I've been practicing for the Harvest Festival Children's Contest. I'm making a cinnamon apple. She paused. It's not as good as yours. The crust doesn't, she frowned.
It does something wrong at the edges. It shrinks, Margaret said. Emily pointed at her. Yes, that. Why does it do that?
Nathan said Emily with slightly more emphasis this time. The butter's too warm when you work it in. Margaret said, "You want cold butter almost too cold to handle. And don't stretch the crust when you lay it in the tin. Just let it fall.
If you stretch it, it shrinks back when it cooks." Emily stared at her. That's it. Just cold butter. And don't stretch it.
Emily looked at her father with an expression that said this was information she should have had weeks ago and someone was responsible for the delay. Nathan looked at Margaret with something in his face that she had not seen before, something that was quieter than gratitude, but deeper, and she looked away first because looking at it too directly felt like looking at something private that wasn't hers to see. Thank you, he said. It's good advice for any crust, Margaret said. professional and steady. Emily was already rearranging information in her head, working through the implications.
Can I ask one more thing? She did not wait for the answer. What do you do when the filling gets too runny? Add a tablespoon of flour to your sugar mixture before it goes in. Not cornstarch flour.
It holds different. Papa, Emily said immediately. I need to try it again tonight. Well talk about it in the cart, Nathan said. He bought the peach pie and the last cinnamon apple, and Margaret watched Emily talking at him continuously as they walked away, gesturing with her hands already rebuilding her whole approach in her head, and Nathan listening with his full attention, the way he always listened, steady and unhurried, like the words mattered.
Margaret turned to her next customer. She kept her face still. She did not let herself feel the thing that was pulling at her sternum like a thread being drawn through. She was not going to do that. Two Sundays later, the thing that Margaret had been carefully not letting herself feel arrived anyway, the way things do when you have been too careful with them for too long.