I Only Have Pies for You, page 6
“Dace, you have school …” Mom started, then looked into my eyes. “This is such a crazy idea, but come on. We’ll look, and then straight to school.”
“Promise,” I assured her.
Not ten minutes later, we sat before the empty wedding chest amidst the piles of wedding mementos we’d unearthed from its belly. Mom had even carefully pulled the seams along one edge of the chest’s quilted lining so we could peek underneath to check for the recipe. But we’d found nothing except some musty mothballs.
“Hey, you know what? It’s all right.” Mom squeezed my shoulder. “I think if GG Hazel had wanted anybody to find her recipe, she would’ve left it in a more practical spot.”
“I’m not giving up.” I got to my feet. “Julip’s looking for the recipe. What happens if she finds it before we do?”
“She’ll give it to me,” Mom said firmly.
“Mom …” I sighed, knowing she was liable to launch into a lecture if I told her again how little I trusted Julip.
“Maybe GG Hazel got rid of the recipe entirely,” Mom said, thinking out loud. “She thought it had served its purpose. That people didn’t need it anymore.”
“I don’t buy that for a second.” I shouldered my backpack.
“No.” Mom’s voice was decisive. “I don’t either. Not with GG Hazel.” Mom began putting albums and wedding cards back into the chest. “Because … is there ever really a time when people aren’t in need of healing?”
We looked at each other, both thinking about the customers who came into the shop, suffering from loneliness, grief, heartbreak. Is there ever really a time when people aren’t in need of healing? No. No, there isn’t.
That thought was still on my mind when I got to school, right in time for lunch.
Bree grabbed me in a hug before I could sit down at our table, nearly making me drop my tray. “Dace, omigod, we were so worried! You quit texting us with updates on Ginger! How is she? Is she—”
“She’s fine.” I smiled as Bree collapsed onto the bench in relief.
“Great!” Zari opened her tablet and began typing. “Now I can publish my piece about you and your dad’s superb lifesaving skills.”
“Actually.” The color rose in my cheeks. “We shouldn’t get all the credit. Chayton helped out, too.”
My eyes skimmed the cafeteria until they found Chayton, sitting with JC and Tad. They were laughing over some joke he’d just told them. His gaze flicked to mine, and he smiled.
I raised my hand in a half wave, smiling back. When I turned back to our table, Zari, Bree, and Maria were all staring at me, openmouthed.
“What’s this?” Maria gasped. “A change of heart?”
I shrugged, focusing intently on my turkey sandwich. “Just a truce is all.”
“So … you two talked?” Zari raised an eyebrow. “Got along? Without arguing?”
“Only this morning, but … yeah, we got along.” It surprised me to say it. It was one thing that I’d decided to make peace with Chayton, but another to realize I’d enjoyed talking with him.
“So you’re friends,” Bree concluded.
I hesitated. Even if my own stubbornness was preventing me from admitting it just yet, I wanted us to be friends. He’d spent all night taking care of Ginger and done it knowing full well that I might still loathe him come morning. Not just anybody would’ve done that. Regardless of all the times he’d irked me when we were kids, what he’d done last night said something about who he was now. Something good. “We’re … working on it,” I said slowly.
“Thank goodness,” Zari blurted. “If he’d stayed your sworn enemy, we might have had to boycott the Main Street makeover and then I would’ve missed out on the story.”
My heart thumped in my chest, and I knew it was time to tell them. “Actually, today I have a story,” I said breathlessly. “And it’s bigger news than the makeover.”
Three pairs of eyes glued to my face. They knew me so well. If I said big news, it meant legit BIG news. I leaned forward, and, in a cascade of whispered words, poured out the story of what Julip had discovered at the library.
“Dios mío,” Maria said. That’s how I knew she was truly shocked, because she’d shifted into Spanish without even realizing it, something she never did. “So it’s really out there somewhere?”
I nodded.
Zari slapped her hands down on the table and stood up. “We’ve got to check out that tree,” she announced, way too loudly.
“Shhh,” I whispered, yanking her back into her seat. “I know, but we can’t go now. And Julip’s probably going to be scoping it out, too.”
“We have to stop her.” Bree’s sweet voice had an edge of panic. “She can’t get to it first. What can we do? We have to do something! We have to—”
“Easy there.” Maria patted Bree’s back consolingly. “We can’t do something right this instant.”
“No …” Zari had a thoughtful, scheming look on her face. “But we can keep Julip extremely busy until we have a chance to check out the tree.” She pulled out her phone and began typing away. “I’m going to set up an interview with her for after school today, and then we’re all going to keep her distracted until—”
“The picnic!” Bree said. “Principal Sawyer made an announcement about it this morning. He said The Panhandle Pickers are performing.” She grinned. Bree was a die-hard country music fan, and The Pickers were her favorite band. “Anyway, we can check out the tree during the picnic on Saturday.”
I nodded. “And maybe we can throw Julip off the trail until then.”
“There are lots of hearts in Bonnet,” Maria said. “There’s the heart in the stained glass window at Bonnet Baptist …”
“And the heart on the water tower,” Bree added.
“Weren’t the stools inside the Bonnet Soda Shop heart-shaped?” I asked. We all nodded, letting the possibilities for hiding places sink into our buzzing brains. “We’ll make a list of every heart in town where the recipe could be hidden. We’ll check them out, one at a time, and if we don’t find the recipe …”
“We’ll drop a hint to Julip. A red herring, to lead her in the wrong direction.” Zari rubbed her hands together. “I love it. It screams investigative reporting tactics.”
“We’ll get started after school,” I said determinedly. “If that recipe still exists, we’re going to find it.”
I rubbed a small circle in the dusty window of the Bonnet Soda Shop, then peeked out through it.
A dozen Bonneters were working on Main Street, even though the Saturday makeover wouldn’t officially kick off for another hour. I picked out Julip right away, colorful in her bubblegum pink dress.
Zari stuck her face beside mine and whispered, “Only Julip could make manual labor look so fashionable.” She giggled. “Can you hear that? She’s already giving orders.”
“No no no no no.” Julip’s honeyed Southern drawl had become a tightrope of commands. “I asked for red geraniums to be hung from each lamppost, not pink geraniums to be hung from each awning. People. Get it together.”
I swung away from the window. “We have to hurry,” I told my friends. “Julip’s down at the other end of the street right now, but she’ll be close soon enough.”
Bree and Maria were busy lifting the musty, grayed tarp off the soda shop’s counter and chairs. A cloud of dust rose in the air, making me cough, but I waved it away impatiently, moving to the row of pink heart-shaped swivel chairs.
Bree sighed. “Aw, I miss this place. The root beer floats were my favorite.”
“Never mind that now,” Maria said. “Start searching.”
We moved from chair to chair, inspecting each one carefully. They were bolted to the floor and still surprisingly sturdy, and all we discovered was some stale, cement-like gum stuck to their undersides. When we reached the last chair, though, the seat wobbled.
“This one’s loose.” I wiggled the cushion a bit more and it came away in my hands. I turned it over and my breath hitched as I spotted the word “heartstring” written on the underside of the cushion. Could this be it?
With a racing pulse, I tilted the seat toward the dim light from the window, trying to make out the rest of the faint, messy writing.
“What does it say?” Bree squeaked. “Is it the recipe?”
“‘My … heartstring,’” I read slowly, “‘is forever … tied to yours.’” I looked up into my friends’ expectant faces. “My heartstring is forever tied to yours.”
Bree clasped her hands to her chest. “Awwww.” She smiled. “It’s a love note.”
“Sweet. But not what we’re looking for,” Maria said flatly.
I felt a mixture of disappointment and curiosity. Whoever had written this note had to have at least known about Heartstring Pie. “I wonder who—”
“Who did what?” The voice was so loud in the quiet room that we all shrieked, and I dropped the seat top to the floor, where it landed with a deafening clatter.
“Chayton!” I yelled in both relief and exasperation when I saw him standing in the doorway. “You scared the beans out of us!”
“What?” he asked, his expression playful. “Did you think I was GG Hazel’s ghost, come back to claim her recipe?”
“Wait …” My eyes narrowed. “How did you know—”
“You all are about as subtle as a bull dancing the cancan.” He laughed. “You were snooping under the rosebushes at Bonnet Baptist on Wednesday afternoon, then looking under the heart bench in front of Vino’s Pizzeria Thursday. But I really knew something was up when I saw you climb the water tower yesterday.”
“You’ve been spying on us?” I folded my arms.
He held up his hands. “Not me. My mom. She’s been sneaking around, checking every place you’ve looked all week.”
“Red herrings.” Zari nodded proudly.
“Anyway, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together,” Chayton said.
I rolled my eyes. Great. We’d been found out. “So what do you know?” I demanded.
“I know about Hazel’s last words, and that my mom, and apparently all of you, think they’re a clue to finding the pie recipe. Mom’s been talking about it all week.” When I frowned, he laughed. “Don’t worry, Dace. I’m not here to sabotage your search. I came to help. Mom’s walking this way right now, and she has no place finding that recipe before you do. It belongs to your family.”
“That is so sweet,” Bree whisper-crooned, and Maria smacked her arm.
“Anyway, I told her I’d start looking,” Chayton continued. “You guys go outside and get started with the makeover. If I find anything else in here, I’ll keep it safe until I can get it to you. Okay?”
I hesitated, the question of whether or not to trust Chayton looming over me. Zari gave a small nod, as if to say, Too late not to. And if I couldn’t trust him, how could I ever have Chayton as my friend? I sucked in a breath, then said, “Okay. Thanks.”
We smiled at each other, and then Chayton walked toward me. “I’ll put this back.” His fingers grazed mine as he took the seat cushion I was holding. My skin tingled at his touch. “I’m pretty sure these words weren’t meant for my mom anyway.”
Then Zari was tugging my arm, leading me out of the shop alongside Maria and Bree.
“We are live in less than five minutes,” Julip announced through the bullhorn. “Paintbrushes should be in every hand.”
“She seems annoyed,” I whispered to Zari as we stood together on the Pies N’ Prattle porch. We were in the positions assigned to us by the Prairie Living camera crew.
Zari nodded. “Because she didn’t find the recipe in the soda shop.”
My friends and I had watched tensely from a distance as Julip had disappeared into the soda shop two minutes after we left it. When she and Chayton came out again, Chayton gave us a discreet thumbs-up, so I knew she hadn’t found anything. It was a relief, but that didn’t mean we could stop looking.
“Do you think she’s choreographed a synchronized brushstroke for us?” I asked Zari now.
She stifled a giggle in her elbow, since her hands were holding a brush and an open paint can. “I wouldn’t put it past her. Look at Bree and Maria.”
Bree and Maria had been assigned a post across the street from us at The Whole Enchilada, and they were hanging colorful lanterns outside the restaurant while posing for some test shots for the cameras. I could see Bree’s unnaturally wide smile and Maria’s shaking fingers. They weren’t the only ones flustered, either. Over the last half hour, most of the population of Bonnet had shown up for the makeover, bubbling with eagerness. But Julip was a bulldozer and she’d shoveled instructions over everyone about what to wear today, down to hair accessories, shoes, and belt buckles.
As a result, folks I’d only ever seen wearing denim had shown up in full flower-print skirts and kitten heels. What was absurd was that Julip was expecting them to paint and hammer in these outfits straight out of Perfectville. We’d also been instructed to smile as much as possible, and to look extremely busy and conversational. I’d never realized how much of a ruse reality TV was, and I didn’t like it.
This wasn’t the Bonnet that I knew and loved; it was a fabricated utopia. I was just about to say so to Zari when I caught sight of Chayton walking toward us with Caroleen beside him. Caroleen was smiling at him like he was the best view in Bonnet. He whispered something to her, and she threw back her head, laughing.
I felt an unfamiliar and unpleasant twinge in my chest. But a moment later, it was gone, replaced with a surge of adrenaline as Chayton left Caroleen to join me on the porch with his own paint can and brush.
“Is this spot taken?” He nodded toward a section of peeling white paint under the Pies N’ Prattle bay window. He rolled his shirtsleeves and tied back his black locks into a low ponytail.
For a second, I wondered if his hair was as soft as it looked. My heart skipped, and I shoved the thought away in confusion. Where had that come from?
“Don’t get sloppy with that paint, now,” I teased. “Use even brushstrokes. Up, down, side to side. And smile pretty for the cameras.”
“Sounds like you doubt my skill.” Chayton’s eyes sparkled.
“The last time I saw you paint was in kindergarten. Remember what you did to Ms. Cassie’s walls?”
“Hey, you said you wanted to have a contest to see who could paint the best garden. You can’t fit an entire garden on a single sheet of paper.” He waved his brush at me. “You were a bad influence.”
“Me?” I said. “I just wanted to see if you were up to the challenge.”
His laugh was cut short when his mom called his name.
“Chayton,” she said again, marching onto the porch. “Has it escaped your notice that there are camera crews lining this main street?”
“There are?” Chayton’s jaw dropped in mock shock.
Julip leaned toward him. “This is no laughing matter. You know what this means to me, and … didn’t I ask you to change? I told you I brought a pair of nicer jeans for you.”
Chayton glanced down at his dirt-smudged, faded jeans. “These look more authentic. Like I walked over straight from the stables, which is actually true.”
“That was an hour ago. You had plenty of time …” Julip pursed her lips. “Why do you have to go out of your way to cause a scene?”
Chayton’s smile faded. “I’m not causing a scene, Mom. Don’t put me in the show if my jeans are going to screw everything up.” He shrugged. “I don’t care.”
He turned away from her then and focused intently on his painting. Julip opened her mouth to argue, but she was interrupted by a guy from the camera crew. She gave Chayton one more disgruntled glance, then hurried off the porch as a makeup artist applied powder to her face.
“Wow,” Zari muttered. I turned to shush her but Chayton hadn’t heard. He was slapping paint onto the porch and holding the brush in a death grip.
I’d never seen him so ruffled, and I had the urge to talk to him about it, but I heard Julip Freedell’s singsong voice resonating up and down Main Street.
“Hi, y’all, and welcome back to Prairie Living.” Julip was grinning for one of the cameras. “Because I care about you so much, today I’m sharing something special with you. My hometown of Bonnet, Texas!”
The cameras—there were at least a dozen shooting from different vantage points all over Main Street—were zooming in on smiling faces and waving hands. A producer sat at a laptop looking at all the shots, deciding on the best ones to stream live.
Julip kept on with her monologue, talking about how much she loved Bonnet and what a wonderful childhood she’d had in our bucolic town. As everyone painted, hung up new store signs, and repaired broken shutters and porch railings, Julip moved among us, giving hugs to her old classmates and chatting with everyone as if we were her long-lost best friends.
At one point, Julip had a camera follow her inside Pies N’ Prattle to share the shop’s history. From my post on the porch, I watched Mom beam with pride as she displayed one of her freshly baked peach pies for the camera. Then, much to my horror, she and Julip waved me into the shop, and a camera homed in on me.
“Here she is now,” Julip was saying to the cameras, “Dacey Culpepper Biel, Hazel Culpepper’s great-granddaughter.”
Despite my hammering heart, I mustered a smile for the camera.
“Edie …” Julip turned to my mom. “I bet you’re tickled pink to have Dacey working in the shop with you.”
“Of course I am,” Mom said evenly. “I love teaching her the pie business, and I am proud to be carrying on our family’s legacy with her beside me. It’s my hope that someday, she’ll claim her spot in the long line of Culpepper master bakers.”
My insides knotted and my skin turned slick.
“Well, Dacey,” Julip said to me. “If there was one pie you’d bake for our audience right now, what would it be?”
Panic rose in my throat. I stared into the camera lens and it stared back like an enormous black eye, seeing past my twitching smile to my innermost secrets. It knows, I thought. It knows I can’t bake.
