I didn’t know why, but grief made me go to the kitchen. I didn’t mean to turn into “the girl who made pies for strangers.” I was only trying to keep my hands busy so my heart wouldn’t break.
It was one of those January nights when the ice hurts and the windows cry from the cold. When I was sixteen, I was laying in bed with headphones on, pretending to care about my homework as my parents laughed at something dumb on TV. I could smell smoke through my music after that. It was wrong, harsh, and metallic. The alarm rang. My dad came into my room, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me outdoors in the snow, which burnt my bare feet. He went back to see my mom and grandfather. They didn’t come back out.
They said there was something wrong with the kitchen’s electrical. The fire didn’t just murder my family. It ate everything, including my mom’s small ceramic horse that she gave me for my tenth birthday, pictures, and money. There was nothing else left in the yard.
A youth shelter provided me a dorm-style bed with two bathrooms on each floor and a kitchen that we all shared. There were around twenty of us. There were faded marker signs on the walls that proclaimed “quiet hours.” The shelter gave me a clean, warm, and safe place to stay. My aunt Denise, who is my mother’s only sister and my only relative, called once to say she didn’t have “room” for me.
She told me that my uncle used the extra room as an office and that she was “grieving too.” But she was awake enough to get half of the insurance money “to help with clothes and therapy.” She bought a wine fridge, a new car, and a stack of romance and detective novels. She also started wearing fancy hats to book club, which she called her “grieving wardrobe.” I didn’t dispute with her. I didn’t fight with anything. Following commands can feel a lot like being numb.
During the day, I studied hard and lived in my textbooks. If I didn’t win scholarships, I was out of luck. I snuck into the kitchen at night when everyone else was in the common area watching TV and talking on the phone. I learnt how to determine when butter is ready, how to feel the weight of flour, and how to use a wine bottle as a rolling pin if you scrub it a lot. With my allowance and coupons, I bought pies with blueberries, apples, cherries, peaches, and strawberries and rhubarb. I made ten pies at times. That night, I made twenty-one.
I put them in boxes, taped them up tight, and led them through the dark to the downtown homeless shelter and the hospice center, which was only a few blocks away. I gave them to a nurse or a volunteer and didn’t leave a name or wait to see who ate them. It was easier to love that way—quietly and without expecting anything in return. Aunt Denise still called to shout at me. She said, “You’re spending too much money.” “Those people don’t even know you.” I should obtain that cash. I also lost a sibling. She didn’t sound broken; she sounded angry. After I hung off the phone, I kept kneading.
Two weeks after my sixteenth birthday, the receptionist called my name and put a cardboard box on the desk. There was no return address, only my name written in cursive at the top. Inside was a pecan pie with a perfect braided edge, a golden tint, and a sprinkling of powdered sugar that looked like the first snow. When I used the dull knife from the drawer to cut into it, the blade hit something. A piece of plastic that is very thin. There was a note inside that was cream-colored and had ink around the edges:
“To the young woman with the kind heart and golden hands, your pies made the last few months of my life feel warm and full of love.”
I could feel your soul even if I never saw your face.
I don’t have any family left.
But I’d like to entrust my home and my blessings to someone who knows how to care for others.
— M”
My knees gave way. I slumped to the floor and stared at the crust while my heart pounded in my chest. The receptionist knelt down next to me and softly stroked my shoulder, like she was trying to calm a child who had been stung by a bee. “Go to sleep,” she urged in a quiet voice. “After, some things are easier.”
Three days later, a lawyer named Paul called. Talk clearly and slowly. He wanted to make sure that I was who I said I was and that I had been bringing pies to the hospice for about six months. “Yes,” I answered. “Then you might want to sit down,” he said. “Margaret Hendley passed away last week. She made you the sole person who would get anything from her estate.
I laughed, a loud, shocked sound that wasn’t mine. “What estate?” He typed it down like a list of groceries: her house, her car, her things, and a trust that her husband left her but she never used. “It made money for almost twenty years,” he said in a hushed voice. “It’s worth 5.3 million.”
I said softly, “She didn’t even know who I was.”
“She did,” he said. “One night, a night nurse saw your red coat with the missing button and followed you home from a distance to make sure you got there safely.” She saw you go into the shelter and asked the front desk for your name. At the end, Margaret was blind, but she made the staff tell her about each pie, including how it smelled and looked. She kept portions of her writing in a journal to share with others. “She’s young and grieving, whoever she is,” she said once. But she still knows how to love. She told us to look for you without making any noise.
I sat on a bench at a bus stop with scholarship forms spread out in my lap like fallen leaves. I looked up at the sky, which seemed too big for what was happening to me. I didn’t tell anyone anything. I was afraid that the truth would evaporate if I told it too soon. But Aunt Denise found out quickly nonetheless. People who enjoy reading obituaries can read probate notifications in the paper for free. She called to say that I “owed” her because she “raised” me and that “family” should get the house and the money. I put the phone down. After that, I blocked her number.
On a quiet street where porches still talk to each other, Margaret resides. The inside smells like cedar wood and old books. In the back, there is a greenhouse. My breath fogged up the first time I went in. There are flowers and orchids all over the place, and a little placard that says her husband made it for their 30th wedding anniversary. I moved in last month. I haven’t used the money yet. It isn’t going anywhere.
I now bake in her kitchen. I use her wooden spoons and the heavy rolling pin that makes the dough feel like silk. Over the oven, she wrote, “The best ingredient is time.” I still deliver pies to the hospice, the shelter, and now the hospital too. I included a card to each parcel that said, “Baked with love.” This feeling comes from someone who has been through the same thing.
I remember the last pie I made for Margaret, which she never saw, only smelled. The sugar popped, the butter melted, and the cinnamon sighed. Sometimes I think of how my dad’s hand held my wrist and pulled me into the snow. Sometimes I think about how grief tries to make you believe that love is over when it’s really just changing shape.
Someone I didn’t know sent me a pie, which changed the tale I was telling myself about what was left. But it wasn’t the money or the things I did that made me change. It was proof that the love I had given in the dark was somehow coming back, whole and warm, without needing my name. That was the first time in years that I felt truly at peace, even though my life had almost burned down to nothing.
