“Now you hold on there, Flo,” Mamie said. “You know Gertie asked if Jackson could sit with Scarlett at the show already, and Ophelia claimed his other side for Cletus’s great-niece.”
Jackson spotted his momma carrying out a couple of pies. He leapt to his feet.
All unhurried and manly and graceful-like, of course. “’Scuse me, ladies, looks like Momma needs some help.”
She didn’t, of course, but Jackson had been over in the desert and missed sweet potato pie last Christmas.
“Bring us back a couple pieces,” Mamie said.
“But make mine small.” Miss Flo adjusted her librarian glasses over a saggy pout. “Doctor says I have to watch my girlish figure.”
“Looking good to me, Miss Flo.”
And while the ladies tittered away, he went off hunting some sweet potato pie.
But five minutes later, when he’d finished delivering the ladies their after-fried-chicken desserts, he sat down to enjoy his first sweet potato pie in over a year and a half, and found it wasn’t the right mix of sweet and potato.
Maybe it was the conversation.
“Is Daisy the one with the mole?” Louisa was asking. She’d joined the ladies when her girlfriends went off in search of refills. Looked like Momma and Russ would be hosting a sorority party tonight. Jackson said another silent thanks for Mamie’s couch. He’d logged a lot of hours on it already this summer.
“No, no, sugarplum, that’s Scarlett,” Mamie said.
“Daisy’s the one with the” —Miss Ophelia shot Jackson a look and dipped her voice to funeral parlor soft while rubbing her upper lip— “hormone imbalance.”
A chorus of “Ooohhs,” accompanied a round of heart blessings.
Jackson shoveled another bite of pie in his mouth.
It was the crust, he decided. Not as flaky as he remembered.
A creeping sensation went down his back, like he was being watched by a rabid armadillo.
Wasn’t Momma’s crust that’d ever been so flaky.
It was Anna Grace’s.
“Pie okay, sugarplum?” Mamie asked. “You look like you swallowed a frog.”
Pie was great.
But it wasn’t that apple stuff he’d had two nights ago. “Pales in comparison to the company,” he told Mamie with as much of a charming grin as he could muster when he was getting ideas about sneaking out of Louisa’s post-birthday breakfast tomorrow to head on back to Georgia for some apple pie for breakfast.
He hoped leaving Anna Grace in his kitchen hadn’t screwed up his chances of getting some more of that pie.
He eyed Mamie. She eyed him right back.
Hoped she didn’t figure out he’d left a lady alone in his house to put his kitchen together. He’d been raised better than that.
But the way Anna Grace had salivated at the mess, he reckoned it would’ve been right cold of him to tell her to come back another day. He’d lay odds the girl had more issues than her ex-husband not loving her.
Wasn’t ready to lay odds more of that apple pie would be worth it though.
Still, he’d take apple pie over Daisy and Scarlett’s biscuits.
He broke eye contact with Mamie and turned to his baby sister. Her eyes were crawling with an afternoon hangover, but she was grinning big, Daddy’s dimple popping out, telling Miss Ophelia about that engine Russ had arranged for her. “Smells like french fries,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the guysthatattracts. Not the kind I’d give my biscuits to, don’t you worry, Mamie.”
“Get anything else good?” Jackson asked.
