OJ did, and he read out loud, “Thanks so much for this invite, OJ! I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it, but I should know by Monday, and I’ll let you know. Okay?”
He looked up, and Otis saw all the hope and apprehension in his son’s eyes. He gently took the phone from him, as OJ said, “So we’ll know by Monday, yeah? Then we’ll know if we need to go buy more food.”
Otis chuckled. “Buddy, it’s one person. We’re not gonna need more food.”
“Yeah, but Bailey really likes those brown sugar carrots,” he said. “I could make them for her.”
“Sure,” Otis said, because this was not a hill he was willing to die on. “Why don’t you go ask your mother to see if that was part of her menu, and if it’s not, and Bailey comes, I’m sure she’ll let you make them.”
“All right,” OJ said, and he skipped out of the office. Otis watched him go, and then looked down at his phone as it started buzzing again. This time it was a smaller group message with just him, Luke, Trace, and Tex in it. Trace had started it, and he’d asked,How are you feeling about Joey andAdam? Do you think this is going to be a problem for Country Quad?
Otis thought about the question for a moment, feeling a gentle chastening move through him. Either he trusted Joey…or he didn’t.
Then let his thumbs fly as he typed out his response.
Not at all.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Joey sat next to Grams, who wore her Sunday finest—complete with a hat. It wasn’t a showy piece like what women wore to the Kentucky Derby, but a beautiful, petite cap in pale blue nonetheless. Joey tried to pay attention as the pastor spoke about gratitude, which went right along with the Thanksgiving season, but her attention kept wandering to her email.
Aunt Faith had gotten her website up and running last week. Joey had named her pie bakery Rooelle Pies, and at the same time she’d coordinated Adam’s move from Coral Canyon to Dog Valley, she’d cleared with Shawn to use the industrial kitchen at Pork and Beans on Tuesday and Wednesday to bake her pies.
She’d been talking about the pie orders on social media, and all of her aunts had helped spread the word through thebookstore, the furniture store, Ev’s dance studio, everywhere.
Adam had reposted her post to the Country Quad page, and the traitorous hope built up in her as she tapped over to her email again. She pressed her eyes closed, imagining dozens and dozens of emails, all pie orders that had come in in the ten minutes since she’d last checked.
Joey wasn’t sure if she wanted to run a pie bakery full-time, but she’d set a goal of making an additional one thousand dollars this holiday season. That would be enough for a security deposit on any of the one-bedroom, one-bath apartments she’d seen online. That too had consumed all of her free time this week.
She almost scoffed at the thought of having free time, as she seemed to run from sunup to sundown and well into the night. Her heart took courage when she saw a single email sitting there, an order for the chocolate silk toffee pie.
A smile spread across her face, and she tapped over to the spreadsheet where she kept track of the orders. That chocolate silk pie brought her total to twenty. She looked up, an awful mix of hope and desperation in the back of her throat. Twenty pies equaled a two hundred dollar profit, and that only comprised twenty percent of Joey’s goal.
She told herself the pie bakery website had been talked about for three and a half days, and she couldn’t expect hundreds of orders within the first hour. Thanksgiving had come early this year, as the first had been on a Thursday, and she had five weeks to keep selling for holiday parties and Christmas.
She glanced over to Grams, who bent her hatted head down. “What is it, dear?” she whispered, and Joey appreciated that her grandmother didn’t scold her for not paying attention to the sermon. She somehow sensed that Joey needed her, and she would set aside anything to be there.
“Do you think I should post again about the pies?” she whispered. She tilted her phone so that Grams could see the extra pie order.
“Couldn’t hurt,” Grams said, and she patted Joey’s knee as she straightened again. Gramps had not been feeling well this morning, and they’d left him at home on the couch with a football game playing, his glasses perched on his nose and his Bible open in front of him.
Joey glanced up toward Pastor Michaels as he talked about what God expected of them. “A broken heart and a contrite spirit,” he said. “And hands willing to do the Lord’s work.”
An idea struck Joey’s mind, and while it wasn’t exactly religious and had everything to do with her earning more money, she quickly navigated over to her social media.
She found the picture of her in a professional culinary institute uniform of a chef’s jacket and a tall toque. She uploaded it and typed in:Let my hands do your Thanksgiving pie work! Hi, my name is Joelle Young, and I’m the owner of Rooelle Pies, and this holiday season, I’m offering full-size pies and mini pies for any occasion, including Thanksgiving, Sunday family dinners, birthday parties, holiday parties. Whatever you can imagine, I will bring the pie.
Thanksgiving orders must be in by Monday at 4 p.m. and I’m offering four flavors: spiced pumpkin, classic apple streusel, my granny’s famous pecan, and a decadent chocolate silk toffee that will have everyone skipping the turkey and reaching for dessert first.
Check RooellePies.com to order!
She added as many relevant hashtags as she could think of and posted the picture. She wasn’t sure why, but a weight felt like it had been lifted from her chest, and she turned her phone over face down on the bench next to her.
Then finally, she was able to tune in to the pastor’s sermon about showing and expressing gratitude year-round. She could definitely do a better job of that, and while she’d heard of people doing gratitude journals for the month of November, she’d never done anything like that.
There’s nothing stopping you from doing it in December, she thought, and she knew Georgia would have leftover gratitude journals at the bookstore.
