She watched them go. Rose had taken Emily's hand now somewhere near the edge of the crowd, the two girls walking close together, Nathan's hand resting briefly on the top of Rose's head before he moved it. a family that had lost something. Still moving forward. Anyway, Margaret sold her last three pies in the next 40 minutes and packed up her table and drove home and sat in her kitchen until the light changed and the room went gray. And she still hadn't figured out what she was supposed to do with the fact that a 7-year-old girl had just told her that her pies tasted like sundaes.
She wasn't going to romanticize it. She was very firm about that. The man bought pie. The children were kind children raised by someone who understood kindness. This was not a story.
This was commerce and a coincidence of loneliness her own and maybe his running parallel for a few Sunday mornings. She told herself all of that. She believed about half of it. The following week, a woman named Patricia Haynes, who ran the dry goods counter and knew everything about everyone, found her way to Margaret's table on a Tuesday, which was unusual enough that Margaret knew before she opened her mouth that something had happened. I thought you should hear it from someone who means well, Patricia said, which was the reliable announcement that what came next was not going to be comfortable.
Clara Hutchkins has been talking, more than talking. She went to see Reverend Aldis. Margaret kept her face still. About what? About you?
About Nathan? Patricia lowered her voice, which was her way of making sure the information felt significant. She told him she was concerned about the influence of, "I'm going to say this the way she said it, an unattached woman of no family and questionable character ingratiating herself with a widowerower's children for personal gain." The air in the room was very quiet. She said that Margaret said she said that Patricia confirmed with the particular grimness of someone who had the decency to be offended on another person's behalf.
Now Reverend Aldis is a reasonable man and he told her he'd seen nothing concerning but she's apparently not satisfied with that and she's talking to other people and I thought I thought you should know. Margaret looked at her hands on the counter, questionable character, ingratiating herself as though the crime was not cruelty but proximity, as though she had built something careful and quiet, and the building of it was itself the offense. "Thank you, Patricia," she said. "I mean that." Patricia left.
Margaret stood in her kitchen for a long time. She thought about not going back on Sunday. She genuinely thought about it, packed it up in her head, worked through what it would mean. She could sell the pies at the Tuesday market in Harrove, 40 minutes east. Different people, different air, no Clara Hutchkins, no conversations she hadn't asked to be part of.
She could just step sideways out of the whole situation and let it resolve itself without her. She thought about Rose saying, "It tastes like sundaes." She thought about Emily asking about the crust with that total transparent urgency of a child who just wanted to get it right. She thought about Nathan standing at the back of the market with a worn coat and a face that did not do easy things easily buying one pie every Sunday for months at full price. Never asking for a discount, never saying a single word about how she looked.