Pies and Prejudice (2 page)

Ella Mae put three mint leaves on the bottom of a tumbler and filled the glass with sun tea. Handing the beverage to her mother like a peace offering, she said, “You don’t have to serve the pie to my aunts if you don’t think it’ll taste good.”

“It will be an experience, I’m sure,” Adelaide LeFaye stated cryptically. “And Reba’s right. You have a gift when it comes to pastries. That’s why I never understood why you took off with…with
that man
to go to New York. There are culinary schools in Atlanta, and I’m certain, especially in light of what happened, that we also have more
gentlemen
here in Georgia.”

Curling her fists into tight, angry balls, Ella Mae tossed an ice cube into her mouth and started to crush it with her teeth—an old habit that had always irked her mother. “I haven’t told you a single detail! I just got here and suddenly you know
exactly
what happened?”

Her mother shrugged. “It’s written all over you, Ella Mae. You’re too thin, your hair is dull, and your skin is sallow. You caught your man cheating and now you’re questioning your value as a woman and wondering where you belong, where you fit in.” She took a sip of tea. “I can answer that last question. Your place is in Havenwood, with your family. I spent the last six months having the carriage house turned into a charming little apartment. And guess when the last throw pillow was delivered by the decorator?”

“I don’t know,” Ella Mae answered sullenly.

“Yesterday,” her mother remarked with a smug smile. “It was as if I knew you’d need a safe haven.”

Ella Mae glanced at the oven timer and then filled a tumbler with crushed ice. “You make it sound like I need a place to recover from botched plastic surgery. For your information, my heart was broken! I pressed the button to call for the elevator, and when it came and the doors opened, there was my husband with the redheaded twins from five sixteen C.”

“Sisters?” Reba breathed.
“Damn.”

Pulverizing ice between her molars, Ella Mae was lost in the unpleasant memory and Reba’s comment didn’t register. “I didn’t recognize Sloan at first. I don’t usually see him from an ass-in-the-air angle.”

“Language, Ella Mae,” her mother tut-tutted while Reba sniggered.

Her eyes flashing between a mottled green and brown, Ella Mae advanced on her mother. “My
husband
was screwing one sister and had his hand up the other one’s skirt! Is
that
a nice, ladylike description?”

Reba put her hand on her chest. “Lord have mercy! Whatcha do?”

“I wanted to kill them.
All
of them,” Ella Mae admitted, her rage ebbing away as suddenly as it had flared. “But the only weapon I had was Chewy. And what was I going to do? Send my terrier into the elevator to nibble them to death?” She shook her head in disgust. “No, I didn’t want my dog to be tainted. If he touched any of them, I’d never want him to lick my face again!”

“Too bad you didn’t have mace or somethin’,” Reba mused. “Aren’t you supposed to carry stuff in your purse when you live in a big city?”

Ella Mae couldn’t help but laugh. “Reba. I traveled from our apartment to culinary school and back. I went to museums, boutiques, and ate at fabulous restaurants. Manhattan isn’t some den of iniquity. It’s a wonderful place. It’s where I dreamed of opening my pie shop.”

Reba turned on the oven light and peered at the baking pie. “If only you’d had
that
to toss in the elevator. Could you imagine the mess?”

She and Ella Mae exchanged smiles, but her mother’s expression was stoic.

“I grabbed the only weapons I had on hand,” Ella Mae continued her narrative. “A two-pound bag of flour, which I tore open and dumped on the six-legged beast, followed by a jumbo bottle of pure maple syrup. I then pelted them with an entire bag of pecan halves.”

“Sounds like a new recipe for humble pie!” Reba shouted and hooted with laughter.

“I didn’t stick around long enough to see what the building’s super thought of the human tarts. I hit the elevator’s alarm button just as he sat down at his desk in the lobby, grabbed Chewy, and ran.” Ella Mae sank down on a stool, suddenly weary from having told the story whose finale spelled the end of her seven-year marriage to Sloan Kitteridge.

At that moment, the oven timer beeped. Ella Mae turned it off and opened the door, inviting a rush of heat and the
scent of crisp dough and warm blueberries into the room. She imagined tendrils of sugar and cinnamon curling around her, coaxing the tension from her shoulders and taking her back to bike rides on dirt lanes and afternoons running barefoot through soft summer grass.

Ella Mae put the pie on the counter and all three women drew closer to it and to one another. Sparkles of sugar on the crumble’s browned crust winked in the light, and for the first time since Ella Mae had come home, she found her mother looking quite pleased.

“Reba, be a dear and put the kettle on for tea. My sisters will be here shortly.” She scrutinized Ella Mae’s outfit of jeans and T-shirt and clearly found it wanting. “Are you going to freshen up before they arrive? I’m sure you want to make a good impression. After all, they haven’t seen you for seven years.”

Ella Mae examined the speckles of flour on her shirt and glared at her mother. She then turned and walked away, thinking,
And whose fault is that?

Ella Mae’s three aunts, Delia, Verena, and Cecilia, fluttered into her mother’s house like a flock of colorful, noisy birds. Delia, a metal sculptor known as Dee to her family, spent most days dressed in overalls and wielding a blowtorch. In honor of her niece’s return, she’d unbraided her long, auburn hair so that it fell in soft waves onto the straps of her gauzy floral sundress. She was the quietest of the four women and spoke in a soft, gentle voice. If Ella Mae made a pie to represent Dee, it would be a warm and comforting double-crust apple with a sweet surprise of raisins in the filling.

Verena, the eldest of the four sisters, was bright and bold as a cherry pie. She always wore outfits consisting of black and white pieces coupled with a vibrant accessory, so Ella Mae was unsurprised to see her aunt in a black skirt, white blouse, and an enormous necklace made of red coral. Verena
was married to Buddy Hewitt, Havenwood’s mayor, and spent her time serving on a host of town boards. She was the most gregarious of the sisters and tended to overeat, talk too loudly in church, and intimidate those who wouldn’t back her latest charitable endeavors.

Then there was Cecilia, who went by Sissy. She dressed in flowing, pastel-hued garments and moved with the same grace as the young dancers at her school, The Havenwood School of the Arts. As she crossed the spacious entry hall to embrace Ella Mae, the hem of her orange sherbet skirt caressed the floor with a delicate whisper. Sissy’s pie would be peanut butter chiffon. Light on the top but rich, sophisticated, and appropriately dramatic on the inside.

“We are
so
thrilled to have you back again!” After holding Ella Mae tightly, Sissy pushed her niece away and studied her. “Let me just drink in the sight of you. Oh.” She turned to Verena. “Hasn’t she
blossomed
?”

Sissy had a tendency to enunciate a single word of every sentence.

Verena put her hands on her hips and declared loudly. “You are a stunner, my dear! I have to admit, I’m jealous. I do recall when the four LeFaye sisters could walk into a room and the clocks would stop ticking for a full ten seconds, but the hands would fall right off the dial for you!”

Dee elbowed Verena. “You’re exaggerating, Sister,” she said in a near whisper. “We’ve never had the power to control time. If we did, I’d hit the pause button and catch up on the Davidsons’ basset hound sculpture.” She slipped past her sisters and gave Ella Mae a hug. “They lost their Radley over a month ago and I still haven’t finished work on their canine angel. I can’t seem to get his eyes right.”

Sissy gave Dee a crooked smile. “Just think of Adelaide during freshman year when she drank
all
the spiked punch at the Confederate Ball. She had basset hound hangover face the next morning!”

The laughter of the women spilled into the empty air and
Ella Mae had the sensation of champagne bubbles popping around her. As they all moved into the living room, the light streaming through the windows shined a little brighter, making the sterling silver candlesticks and framed photos on the mantel glint like Christmas tree tinsel. Even her mother seemed to glow in the company of her siblings, and Ella Mae wondered if anyone had ever seen four such beautiful, gifted, and formidable sisters as the LeFayes.

It had been both wondrous and daunting to be reared by this collective of women. Though her mother and Verena had married, Verena never had children, and neither Dee nor Sissy had expressed a desire to marry or raise a family. Therefore, five women, including Reba, had served as Ella Mae’s mothers, each of them teaching, guiding, and loving her until she’d left them behind for a good-looking man with a honeyed tongue.

Watching them now, Ella Mae was thankful that she’d kept in touch with her aunts during the seven years she was away, the seven years in which she and her mother didn’t exchange a single word. They’d called her constantly during that first year in Manhattan, knowing she was lonely and that Sloan often worked late.

She’d tell them of the city’s wonders while they’d update her on the doings in Havenwood. Ella Mae never asked after her mother, but her aunts always ended every conversation by saying, “And you know your mama sends her love, even if you don’t hear her speaking the words.”

At the time, Ella Mae believed Sloan’s love was all that she’d needed. How wrong she had been.

Dee must have noticed the shadow hovering over Ella Mae’s shoulder for she touched her niece on the elbow and gently steered her toward the sunroom where the table was set for afternoon tea. “Did you bake something?”

“Ella Mae volunteered to make us a pie.” Her mother gestured regally toward the table covered with a gleaming white cloth and a silver urn bursting with bright yellow
roses. Their petals shimmered in the light, reminding Ella Mae of the surface of a lemon tart.

“Adelaide!”
Sissy gushed. “Is this your new Yellow Ribbon rose?”

When her sister nodded, Sissy leaned in to smell the bouquet. “Hmm, I smell homecomings and
happiness
and…” She inhaled deeply, her eyes closed. “Immeasurable relief.”

Verena gave Sissy a bossy nudge. “The roses are lovely, Adelaide, but I am much more interested in finding out what Ella Mae learned in that fancy New York culinary school.” She took a seat at the table. “Come on, girls! All I had for lunch was three fried chicken thighs, a pile of okra, and a biscuit oozing butter. I’m starved!”

The women giggled with mirth. Verena was notorious for her appetite. Unlike her sisters, who were slim and lithe as dancers, Verena had a solid build. She was by no means fat, but as the eldest and tallest of the LeFaye sisters, she seemed larger than life to most of Havenwood’s populace. And when she was ready to eat, nothing could come between her and her meal.

Her mother served slices of Ella Mae’s pie, deftly lifting precise wedges of the dessert onto cloud white plates. Watching her, Ella Mae decided that she’d be a rhubarb-raspberry tart a la mode—the filling forced into sweetness by a dram of whiskey and the acidic taste of the berries softened by a plump scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The sisters chatted away as they loaded their forks, but the moment they savored their first bite of tart blueberries blended with flaky dough and finishing with the crunch of the sweet crumble, the women fell silent.

Ella Mae twisted the linen napkin on her lap, her own pie untouched.

They don’t like it,
she thought, watching her aunts. Her mother hadn’t served herself a slice, disappearing into the kitchen to get the tea instead.

Dee put her fork down and licked her blue-tinged lips. “Do you all remember Mack Davenport?” Her voice was so light and feathery that it nearly floated away. “That boy who lived down the street and moved away when I was in the third grade?”

Sissy and Verena nodded.

“I stole his baseball glove and slept with it under my pillow until high school,” Dee continued dreamily. “Mack was my first crush.”

Verena broke off a piece of crust and popped it into her mouth. She chewed, swallowed, and sighed wistfully. “I fell in love at church. John David Appleby. We sang in the children’s choir together and he stood right behind me. His breath was like a cool peppermint on the back of my neck. Four years of imaginary candy-cane kisses. We never spoke a word, but he sang like an angel.”

Sissy put her hand over her heart and sighed theatrically. “I kissed
my
first boy on a dock, watching fireworks reflect on the surface of Lake Havenwood. I thought I’d marry J. P. Littleton after that night, even though we were only
twelve
. I often wonder where he is now, what his life is like….”

Ella Mae looked from one face to another, stunned at the transformation that had occurred around the tea table. The sisters’ banter, light and airy as a cream puff, was gone, replaced by the blue tinge of heartache and regret.

“The pie,” Dee whispered in awe. “It made those memories swim to the surface.”

Verena and Sissy stared at their empty plates and then exchanged knowing glances.

“Were you thinking about Sloan when you baked this pie?” Verena demanded.

“Yes,” Ella Mae answered.

Sissy put a hand over hers. “Tell us
exactly
what you felt.”

Ella Mae hesitated and then whispered, “That I already
miss belonging to someone. That my chance for happily ever after has slipped away.”

The yellow roses in the center of the table seemed to lose their luster as the three sisters studied their niece. No one noticed when her mother returned with the teapot.

“Verena? Dee? Sissy?” she cried, setting the pot so roughly onto the table that the urn toppled, scattering rose petals into the overturned porcelain cups. “Why are you crying?” She reached out to Dee, catching a teardrop on her index finger, and then raised the vibrant bead of moisture closer to her face, her eyes widening in astonishment. “And why are your tears blue?”