Pies and Prejudice (37 page)

The rest of the morning passed by in a blur of baking, plating, and dish washing. The breakfast rush merged into brunch and before Ella Mae knew it, the lunch crowd had arrived.

With a loud “Yoo hoo!” Ella Mae’s aunt Verena strode into the kitchen, a glass of pomegranate iced tea in hand. Verena, who was clad in a black and white checked dress and a pair of cardinal-red pumps, settled onto a stool and drank her tea down in three gulps. Verena was famous for her hearty appetite. As she surveyed the heaps of dirty dishes in the sink and the pies cooling on wire racks, her fingers marched across the worktable and snagged a blueberry from a bowl of fruit salad. “Full house again, I see!” She popped the berry into her mouth.

Ella Mae cut a tomato basil pie into even wedges and wiped a hunk of dried dough from her forehead. “Are you still glad you invested in this place?”

Verena rolled her eyes. “Of course!” she shouted. Verena didn’t have an indoor voice. Whenever she spoke, it was as if she was addressing a large crowd. Her exuberance was as powerful as her appetite. “But we’re all worried about you, Ella Mae. You work all day and then you go home, drink
some wine, and fall asleep with a book in your hand. That’s no way to live! Where’s the fun? The adventure?”

“Has my mother been spying on me?” Ella Mae joked, but she didn’t really want to hear Verena’s answer.

Grabbing another blueberry, Verena shook her head. “No one’s peeking in your windows. We only have to look at you to know that you’re in over your head!” She scrutinized her only niece. “Your hair’s a tumbleweed, you’re too skinny, and I bet you can’t recall the last time you ate out or went to the movies. You need help!”

Reba entered the kitchen in time to catch Verena’s last sentence. “Amen to that. Our girl needs another employee, a car, and a roll in the hay. And not necessarily in that order.”

Shooting Reba a dirty look, Ella Mae said, “I’ll run another ad in
The Daily
, okay? If I get a break this afternoon, I can check out the auto listings too. As for the roll in the hay? I should get divorced first, don’t you think?”

Balancing three plates on her arm, Reba still managed a shrug. “Sloan didn’t let his marriage vows get in his way, so why should you?”

“Hush up! She’s going about things the right way!” Verena scolded, grabbed the next two orders, and followed Reba through the swing doors. She came back a minute later. “Dining room’s stuffed, patio’s packed, and there’s a line at the counter!”

Groaning, Ella Mae hurriedly plated two lunches, slipped off her apron, and picked up the dishes that needed to be delivered to a patio table.

Verena was right. There wasn’t an empty seat in the shop. Reba was busy boxing a key lime pie for a to-go order while the in-house customers eyed her impatiently. Some were waiting for food and others were eager to pay their bill or have their drinks refreshed.

“This place is a train wreck,” Ella Mae murmured. Pasting on a smile, she served lunches to the couple seated by
a cluster of black-eyed Susans and pink coneflowers, checked to make sure the rest of the patrons were enjoying their meals, and then went back into the dining room to see to her other customers’ needs.

By the time she’d walked around the room with pitchers of sweet tea and ice water flavored with paper-thin slices of lemon and lime, the line at the counter had doubled. Without being asked, Verena volunteered to ring customers on the register. Ella Mae blew her aunt a kiss of gratitude and then hustled back out to the patio to tend to people’s empty glasses.

Too preoccupied to bring dirty dishes into the kitchen, Reba and Ella Mae piled them on the counter behind the display cases, well out of sight of the customers eagerly waiting to buy slices of dessert pies and tarts to take home. Ella Mae had just finished boxing a half dozen cherry hand pies when Reba thrust a plate containing a piece of blackberry tart into her hands.

“Take this outside to Mr. Burton. He’s sitting by the geraniums. And don’t get stuck at his table,” she warned. “He’s a real talker.”

Reba was right. Mr. Burton accepted his tart and before Ella Mae could slip away, he asked where the blackberries had come from.

“There’s a lovely swimming hole on the way to my house,” she explained, momentarily distracted by the image of the deep pool of water in the middle of a copse of old trees. “On a rise above the water, there’s a ridge covered by blackberry bushes. They grow plump and juicy all summer long and are the best I’ve ever tasted.” Her eyes grew distant as she pictured the place. “The sun bathes them all day and at night, cool air from the swimming hole drifts upward and coats the berries in a gentle dew. My mother used to say that fruit and flowers are best picked by moonlight, so that’s when I go.”

Mr. Burton had yet to sample his tart, but now he lifted
a forkful to his mouth. He closed his eyes and chewed slowly, relishing the sweetness of the berries and the flaky, butter-kissed dough. “I taste them both,” he said, his eyes filled with delight. “The sunshine and the moon glow. I think it’s about the most magical thing I’ve ever eaten. Could you box a piece for my wife? She’s been feeling poorly lately. It’s her hip, you see.”

Ella Mae did her best to look sympathetic, but she sensed the tale of Mrs. Burton’s hip could go on for quite some time and time was one thing Ella Mae couldn’t spare. With an apologetic smile, she interrupted Mr. Burton’s narrative and excused herself.

The moment she opened the door leading into the dining room, she was assaulted by an unpleasant aroma. It was strong and acrid—the kind of odor that typically accompanies a fire. Ella Mae stopped and sniffed.

“Something’s burning,” she murmured and then saw a curl of smoke escape from the crack between the kitchen’s swing doors. She began to walk toward the counter, horrified to see another curl and then yet another snake through the tiny opening. The smell intensified.

At first, Ella Mae had found it reminiscent of smoldering wood, but now it called to mind the image of something blackened and charred. Something like a pie. A half dozen meat pies to be exact.

“No, no, no!” Ella Mae cried and rushed into the kitchen.

She was met by a wall of gray smoke that obscured the worktable and countertops. As she moved closer to the commercial ovens, the air darkened from pale pewter to dark charcoal. Ella Mae quickly turned the appliances off and opened the top oven door. Smoke burst out like a puff of dragon’s breath coming from a mouth of a cave and Ella Mae waved it away from her face with a potholder. Bubbles of burned cheese and ground beef pooled at the base of six black and unrecognizable shapes. To Ella Mae, the pies looked like charred Frisbees.

“The dinin’ room’s clearin’ out!” Reba shouted, flinging open the back door. “If you wanted a break, you could have just asked. No need for such dramatics.”

Ella Mae removed the smoldering pies and dumped them into the garbage can. “I know you’re teasing me, but I don’t see anything funny about this. By suppertime, everyone in Havenwood will be talking about how I burned an oven full of pies.”

Reba slid the window above the sink open. “They didn’t exactly stampede out of here. Everybody paid and I gave them all a slice of dessert pie to take home for their trouble. I put up the closed sign too. We’re done for today, sugar.”

Sagging against the worktable, Ella Mae watched the smoke race out of her kitchen and rise into the clear August sky. “At least the smoke alarm didn’t go off.”

Glancing at the ceiling, Reba frowned. “I reckon that’s not a good thing. Isn’t it supposed to yell and scream when the kitchen is close to burnin’ down? And what’s that little red blinking light mean?”

“A malfunction,” a man’s voice said.

Ella Mae turned to see Hugh Dylan standing at the other end of the room. He was breathing hard, his chest straining against his navy blue Havenwood Volunteer Fire Department T-shirt. He ran a hand through his molasses-brown hair and looked around. “No flames?”

“Not this time,” was Ella Mae’s foolish reply. She tried to look away from Hugh’s startling eyes, but they were as mesmerizing as always. She tried not to be captivated by their brilliant hue—twin pools of blue-green that made her think of secluded Grecian coves, but she found herself getting lost in them just the same. Eventually, her gaze moved down to his lips, which she had kissed not so long ago, and the strong jawline, which she’d traced with her trembling fingertips.

Ella Mae’s face grew warm as she recalled the two of them working together in this kitchen. How he’d had his back to her and then had suddenly pivoted until their bodies
had been so close that it had felt completely natural to erase the gap between them. She remembered raising her chin and parting her lips, how she’d closed her eyes and slid her hands over his broad shoulders as he’d bent to kiss her.

She remembered the feel of sparks leaping beneath her skin, of the heat coursing through her veins with such force that she thought she was burning from the inside out.

Even now, despite the smoke lingering in the air, she could detect Hugh’s scent of dew-covered grass and sun-warmed earth. Just the memory of it filled her senses. But she could also never forget how quickly those seconds of exquisite pleasure had turned to pain. How she and Hugh had broken off their kiss, baffled and frightened. They’d only been alone together once since that day, but they hadn’t touched. And as the summer passed, Ella Mae feared that they’d never find a way back to the moment they’d shared in this room.

Reba cleared her throat, forcing Ella Mae back to the present.

“We’re okay,” she told Hugh. “Just a bit of smoke. There’s no damage.”

“Speak for yourself,” Reba said and put a hand to her forehead, feigning a swoon. “I feel kinda dizzy. You might need to carry me outta here, young man.”

Hugh grinned. Along with everyone else in Havenwood, he knew that Reba was an incorrigible flirt.

“How did you find out about my little charbroil incident anyway?” Ella Mae asked.

Hugh focused his blue-green gaze on her once again. “One of your customers called nine-one-one. The rest of the emergency response crew will be here any—”

The rest of his sentence was cut off by the howl of a siren.

“Oh, no!” Ella Mae shouted and hurried past Hugh and through the dining room. She burst out of the front door onto the wide rose-covered porch in time to see a neon yellow fire truck turn the corner and head down her street, its siren’s wail cutting through the peaceful afternoon.

Ella Mae leapt off the porch and raced up the flagstone path lined by snapdragons and purple salvia and frantically tried to wave the truck away.

“They’re not going to drive by!” Hugh yelled, clearly amused by her antics. “Someone reported a fire so they have to investigate now.” The smile playing at the corner of his mouth suddenly disappeared. He stared at the fire engine, frowning in confusion. “What the hell?”

Ella Mae followed his gaze. It took a few seconds for her mind to register what she was seeing, but when the image became clear, she began to laugh. For there, clinging to the steel handrail on the back of the fire truck, her canary-colored dress flapping in the wind like a ship’s sail, was a middle-aged woman.

She was no firefighter. That much was obvious to both Hugh and Ella Mae. In addition to her bright sundress, the woman also wore a pair of blue Converse sneakers and rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses. As the truck drew closer, Ella Mae could also make out a fuchsia headband in the woman’s gray hair.

“Why are you laughing?” Hugh asked. “Do you know that crazy lady?”

“It’s Mrs. Dower,” Ella Mae replied, delightfully awestruck. “She’s the organist at the Havenwood First Baptist church.”

Hugh threw out his hands in frustration as the truck drew to a halt and the siren ceased blaring. “I don’t care if she’s the preacher! She can’t just hitch a ride on the back of our engine!”

Ella Mae smiled. “I think she’s having a carpe diem moment. It’s been a long time coming too, so let her be.”

Mrs. Dower hopped off the back of the truck, waved at Ella Mae, and paused by one of the rosebushes marking the far corner of the pie shop’s lot. She bent over, drew in a deep lungful of flower-scented air, and then plucked one of the soft purple roses from the bush. Tucking the flower behind
her ear, she skipped down the sidewalk in the direction of the church, as agile and carefree as a young girl.

Hugh’s shock quickly faded and his eyes twinkled with humor. But then he looked at Ella Mae and his expression changed. She saw longing there. And a reluctant resignation too. “When you first came back to town and I saw you at your aunt’s school, I knew you were going to be trouble.” His smile was twisted, as if being so close to her was agonizing. “So why is it I keep ending up here? Why can’t I stay away from you?”

And then, without waiting for an answer, Hugh walked off to meet his fellow firefighters.

Hurt and confused, Ella Mae turned back to her pie shop. She noticed how the gray-white smoke still hovered over the roof like a pair of wings. She studied their shape, thinking that they didn’t resemble the wings of a bird or even an angel. They were wispy and diaphanous, shimmering in the air for a few precious seconds before disappearing completely. Like the wings of a dragonfly. Or a fairy.