, Rosaleen pours her chewing- tobacco juice over their shoes and they called the police, who arrested them both. -
Lily runs away from T-Ray & busts Rosaleen out of jail
Lily's father who she calls "T-Ray" takes Lily out of jail and leaves Rosaleen behind. Lily decides to leave T-Ray and go out to Tiburon, which has a significance to her, whilst taking Rosaleen with her. Rosaleen had been taken to the hospital because the white men were allowed into the jail to beat Rosaleen more. Lily arrives and tricks the security guard with a fake phone call and sneaks out of the hospital with Rosaleen. -
Finds August based on her honey bee jars
When Lily and Rosaleen arrive in Tiburon, South Carolina, Lily sees jars of honey with the same black Mary picture on the front as her mother had kept. The store clerk tells Lily that the creator of the honey jars is August Boatwright and that she lives on the other side of Tiburon. Lily thinks that she is someplace her mother once was and tells Rosaleen what she just saw. Later, they both arrive at August's home. -
Lily calls T-Ray
After leaving him, Lily decides to call T-Ray to test how much he loves her by asking him what her favorite color is. T-Ray ignores the question and they have a heated argument with each other and he tries to find out where she is. This is significant because she finds out that he doesn't love her the way she wanted him to and regrets calling him in the first place. -
Lily becomes a true beekeeper
Lily was replacing a lid onto a hive box and got stung on the wrist and told August. August replied, "Count yourself initiated. You can't be a true beekeeper without getting stung." This is significant because it makes Lily feel more at ease and like she belongs at the Boatwright house, more so than her old home with T-Ray. -
Lily finds out her mother stayed in the Boatwright house
Lily got up one night to get a drink in the kitchen in the pink house, and May (one of August's sisters) was on the floor luring a roach out of the house with graham crackers and marshmallows. She then thought to herself when T-Ray had told her that her mother used to do the same thing and thought that her mom could've learned the trick from May. Then, Lily asked May if she ever knew a Deborah Fontanel (her mother) and May replied that she did and that she used to stay in the honey house. -
Zach gets arrested
Lily and Zach go into town to retrieve a new radiator and when they arrived, three white men were waiting by the movie theater and Zach's friends were there too. Zach's friends began taunting the men and one of them threw a bottle at one of them. The other two men began asking for the other boys to confess who threw it, and when none of them spoke up, they were all arrested; leaving Lily alone to walk home. -
May commits suicide
June and August both made an agreement to not tell May about Zach being arrested because they thought that would be too much for her. But, when May answered the phone from Zach's mother, finding out that he was arrested, she said she was going out to the wall. After a while, May didn't come back and Lily, Rosaleen, August, and June all went out to look for her; when they found her laying in two feet of water with a rock over her chest. -
Lily confesses to August
Lily decides it's time to tell August everything so when she explains who she really is, she learns that August knew her identity and her mother the entire time. August explains that she helped raise her mother and that before she died, she was very depressed and came to them, but without Lily. Lily become angry over the idea of her mother leaving her. -
Lily learns her mother loved her all along
August finds some of Lily's mother's belongings and shows Lily who was still upset over the misconception she had about her mother. Some of the items included a mirror, a brush with a strand of her hair still in it, a pin, a book of poetry, and most importantly, a picture of Lily and her mother smiling down at her. This made Lily realize that her mother loved her all along, but just in a more complicated way. -
T-Ray finds Lily
Lily hears a pounding on the door, and after realizing no one is around to answer it, she opens the door to see T-Ray with a grim smile on his face, finding her by a mysterious number on his phone bill. He forced her to come with her as if he was talking to Deborah 10 years ago not to leave him, and Lily felt like she never understood him better. August and Rosaleen appear and promise T-Ray that they will take care of Lily and it would be best for her to stay right where she is, and he agreed.
