I went to the kitchen because I was sad, but I didn’t know why. I never meant to be “the girl who baked pies for strangers.” I was only trying to keep my hands occupied so I wouldn’t become too sad.
It was one of those January nights when the windows weep from the cold and the ice hurts. I was sixteen, laying in bed with headphones on, pretending to care about my homework while my parents laughed at something dumb on TV. After that, I could smell smoke through my music. It was wrong, rough, and metal. The alarm rang. My dad came into my room, grabbed me by the arm, and brought me down the stairs and outdoors into the snow, which hurt my bare feet. He went back to visit my mom and grandpa. They didn’t come out again.
They said there was a problem with the kitchen’s electricity. The fire didn’t just murder my family. It ate everything, including pictures, money, and the little porcelain horse my mom gave me for my tenth birthday. I was the only thing left in the yard.
A juvenile shelter provided me a dorm-style bed, two bathrooms on each level, and a kitchen that we all shared. There were faded marker signs on the walls that proclaimed “quiet hours.” The shelter gave me a safe, warm, and clean place to stay. My aunt Denise, who is my mother’s older sister and my only relative, called once to tell she didn’t have “room” for me. She added 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 slew of romance and mystery books. She also started wearing fancy hats to book club, which she called her “grieving wardrobe.” I didn’t fight with her. I didn’t fight anything. Following orders can seem a lot like being numb.
I studied hard during the day, living in my textbooks. I had to get scholarships, or I was out of luck. When everyone else was in the common area watching TV and talking on the phone at night, I crept into the kitchen. I learnt how to know 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 enough. With my allowance and coupons, I bought blueberry, apple, cherry, peach, and strawberry-rhubarb pies. I made ten pies at times. That night, I made twenty-one.
I put them in boxes, taped them shut, and took them in the dark to the downtown homeless shelter and the hospice center, which were 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, without expecting anything in return. Aunt Denise still called me to shout at me. “You’re wasting money,” she said. “Those people don’t even know you.” That money should be mine. I lost my brother or sister too. She didn’t sound broken, she sounded angry. I hung up the phone and kept working.
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 scribbled in cursive on the top. Inside was a pecan pie with a perfect braided edge, a golden tint, and a sprinkle of powdered sugar that looked like the first snow. I used the dull knife from the drawer to hack into it, and the blade hit something. A small chunk of plastic. There was a note inside that was cream-colored and had ink smeared on the edges:
“To the young woman with the kind heart and golden hands, your pies made me feel warm and loved in the last few months.”
I never saw your face, but I could feel your spirit.
I don’t have any family left.
But I want to give my home and my blessings to someone who knows how to love.
— M”
My knees gave way. I slumped to the ground and stared at the crust while my heart beat behind my eyes. The receptionist knelt down next to me and stroked my shoulder in a way that made me think of how you would comfort a child who had been stung by a bee. “Get some sleep,” she advised in a quiet voice. “Afterward, some things are easier.”
Three days later, a lawyer named Paul called. Talk slowly and clearly. He wanted to make sure I was who I claimed I was and that I had been bringing pies to the hospice for approximately six months. I answered, “Yes.” “Then you should probably sit down,” he said. “Margaret Hendley died last week. She made you the sole person who would get anything from her estate.
I laughed, a sharp, shocked sound that wasn’t mine. “What estate?” He put everything down like a list of goods to buy: her house, her car, her stuff, and a trust her husband left her that she never used. “It earned interest for almost twenty years,” he said in a quiet voice. “It’s worth 5.3 million.”
I whispered, “She didn’t even know who I was.”
“She did,” he said. “A night nurse observed your red coat with the missing button and followed you home from a distance one night to make sure you got there safely. She saw you go into the shelter and asked the front desk for your name. Margaret was blind toward the end, but she made the staff tell her about each pie, including how it looked and smelled. She kept some of the things she wrote in a journal to share with others. She said once, “She’s young and sad, whoever she is.” But she still knows how to love. She told us to seek for you without saying anything.
I sat on a bench at a bus stop with scholarship paperwork strewn out in my lap like leaves that had fallen. I looked up at the sky, which seemed too big for what was happening to me. I didn’t talk to anyone. I was afraid that the truth would get lost if I told it too quickly. Still, Aunt Denise found out quickly. People who like to read obituaries can read probate notifications in the newspaper for free. She called to say that I “owed” her, that she “raised” me, and that the house and the money should go to “family.” I hung up the phone. After that, I blocked her number.
Margaret lives on a quiet street where people still talk to each other on their porches. The inside smells like old books and cedar. There is a greenhouse at the back. When I initially went in, my breath fogged up. There are flowers and orchids all over the place, and a small sign that says her husband built it for their 30th wedding anniversary. I moved in last month. I haven’t touched the money yet. It’s not going anywhere.
I bake in her kitchen now. I use her wooden spoons and the heavy rolling pin that makes dough feel like silk. There is a note on the oven that states, “The best ingredient is time.” I still deliver pies to the hospital, the hospice, and the shelter. I put an extra card on each gift that says, “Baked with love.” This person has been through something similar to what you are going through.
I remember the last pie I made for Margaret, which she never saw but only smelled. The sugar crackled, the butter melted, and the cinnamon sighed. I sometimes think about how my father grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the snow. Sometimes I wonder how grief tries to make you think that love is over when it’s really only shifting shape.
Someone I didn’t know sent me a pie, which changed the tale I was telling myself about what was left. But the money and the things I did didn’t change me. It was proof that the love I had given in the dark was returning back, whole and warm, without needing my name. Even though my life had burned down to almost nothing, that was the first real peace I experienced in years.