“Ugh. I can’t take this much optimism so early in the morning.” Shell sips her coffee.
Suzanne rolls her eyes at me. Suzanne and I have our secret language of facial expressions about Shell. It feels like I’m one of the popular kids or something, even though there are only three people in this group.
Shell’s expression goes dour. “I wish you guys would stop laughing at me all the time.”
Guilt wraps itself around me like a too-small sweater. I stare at my empty cereal bowl. Suzanne puts her hand on Shell’s shoulder. “Oh, honey, we’re not making fun. We like what a sourpuss you are.” I can tell Suzanne’s not serious, but I already know Shell can’t. I stiffen.
Shell gets up, her entire body tense. “You’re always telling me I don’t consider your feelings, Suzanne. Maybe you should consider my feelings for once.” She stalks out.
Suzanne’s face is so stricken that I grab her hand. “I guess I went too far. Shell just can’t be teased these days.” She squeezes my hand, then goes after Shell.
It seems like Shell’s looking for a reason to be mad. But maybe we do make too much fun of her. I don’t mind her expressions. She’s just so stone-faced that we could never tell she minded.
I guess maybe people who don’t show their feelings might still have them.
I spend a good part of every morning talking with Mr. Miniver. He’s eighty-two and still gets up to volunteer at the museum almost daily, and of course comes here for pie. “If you don’t do things, you waste away,” he tells me.
Mr. Miniver sort of reminds me of a combination of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, so of course I like him. Mr. Miniver looks like Paul Hollywood will look in thirty years, plus he often tells people exactly what he thinks. But he’s sweet and kind, too, like Mary Berry. He’s also the one who knows everything about everyone in town. He draws me a map of the whole village, including where all the families live, where the bed-and-breakfasts and hotels and restaurants are, and tells me all kinds of details, like who got married, who used to be married, and who he thinks should be married. He introduces me to everyone he knows—people who come into Shell’s, people who come into the museum when I go visit him there. Now when I walk through downtown, I always see at least three people I know. And they always say hello to me and ask how I am and ask how Shell’s doing. Even Mrs. Moretti from Grandma’s Pies waves.
I was always used to being invisible. Most people wouldn’t even look at me and Dad as they walked by. In school, being invisible was better than getting bullied. It’s the weirdest thing ever, to have everyone in Julian notice me, but I think I like it.
Gable’s dad has told me twice that his ear-piercing offer is still good, but I haven’t reminded Shell to ask my dad. She’ll make me talk to him, and I don’t want to.
A man in a plaid shirt and jeans walks by this morning and Mr. Miniver lowers his voice. “There’s Kirk Nelson. Now, if you ask me, he’d be a better match for Claudia. He’s going to inherit his dad’s winery.”
“I don’t like Kirk Nelson,” Claudia says from behind the counter, where she’s doodling on a pad. Mr. Miniver’s the only one here right now. “He picks his nose. And I don’t need you telling me what to do, thank you.”
Mr. Miniver raises his bushy white brows. “I’m just saying you could broaden your horizons. Though when I was your age, I’d never listen to what an old geezer had to say, either.”
I giggle and refill his decaf. “Did you ever bake, Mr. Miniver?”
“Oh, yes. Not professionally, but when my wife was alive, she and I used to whip up dozens of treats for the holidays. I don’t anymore—my middle grandson can’t eat gluten, so his mother is the one who makes our treats.”
“Really?” I almost drop the coffeepot. “My best friend in San Diego has celiac.”
Mr. Miniver whips out his phone and shows me a picture of a little brown-haired boy. “This is Emory. He’s got Crohn’s disease. That means that his body’s decided food is an invader. Gluten makes him flare.” He gestures around the shop. “Needless to say, I don’t bring him here. Too much he can’t eat. But he’ll come up for Christmas. In fact, I’ll invite you to our big Christmas Eve party.”
Christmas. My heart leaps like a bounding deer, and I’m not sure if I’m super happy or super frightened. My emotions are funny like that—sometimes I can’t tell what they are, as if they’re a foreign language. Will I be here in December? That’s five whole months away. “Will it snow?”
He smiles. “Sometimes we get lucky with a white Christmas. You should see the crowds. Something about people in our old-fashioned costumes, wandering around in the snow, makes it seem real festive.”
Snow. I’ve never seen snow. I try to imagine the town blanketed with white, fluffy stuff. I can’t actually picture what snow is. The only thing I can picture is that white blanket stuff stores use for fake snow displays. It’s cold. Is it soft? I have no idea. “I can’t wait,” I blurt out, and then my stomach hurts. I’m wishing I could stay for Christmas. Without my dad. How bad would that make him feel? I would feel terrible if I knew my dad was wishing he could be somewhere for Christmas without me.
“Christmas party?” Claudia returns from the back, her mood shifting to normal. “How come I’ve never been? Don’t you like me?”
“You used to come with your family when you were younger,” Mr. Miniver replies smoothly, “but you’ve been busy the past four years or so.”
The corners of her mouth turn down, and she opens it like she’s ready to argue. Then she sighs and flips her sketchbook closed. “I’m going on break.” She flounces out, throwing her apron on the counter. She’s cranky because Gable hasn’t been back for a week. He’s moving to the city for college.
I move her sketchbook to the side so I won’t spill coffee on it. It falls open to a picture of Gable in colored pencil, sitting on his motorcycle. I flip through it. There are tons of Gable drawings. Gable looking dreamy. Gable drawing a picture of Claudia. I laugh at that.
And then there’s me.
I touch the pencil, smearing it a bit. Me, with a coffeepot in my hand, my hair in a net with tendrils escaping. I don’t know what I expected Claudia to make me look like, but here I’m strong. My Bennett chin juts out. I’m squinting like I’m considering throwing the coffeepot at someone.
Claudia’s kind of made me look like a superhero.
I hold up the book to show Mr. Miniver. “Impressive. That girl needs to go to college.” Mr. Miniver takes another sip of coffee. “Get at least an associate’s degree.”
“She’s only nineteen,” I say, because that’s what I’ve heard Shell say when María says the same thing: “My daughter needs to get out and do something.” Shell says, “Give her time. She’s young. Only nineteen.” Nineteen seems pretty old, but I know it’s not. I also know that by nineteen Shell had already enlisted in the military, so I’m not sure why she’s so gentle on Claudia.
Claudia pops back and grabs her sketchpad out of my hand. “But why bother? I can go to college all I want, but I’ll never get to be a citizen,” she mutters, returning to the back.
Mr. Miniver takes a breath. “It is an unfortunate situation.”
“Is it true?” I remember what Jay said about his dad. “It’s not Jay or Claudia’s fault that they’re here, though.”
Mr. Miniver leans back. “Their parents came here because there was nothing for them in Mexico. No way to make a living. Lots of violence. I don’t really blame them. Things are never as black and white as we want them to be.” He cups his mug. “Sometimes there are no good choices, and we can only do our best.”
We’re quiet for a moment. If Jay and his family got deported, I don’t know what I’d do. They’re like my family too now. If the thought scares me, think of how Jay feels. My chest contracts. “I hate that Jay has to wake up every single morning worried about getting kicked out of the only place he’s ever known.” My voice rings through the shop.
Mr. Miniver looks at me kindly. “Me to
o. But we all must learn to live with uncertainty, Cady.” We’re quiet for a moment, and I know he’s thinking about his wife. He clears his throat. “Anyway, it won’t hurt Claudia to go to college. You’d be surprised at how fast time passes. One minute you’re nineteen.” He snaps his freckled fingers. “The next you’re an eighty-two-year-old widower. She’s like Han Solo frozen in carbonite in here!”
“You like the old Star Wars movies?” I ask. My dad loves those.
Mr. Miniver clutches the collar of his pioneer-man clothes. “Do I like Star Wars? My dear girl, I took my children to see that in the theaters no fewer than six times. And they only wanted to see it twice.”
I grin. “I haven’t seen the whole thing. Only parts of it when it was on TV.” I never knew ahead of time when it’d be on.
“I’ll bring you the DVD.” Mr. Miniver raises his mug of coffee to me. I see a cobweb forming under the window and wipe it clean—in the mountains, cobwebs can appear in seconds. In the month I’ve been here, this shop has come to feel like mine. I’m the one who makes sure the windowsills are dusted, who gets out the broom and dustpan after a little kid’s been here. Not because Shell will be mad if I don’t, but because the pie shop is mine. Or sort of mine. Anyway, it feels right, and that’s what matters.
Chapter 25
“Hey! Where is everybody?” Shell shouts from the front of the pie shop. It’s Sunday at noon, and it should be busy, but it’s been so slow that María and I went to work in the back. She sticks her head in the kitchen. “Why are you sitting around? Did you forget about the three dozen pies for the football fund-raiser? It’s tonight!”
I rush to tie on an apron. I’d just been hanging out with María, who was showing me a chicken pot pie recipe in an issue of Martha Stewart Living. It’s not like we want to sit around. The front case is full of pies, with nobody to eat them. Both María and I are trying to keep busy, but I can tell she’s as worried as I am by how she keeps jiggling her foot when we sit.
“I haven’t started them.” María doesn’t move from her perch on the stool.
“Why not?” Shell puts her hands on her hips.
“Every year, you donate the pies. Are you donating them this year?” Her tone’s almost accusing, like Shell said she was going to steal puppies from small children.
“Of course.” Shell washes up.
María sighs through her nose.
“I have to, María. I do it every year.” Shell sounds defensive.
“This year you shouldn’t,” María says flatly. “This year, they should pay.”
“It’s a community event.”
María slams her hand on the counter. “We can’t afford it!”
I freeze where I am. I’ve never seen María lose her temper. She looks like she’s breathing steam.
“María.” Shell turns and takes a deep breath. “I promised. I can’t not do it. It’ll look bad.”
María shakes her head. “Put aside your pride. Be realistic.”
“It’s fine. I promise.” The bell tinkles at the front door, and Shell goes out front.
María picks up a broom and begins attacking the floor, though it’s pretty clean. “Is everything okay?” My voice shakes. I want her to tell me it is.
María nods silently. “Lo siento. Don’t worry about it, Cady.”
“But I can’t help worrying.” I start crying. María falling apart means things are really bad. I think about my food store in the bedroom. I’d better add more in case all of us end up without a home.
María drops the broom and holds out her arms. “It’ll be fine, Cady.”
“How do you know?” I step back. I can’t be hugged right now. I bite my lip and the tears stop.
“I don’t, really. But what good will it do me to worry? I can’t control what happens.” She picks up the broom and sweeps the few crumbs into a dustpan.
I don’t know how María can put such a brave face on. But I’ll do what Aunt Shell says. I get out more flour and start measuring.
“Hey.” María opens the fridge and takes out a plastic grocery bag. “Jay brought more fennel. Do you want to make a few of your new special for the football people?”
“Sure.” It does get boring making the same flavors over and over again. María must be sick of apples. We wash the fennel and get everything ready.
The high school is next to the middle school. In fact, all the schools are clustered together, with the high school taking up the most land because of the sports fields. The library’s there, too. You could spend your whole life in this five-mile radius and have everything you needed.
I help Shell set up the pies on the dessert table in one corner of the gymnasium. Besides the pies, there are doughnuts and cake. None of those chocolate bombs, though, I’m disappointed to see.
The football players and cheerleaders are serving spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread. The gym is filled with people joking and eating at round tables decorated with maroon and white, the school colors. A banner that says JULIAN EAGLES hangs down. My stomach growls.
Shell kind of pushes me toward the line. “I gather you’re hungry.”
“You gathered correctly.” My mouth waters. I watch Shell give the money collector a twenty-dollar bill for admission and chew my lip anxiously. Can we even afford to eat at this fund-raiser? But Shell told me to trust her, so I guess that’s all I can do.
We sit at a table with a couple who are around Shell’s age and that guy I saw walking around that Mr. Miniver wanted Claudia to date. Kirk something or other.
“These are the Culvers,” Shell says about the people who are her age. “They live near us. They have the white horse.”
“Oh! Nice to meet you.” Jay and I pet the white horse all the time.
“Miss Daisy,” Mrs. Culver says with a smile. “She’s the white one.”
Kirk spends the entire meal talking to Mr. Culver about soil, which I guess could be interesting for some people but would definitely put Claudia to sleep. He seems super bland compared to Gable, like American cheese compared to extra-sharp cheddar, so I can’t really blame her. But then again, some people prefer American cheese.
A lady comes up to Shell. “We’ve missed you at knitting club!” she says.
“Oh. Hi, Vicky. I’ve been really busy.” Shell pats her mouth with a napkin and they catch up. That happens a couple more times, with a man saying he hasn’t seen Shell at the library, and another saying they missed her at some other meeting.
I can’t help compare Shell to Dad. Dad never took me to one of these things. Other people don’t come up to him and tell him they miss him.
I wonder if he wishes they would. Or if he could ever get to where it could happen.
A group of five football players run over to our table like a herd of buffalo. “What kind of pie is this?” the biggest one asks Shell, holding out his plate.
Shell raises a brow at me. “It should be apple.”
“Oh. It’s apple fennel raisin.” A nervous shock shakes my whole body. What if he doesn’t like it? What if the football players riot because they hate raisins?
Shell nods. “Apple fennel raisin,” she repeats.
He scrapes the plate clean and gives us a thumbs-up. “Seconds!”
“Better hurry!” one of his teammates yells. There’s a minor skirmish at the table as they try to get the last pieces. María and I only made three.
Shell turns to me with a small smile. “Well. Looks like you have a hit.”
“You’re not mad, are you?” I give her my best Jacques-eyes.
She ruffles my hair. “How could I ever be mad at you when you’re so clearly imitating my dogs?” Then she leans forward. “It’s okay because María helped you, but I’ve got health standards to uphold. So don’t think you can make random pies for the public any old time. Deal?” She holds up a pinky.
I loop it with mine. “Deal.”
Other than my daily duties and hanging out with Mr. Miniver, I spend most of my time in a corner of
the pie shop kitchen, trying out new flavors. Shell told me I could pick whatever I liked out of the garden. “The best way to learn how to cook is to do it,” she said.
So Suzanne and I have been making dinner when she’s home. Roasted chicken with lemon and thyme. Pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes, basil, and garlic. I chewed on a basil leaf, enjoying the herby flavor, if herby is a word. “Am I allowed to use this in a dessert?”
“There’s no rule against using herbs in pies,” Suzanne told me. “There are no hard and fast rules about anything. That’s why your fennel pie worked.”
First I write down my ideas in my notebook. Sometimes I watch The Bake Off and get super-crazy ideas. On one show, the baker named Nadiya made cheesecake in soda flavors, so I thought of making a pie that had root beer flavor. Then I realized I didn’t really know how to do that. I look at these ideas later and wonder what I was thinking. “That’s brainstorming,” Suzanne said when I showed her my notebook. “You write every single idea down, and if it works, great. If it doesn’t, no worries.”
So now I’ve got pages and pages of pie ideas I’m not going to use, but also a lot I still want to try. Shell lets me get whatever I like out of her garden, and Suzanne buys me extra ingredients when I need them. Suzanne says I have a penchant for sweet and savory combinations, meaning I like those the best.
What I do is imagine the ingredients first. I write the possible combinations in my notebook and narrow them down. Then I talk to Shell or Suzanne about them. Shell says simpler is better. After that, I gather the ingredients. I Google recipes to see if the pie already exists (even if it does, Shell says it’s fine to tweak what’s there). Last, I try making the pie.
Some of them are total duds. I tried to make a chocolate pie with a crushed pecan crust—I didn’t make the pudding right, the chocolate oozed out, and the crust fell apart. Shell said I’d overheated the chocolate and made me try it again. That time it held, but it was so bitter I spit it out. Turns out I didn’t add enough sugar. Then Shell said we’d try chocolate again later because we ran out, and chocolate’s expensive.
Summer of a Thousand Pies Page 15