Summer of a Thousand Pies

by Margaret Dilloway

  Dedication

  For DREAMers everywhere

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  May

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  June

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  July

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  August

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  September

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Cady’s Recipe Book

  9-Inch Double Pie Crust, with Notes from Cady

  Apple Pie, with Notes from Cady

  Cady’s Fennel Apple Raisin Pie

  Lady Baltimore Cake

  Never-Fail or Seven-Minute Icing

  Tres Leches Cake

  Strawberry Basil Pie

  Gluten-Free Pie Crust

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  May

  0 Pies Down

  1,000 to Go

  Chapter 1

  I open my eyes, expecting to see the inside of our van, Dad snoring next to me like a half-broken engine. But I’m in a small bedroom covered in bright posters. Another bed’s just beyond my arm’s reach, in case someone has a brother or sister. Which I don’t.

  This is the San Diego County Children’s Center. They took me here the day before yesterday, and it still seems unreal. I’ve been hoping it was like one of those cheesy TV shows where everything bad that just happened was all a dream.

  Dad. My heart thumps hard. I grab the stuffed animal the police officers gave me and squeeze him so hard I’m surprised his seams don’t pop. His name is Bear, from the book Found. Jenna, my honorary little sister and reading buddy, loved that book in kindergarten. It’s about this bear who finds a stuffed bunny and falls in love with it while he looks for the owner. And now here he is, in stuffed animal form. I’m twelve and getting too old for stuffed animals, but I’ve got to admit that Bear makes me feel a tiny bit better.

  My stomach growls. I look at the clock—it’s already eleven. No wonder I’m so hungry. I couldn’t fall asleep until after the sun came up. I just didn’t feel comfortable enough, though it was my second night here.

  I use the little bathroom, then tuck Bear safely into bed and slide on my ratty Vans. I need food. And answers about my father. Somebody has got to know what’s up.

  The day before yesterday, my dad showed up at my school because I got into trouble. Which is a normal parent thing to do, right? Except my dad—he wasn’t normal. He came into the office swaying his body, slurring his words. He blamed it on medication. But everyone from Jenna to the principal could see he was lying.

  I’ve known he was lying for a long time.

  So the principal had to call the police. Child endangerment, they said. He broke the law. No way he could take care of me. I don’t see why anybody cared this time. I was okay with how things were.

  Long story short, that’s how I ended up here.

  I hope Jenna isn’t worrying about me. Maybe I can write her a letter to tell her I’m okay. Even though I don’t really feel all that okay. I can lie a tiny bit, if it means Jenna won’t be anxious. It won’t be a big lie, like Dad’s.

  There’s a knock and before I can say anything, the doorknob starts turning. Someone’s trying to break in! I gurgle out a half scream. In a panic, I slam my shoulder against the door, shutting it tight, the way Dad taught me. I’ve seen him do it before at one of the motels where we stay. “What do you want?” I say in my meanest, most grown-up voice.

  “It’s Marleen,” the person says, and I sag against the door. She helped me when I got here—a social worker who asked me a bunch of questions I didn’t want to answer.

  I open the door an inch. Marleen smiles anxiously, scrunching her shoulders, her blond corkscrew curls bouncing. “Good morning,” she says fake cheerfully. The walkie-talkie on her waist mutters with voices, and she mutes them. “Did you sleep well?”

  I shrug. This Marleen seems nice enough, but I’m not in the mood to be particularly nice back. Number one, she could have said who she was before she opened the door so I didn’t have a heart attack. And number two, I’m hangry now, as my dad would say. That means hungry and angry. I scowl and step out of the room, shutting the door. “I’m starving. Do you guys have any oatmeal?” I’m hoping for one of those instant packets. Blueberries and cream is my favorite.

  “I’ll get you a snack in a second.” She stands there twisting her mouth around.

  A snack? Does that mean a package of crackers, oatmeal, a bowl of cereal? My stomach rumbles. Now only Marleen and her mission are standing between me and my food. I’ll do anything she asks. Almost anything. “What do you want?”

  Marleen clears her throat, then rattles off her next words so fast I barely understand. “Cady, your aunt is here.”

  “My what?” I forget about everything else.

  “Your aunt. Michelle.” She says this like I’m supposed to know who that is.

  But the name makes my heart beat a little faster. “I don’t have an aunt Michelle.”

  Marleen opens and closes her mouth in a way that reminds me of a goldfish. Who on earth is she talking about? Then it hits me.

  Michelle. Could that be Shell? My mother’s sister, the one who didn’t want to see us? “Shell? She’s here? But why?”

  “Oh, good.” Marleen lets out a little titter. “For a second I thought I had the wrong kid.”

  Then another woman appears in the hallway behind Marleen and starts toward us. She looks down over the top of Marleen’s frizzy head, her eyes lasering straight toward mine.

  She stops in her tracks.

  My breath catches in my chest. Because for a second, I think my mom is there. Same tall build, same kind of face. The black brows above dark brown eyes, the cheekbones. Her skin’s the color of Mom’s too, a light tan.

  But then that passes. This lady is bigger, broader, as if she can plow a field and bench-press a thousand pounds. And older than my mother, with gray streaked in her black hair. Of course, my mom died when I was five. Maybe Mom would have gray hair, too, by now. I wipe my eyes and frown, looking down at where the faded brown linoleum floor meets the dirty white wall trim.

  “Is this Cady?” the woman says. Her voice is deep, gruff. Marleen nods. This lady continues toward me. She seems to fill the entire hallway, wall to wall, floor to ceiling.

  What Dad said about Shell—it was nothing good. Pretty much the opposite, in fact. From what I know, Shell didn’t really care about my mother. Or me.

  I immediately go full-on cactus prickly. Dad would be so mad that they called her. “Aunt Shell, I presume. Well, well, well.” I clear my throat. “Never thought you’d show your face to me.”

  This sounds like something Dad would c
ome up with. She looks at the floor, then back up, her expression now uncertain.

  We stare at each other, her sizing me up, me sizing her up. I recognize her mouth, thin but with a Cupid’s bow on the upper lip. It’s the same as mine. So weird to see it on a stranger. She frowns. The same frown I see in my mirror, with the number eleven–looking lines between the brows. “I’m here now, young lady. And you’re coming with me.”

  I stick out my proud Bennett chin, inherited from Dad. That’s something she doesn’t have. “What if I don’t want to?”

  “Then I guess you can stay here.” Her voice is even. She doesn’t care if I stay or come. This stings, but I pretend it doesn’t.

  “I think I’ll stay, thank you.” I open my door to make my point. “Can I still get food, though?” I say to Marleen. My pulse hammers as though I finished a fistfight. Worse than when I thought Marleen was breaking in.

  I move partly into my room. I totally don’t care if Shell leaves. Dad will get me sooner or later. He always has before.

  I’ll stay here and then they’ll find me a foster home until Dad is ready. It’ll be fine. But my stomach goes all wobbly. Not to get into gory details, but the foster homes I’ve been in are definitely not fine. And the last time I was in one, it took months for Dad to get his act together.

  Not to mention, I’ll miss promotion at school. What will my teacher, Ms. Walker, think? How will I finish the year?

  Dad promised he’d never put me through this again. But here I am.

  “Wait a second.” Marleen steps between us nervously, puts her hand on my shoulder. It’s literally undead-cold. I shrug it off. I don’t like people touching me in general, much less people with ice cubes for fingers. “Hey, wow, Cady, I didn’t realize you didn’t know your aunt. At all.”

  “I told you that when I got here. I said she probably doesn’t even know she has an aunt Michelle.” Aunt Shell rolls her eyes at the same time I roll mine, because I also told Marleen I didn’t know about any aunt. This makes me like Shell a tiny bit more. But only a bit.

  “It’s okay, Cady,” Marleen says, her voice too sunshiny bright. “Your dad put her on the emergency contact sheet at your school. We vetted her.”

  I don’t know what “vetted” means. It sounds like something you’d do to an animal. And wait—what? Shell is on my emergency contact list? Shell, my dad’s number three enemy? (Number two being this one convenience store security guy who gives him a hard time, and number one being the sun because it’s always in his eyes when he doesn’t want it to be.)

  Not to mention—my dad knew where Shell was this entire time and didn’t bother telling me? And put her on the emergency list like he actually trusts her?

  I mean, what the actual heck?

  I think I knew a lot more when I woke up yesterday morning than I do now.

  Shell sighs. “Listen, Cady, I know you don’t know me from Eve. But I’m your mother’s sister, and she’d want me to take care of you. Okay?”

  But do you want to take care of me? I want to ask. Or are you just getting paid for this like other foster parents? But I don’t really want to stay in unicorn la-la land, either. Or go to some completely strange home.

  Shell, at least, looks like family. Kind of sort of.

  Besides, it doesn’t seem like Marleen’s going to do anything else useful. Not even get me a snack. At last, I give Shell one tiny nod.

  Shell takes that as a yes and ducks past me into my room, hauling out my trash bag full of stuff. “Is this all you have?”

  “All my worldly possessions.” That’s what Dad calls it. My throat’s so dry I can barely squeeze out the words.

  “Traveling light. I like it.” She walks out of the room. “Let’s roll.”

  I’m frozen. Roll where? Right now? Before I eat? My stomach growls. “Do I still get a snack?” I remind Marleen.

  The walkie-talkie at Marleen’s hip crackles. She glances at me. “I’m sorry. You’ll be okay. Shell will feed you.” She holds out her hand. “Good luck.”

  I shake it a little too hard. No snack, after she promised? Typical. It probably would have been a lame snack anyway, like fake cheese and crackers.

  I take in a deep, deep breath. I have to go with Shell, even though I want to hop back into bed and pull the covers over my head until my whole life is fixed. Because the earth might stop spinning before that happens. “You gotta deal with what’s in front of you,” Dad likes to say. This is what’s in front of me.

  I grab Bear and follow Shell out of the building into the bright May morning.

  Chapter 2

  It’s not every day you find out you have a brand-new aunt. Much less one who drives a really old truck so fast it feels like we’re going around the curves on only two wheels. Which is not helping my stomach situation. I grip the side of the seat as my aunt accelerates into the other lane around a slow motor home, muttering about how it would be courteous of them to pull over. The truck rattles, as if it’s an elderly lady being forced to sprint.

  I stare so hard at where the hills meet the sky that I’m surprised the whole thing doesn’t burst into flames. My dad says doing this stops motion sickness. “Buckle up, Buttercup,” he’d tell me. “Fix your eyes on the horizon, and take ten deep breaths. It’ll pass. Always does for me.” But it’s not working today. My stomach makes a gurgling noise and I turn toward the door, in case I’ve got to lean out the window really fast. Hurling in someone’s car an hour after you met doesn’t seem as if it’s the best way to get that person to like you. I tuck Bear behind my back so he’ll be safe.

  My aunt’s taking me to her house in Julian, wherever that is. She said it’s still in San Diego County. It could be the lost city of Atlantis for all I know, except we’re driving inland, not toward the ocean. She drives us farther and farther away from the city, through the mountains, until I’m pretty sure she’s taking me to Mars and not to Julian.

  Forty-five minutes or so after we left, the curves settle down somewhat, and the road winds between squat mountains dotted with leafy trees, opening up to meadows. Cows and horses swish their tails on either side. I roll down my window some more, stick my head out. The cool air blows over my face, and finally my belly settles.

  Everything looks like a museum painting. It sure doesn’t smell like a museum painting, though. I wrinkle my nose. Who knew horses and cows were so stinky? The most impressive countryside I’ve seen before this was the school sports field, where the only wildlife were the tubby squirrels, food thieves who left a trail of ripped-up backpacks behind.

  I steal a look at Aunt Shell. I wish I knew anything about her. Shell looks a heck of a lot like me, at least in her build. I poke at my stomach. Some kids call me plain old fat, but Dad says I’m solid like my mother was.

  Shell drives with her head resting on her hand, her elbow on the open windowsill. She’s got purple circles under her eyes. When Aunt Shell woke up yesterday morning, she probably didn’t guess she’d be bringing home a kid today.

  She glances over and I pretend I was looking past her at a cow grazing in the brown grass. After all, my father told me Aunt Shell had pretty much written off our family a long time ago. Some kind of fight. That’s why we hadn’t heard from her. But that doesn’t explain why Dad wrote her name first on the emergency contact list. Or why she’d agreed to be my guardian. “Here we are.” Shell makes a sudden right into what looks like a bunch of trees.

  I gasp, but Shell maneuvers the truck expertly through the miniforest. The tires churn and squelch on the gravel. It’s darker here, the trees growing close together, and cool. The trees are tall, with no branches close to the ground, and the tops are thick with leaves. “What kind of trees are those?”

  Shell looks startled. I haven’t spoken since we left the shelter almost an hour ago. “Quaking aspen.” Shell slows down. “My father—your grandfather—planted them as a fire- and windbreak. They don’t burn easily, like pine.”

  My grandfather? This was his house, then. The hous
e where my mother grew up. I didn’t know. Is it going to be one of those countryside farmhouse mansions like on TV? Did we have a super-rich relative this whole time? I look at the truck’s ripped seats and decide: probably not.

  For a second, though, I picture my mom as a little kid, running down this path between the trees. If she’d been around, I bet she would’ve taken me to visit. We would have had Christmas here every year, and we’d make lots and lots of food. My heart squeezes with an unfamiliar homesickness I’ve never felt before.

  I sniff the air. No more cow stink. I actually do smell some pine, along with dirt and pollen that make my nose itch.

  My stomach cramps and makes another noise like a broken garbage disposal. I hope we can stay on this mountain for a while, because I don’t think I can take another trip on those roads anytime soon.

  Shell seems to be waiting for me to say something else, so I do. “The trees make it too dark.” Being good doesn’t mean I can’t have my own opinion. I press Bear against my stomach to make it feel better.

  “You won’t think that when the weather heats up.” She pulls up to a chain-link fence with a gate in the middle. Two dogs, a golden retriever and a black Lab with a white spot on its chest, run up barking. I shrink into my seat—I don’t much like dogs. Not that I’ve met many. Shell leaves the truck running, gets out, and opens the gate. She drives slowly through, the dogs kicking up a fuss the whole time. “Your turn,” she says to me. “Close it, please.”

  Um, I don’t think so. I open the truck door, eyeing the dogs warily. I can smell their not-minty-fresh breath from five feet away. The animals put their front paws on the seat and pant at me. I flinch and put Bear safely out of reach.

  “Meet Jacques and Julia.” She spells out Jacques for me. “Jacques is the golden, Julia’s the black Lab. Let ’em smell you and you’ll be fine.”

  I hold out my leg uncertainly. The dogs nuzzle either side, making me giggle. “Their noses are wet!”

  “Your hand.” Shell demonstrates. “Make a fist and hold it out. Haven’t you ever met a dog before?”

  “Only when I didn’t want to,” I mutter, thinking of the last dog I met on the street, who growled and tried to bite my leg. I offer them my fist. The dogs smell my knuckles, then wag their tails. Phew. I climb out of the truck. The golden jumps up, putting his paws on my chest. I hop back into the truck, scared, and I swear the dog looks like I hurt his feelings. Maybe he was trying to hug me.