Her mother was the same way. Ran in the family. What's she selling? Pies. Looks like a pause.
Well, who's going to buy pies from her? Laughter. Not cruel. Exactly. Or maybe it was.
Margaret had stopped being able to tell the difference a long time ago. She straightened the cloth on her table and looked out at the crowd and kept her face still. By noon, she had sold two pies. The sweet potato to old Mr. Callaway, who was half blind and wouldn't have noticed who was selling it. And one blackberry to a woman from out of town who was passing through and didn't know Margaret from Adam and simply said, "That smells wonderful, how much?" and paid without drama.
Margaret drove home with four pies and $9 and a feeling in her chest like something had been rung out and hung up to dry. She sat in her kitchen that night and ate a slice of the leftover apple pie. cold sitting at the table where her mother used to sit and she thought about her options. She could look for work as a housekeeper. She had tried that twice already and been turned away both times once because the family decided they didn't need help after all. And once in a way that was more honest and harder to forget.
She could sell the horse. She could write to her cousin in Billings, who she hadn't spoken to in six years, and ask for something, charity, basically, or she could come back next Sunday. She told herself she was only coming back because she had four pies left that would go to waste otherwise. She came back. She set up before sunrise again.
This time, she sold three pies by noon. One to Mr. Callaway again. One to a young mother who said her husband had a sweet tooth and the price was fair. And one to a man Margaret didn't recognize. Tall, somewhere around 40, dark hair, going silver at the temples, wearing a good coat, but worn at the elbows in a way that said, "Rancher, not banker."
He didn't say much. He looked at the pies for a moment, pointed at the apple cinnamon, said, "How much?" She told him. He paid it exact. Took the pie. nodded once the way men out here nodded when they meant something they weren't going to say out loud and left.
Margaret didn't think much of it. There were two more Sundays before she noticed. He came back. Same time, same quiet approach, same brief consideration of what was available. He chose the peach that week, paid full price, nodded, left.