The following Sunday, he chose the blackberry. Margaret watched him go and felt something she hadn't felt in a long time. Something cautious like a door she wasn't sure she should open. She told herself it was nothing. A man liked pie.
Men liked pie. It was not a complicated situation. But she started making sure she had a fresh apple cinnamon every Sunday just in case. His name was Nathan Brooks. Though she didn't learn that until the fourth week when Pastor Elias stopped by her table and mentioned it in passing.
I see Nathan Brooks has been finding his way over here. Margaret, that man hasn't had a good pie since Eleanor passed. God rest her. And then moved on before she could ask a single follow-up question. Elellanar, his wife, then dead.
Margaret filed that away without knowing why. By the fifth week, something had shifted in the market, though Margaret couldn't have said exactly when it began. The whispers had gotten more specific. She heard them in fragments. The way you always heard things you weren't supposed to hear between the gaps in crowd noise and the spaces between stalls.
Nathan Brooks buying from the Dawson woman again. His girls deserve better than some spinster's charity baking. A man with his land and his name he could have his pick of Margaret's hands were steady on the table. Her face was still. She had a lot of practice.
What she was not prepared for was the morning Clara Hutchkins decided to say it to her face. Clara Hutchkins was the wife of the biggest grain merchant in Willow Creek, and she wore that fact the way some women wore jewelry visibly constantly, and with full expectation that everyone around her would be impressed. She was perhaps 45 handsome in a hard way, and she had a voice that could carry across a cattleard. She stopped in front of Margaret's table on the sixth Sunday with two of her friends flanking her like centuries and she looked at the pies and then she looked at Margaret and she said pleasantly enough. I do wonder sometimes what a man like Nathan Brooks sees in stopping here week after week.
Margaret met her eyes. He sees pie Mrs. Hutchkins. Clara smiled. The kind of smile that didn't touch anything above the cheeks. Of course he does. though I imagine there are plenty of places in this town where a man could get a decent pie without She paused, looked Margaret up and down with the particular thoroughess of a woman who wanted to make sure her meaning landed without going out of his way.
One of the friends made a small sound that was not quite a laugh. Margaret's hands were flat on the table. She could feel the wood grain under her palms. She focused on that. My pies are $2 each, Mrs. Hutchkins, she said.