Something that had no business being there, and she pressed it down firmly and turned to the next customer. But she thought about it on the drive home. She thought about it while she was washing up that evening. She thought about a 10-year-old girl who had never met her, who was talking about her pies every Sunday morning before she'd even gotten out of bed. The following Saturday night, when she was working through the dark hours with flour on her hands and the lamp light low, she made a second sweet potato pie, the kind she hadn't made since her mother's last autumn, and she packed it separately and told herself she was bringing it in case someone requested it.
She knew that wasn't why she made it. The next Sunday, Nathan came at his usual time. He reached for the apple cinnamon as he always did. And Margaret said quietly. I made a sweet potato this week.
If your daughters might like something different. He looked at her. She kept her face neutral and professional. He said, "Rose, my younger one, she'd pick sweet over apple any day of the week." He paused.
I'll take both. He paid for both without blinking. Margaret wrapped them in separate cloths so the heat wouldn't make them sweat against each other. And when she handed them over, their hands didn't touch, but it was the closest she'd come to a real moment with another person in longer than she could remember without feeling sad about it. 2 weeks after that, the cruelty arrived in a new form.
It was a Sunday with a good crowd, more people than usual, because the autumn chill had made folks more willing to linger and socialize, and Margaret had her best table yet ate pies. All of them looking right, the crusts golden, and the smells carrying well on the cool air. She had even sold two before 9:00, which was early for her. She was wrapping a blackberry for a farm wife from the eastern edge of the county when she heard the children. There were three of them boys, maybe 8 or 9 years old, the kind of boys who moved in a pack and were brave in ways they wouldn't have been alone.
They had stopped near her table and they were watching her. And then one of them, she would not look directly at them. She was looking at the pie she was wrapping. She was keeping her face still. One of them waddled, just took a few steps in an exaggerated side to side motion, arms out, cheeks puffed.
The other two dissolved into giggles. The farm wife from the eastern county looked up sharply from the transaction. She looked at Margaret with an expression Margaret couldn't quite read. Pity probably or something close to it. Margaret finished wrapping the pie.
That'll be $2, Mrs. Henderson, the woman said. She dug into her purse with more force than necessary. Those boys ought to be ashamed of themselves, she said not quietly. Boys will be boys, Margaret said. Which was what you said when you didn't want to make it bigger than it needed to be.