Katelyn Brawn - Pumpkin Pie

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection

BUDDHA

Chapter One

T here are a finite number of crystals inside a shaker of salt and yet I know I will never be able to count them. Theres something unsettling about not having that kind of control, even over a thing so inconsequential. I play with the tab of the industrial sized container of table salt as my eyes flick between the salt shakers lined up like soldiers in front of me. My chins resting on the edge of the checkered table of the booth Im sitting in, and I try like crazy to ignore the tacky substance thats sticking to me there. Its taken me almost ten minutes to remove the lids from the shakers at my banana slug pace. Truth be told, I have the easiest of all closing jobs, refilling the salt and pepper shakers. I always get through the pepper pretty fast, but my brain majorly slows down whenever it comes to the crystals in the salt.

Hey dumb-dumb, poor the sodium chloride, a voice exclaims from across the room as a rag hits me in the head. It soaks my face with the three day old water we use to clean the tables. I look up to see my friend Rosie smirking at me from behind the counter. She wipes her hands on the white lace apron she wears around her waist. Her red painted lips curl up into a smile as she piles a few empty pie tins on top of one another to take back to her kitchen.

How about you worry about yourself? I mumble as I bang one of the shakers against the counter to break up the clumps. I hate clumps. Not that shes wrong. I only have one thing I need to do while everyone else does the hard cleaning. I flip open the tab of the wholesale salt and pour about a tablespoon of the crystals into my palm and rub my hands together. I focus on the feeling of coarseness cutting into my hands.

Darling, I will always worry about you before me, she says with a smile as she makes her way back through the swinging doors into the kitchen with her pile of empty pie dishes. The clinking and clanking of the metal and ceramic pans against one another, mixed with the harshness of the salt in my hands pushes the rest of the room, including my responsibilities, away.

Bella pops up from behind the counter as Rosie finally exits. How is my ray of sunshine? she asks me as she begins her nightly fight to count out the money from the register. Bellas black framed glasses slip down her nose as she turns to the ancient money machine that Beattie, our boss, insists on keeping. Its older than all of us combined and barely ever works, but its Beatties prized possession and its not going anywhere. She lugs an oversized toolbox from under the counter and fishes around inside for the pieces she needs to conquer the beast. Victoriously she emerges with a flathead screwdriver to wedge the cash drawer open. It screeches and screams in protest as metal rubs against metal, but Bella doesnt seem to hear it.

I remember moving that massive eyesore in here months ago, my back still hurts at the thought. Its crazy for me to think that this place hasnt always been here. Its hard sometimes for me to remember how I survived without it for the first sixteen years of my life.

Allow me to welcome you to Hap-PIE-ly Ever After Pie Shop and Restaurant! Where all we serve is, you guessed it, pie, pie and MORE PIE! We make everything from my favorite pumpkin pie to your traditional apple and cherry to crazy things like Midnight Madness (a chocolate cookie crust with a dark chocolate and caramel cream, yum). Breakfast quiches and pasta pies (you havent lived until youve had lasagna in a flaky crust). Its one of the most popular places to eat in our small town. Especially considering its us or the questionable diner. For years mystery meatloaf and week old cannolis were the only option in our little corner of the East Coast, but thats all changed now.

Beatrix Cod, whom we call Beattie, moved to our town a year before and bought the old place that used to be a hardware store. Shed covered the windows in newspaper and I swear no one ever came or went. The only inkling to there being people inside were the sounds of saws and hammers. Walking by, we were overwhelmed by the smell of wet paint and sawdust, but we never heard voices. Being the nosy people that we all were in Harpersgrove, Maryland we couldnt NOT know what was going on in there, so we did our best snooping at all times. When you think of the gossipers in a small town you probably think of little old women sitting under dryers in the local hair salon. Not so in Harpersgrove. In our town its everybody, from the principal of the elementary school to the captain of the high school football team and even us, the girls who would come to work here. Were all guilty of spreading gossip about what was going inside the shop of mystery. The rumors stretched in every direction the imagination could go. My neighbor thought it was an S&M shop, my English teacher thought it was day care, and my sisters thought it was a vegan cupcakery.

So, the day came for the opening and Beattie, being her normal secretive self, hung the sign outside, under the cover of darkness. Then she actually covered it, like with a sheet. In front of the door stood Beattie, a woman about twice my age even though you couldnt tell by looking at her. Her dark red hair piled up on top of her head in a messy ponytail with pieces flying loose across her eye. Her flawless, freckled skin showed no trace of makeup. She wore paint splattered and ripped jeans and a tee shirt that actually read, Frankie Says Relax. Beattie was not a woman for the pomp and circumstance of appearance and I loved that about her. The people in town, I was sure, expected her to be in a dress or suit. I know they assumed shed be in something quasi-professional, anything but what she was wearing. And yet she was the most strikingly beautiful person Id ever seen. I cant tell you what it was about her, but she looked like a goddess or something. Maybe it was the eyes. She has amazing blue eyes, like a cloudless sky in the middle of summer.