Nine days after we put my husband in the ground, my son’s wife dropped six sacks of flour and ninety-six pie orders on my kitchen table. “Everybody’s grieving something, Lola,” she said. “Pickup’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.” Neither of them knew what I’d spent $36,400 on, or where I’d be by Saturday night.
David and I had forty-four years, and the last two of them happened in a dialysis chair three mornings a week.
I drove him to every single appointment.
For most of that same stretch I was also making Corey’s truck payment, because the heating company had let him go and he swore it was only until spring.
Spring came twice.
Last November I baked for Angelica’s little side business six days running, on my feet at my own oven until my ankles looked like bread dough.
She posted online that she’d been up all night.
I let it go.
I let a lot go.
At the cemetery, Corey kept his sunglasses on through the whole service.
Afterward he walked me to the car with one hand on my elbow and said, “Did Dad’s policy come through yet? Angelica’s been pricing pools.”
I was still holding the program with David’s face on it.
The funeral home’s coffee had tasted like pennies, and I remember thinking about that instead of answering him.
The check came that Monday.
Ninety-one thousand dollars.
On Tuesday night I sat down with David’s crossword laptop and called the number on a brochure that had lived in the junk drawer since 2019.
A man named Sanjiv answered.
“How long are you hoping to be away, ma’am?” he said.
“How long have you got?” I said.
He laughed.
I didn’t.
Three hundred and thirty nights, twenty-eight countries, out of Galveston.
An inside cabin with no window, because I wanted the money for the ports.
I read him the card that only had my name on it now.
That night I packed the blue suitcase and hid it in the hall closet behind the vacuum.
I didn’t tell my sister Rebecca, who’d been sleeping in my guest room all week and putting masking tape on every casserole dish so they’d go home to the right church ladies.
I didn’t tell anybody.
Friday at six, Corey let himself in with the key I’d given him for emergencies.
Angelica followed him through the door, pushing a hand truck.
Six sacks of flour.
Four flats of foil pie tins.
A cooler of butter and a box of pecans the size of a car battery.
She parked all of it against my table, right beside David’s picture and the peace lily his old crew from the plant had sent.
She didn’t even pull her sunglasses down off her head to look at me.
“Orders are on the clipboard,” she said, scrolling her phone with one long pink nail. “Pecan, pumpkin, and the apple with the lattice. Lattice is twelve dollars extra, so don’t skip it.”
“Angelica, it’s been nine days,” I said.
Her upper lip went up on one side, the way it does when she sits on my couch.
“Everybody’s grieving something, Lola,” she said. “My mom’s dog has a tumor. Pickup’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. They’re ALL prepaid, so no excuses.”
“Pickup where?” I said.
“Here. It’s on the flyer.”
She slid it across the table.
It was a picture of MY pecan pie, the one with the scorched edge that I’d texted her at Easter.
Across the top, in red letters, it said NANA LOLA’S FAMOUS PECAN.
Fifty-four dollars each.
I turned David’s funeral program over and did the math on the back with the pen from the bank.
Five thousand, one hundred and eighty-four dollars, before the lattice.
“And what does Nana Lola get?” I said.
Angelica laughed.
“You get to stay busy,” she said.
Corey jingled his keys by the back door.
“Mom, come on, that’s the whole point,” he said. “You’d just sit in here with the TV going and eat ziti. This is GOOD for you.”
“Where are you two going to be?” I said.
“Aruba. Ten days. We’re back Tuesday night, so have them boxed by then.”
My sister was standing at the stove holding a dish of that same ziti in her oven mitts.
She set it down very slowly.
“Corey Petersen,” Rebecca said, “your father’s flowers aren’t even DEAD yet.”
“Aunt Rebecca, respectfully, this isn’t your house,” he said.
He didn’t look at her when he said it.
He was looking at the peace lily like he was deciding whether it would fit in his truck.
Something in me went very quiet.
Not angry.
Quiet, the way a house gets after the furnace shuts off.
I looked at the flour.
Then the clipboard.
Then Corey’s new watch.
Then I gave Angelica the smile I used to give the dialysis nurses when they were forty minutes behind and pretending they weren’t.
“Leave everything right where it is, honey,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”
She blinked.
She’d come in with a whole speech about the lattice, and now she didn’t need it.
Corey hugged me with one arm, his phone already in his other hand.
“Love you, Mom,” he said. “Don’t know what we’d do without you.”
The screen door banged twice after them.
Rebecca waited until the truck was out of the driveway.
“You are not baking ninety-six pies,” she said.
“No,” I said.
She waited for the rest.
I went to the hall closet, moved the vacuum, and rolled the blue suitcase into the kitchen until it stood right up against the sacks of flour.
Rebecca looked at the suitcase.
Then at the flyer.
Then at me.
“Lola,” she said. “What did you DO?”
Ninety-six families had already paid to stand on my porch the morning before Thanksgiving.
Corey’s flight landed Tuesday night.
So I turned the flyer face down, pulled out a chair for my sister, and told her what time my ship left and what I’d decided to do with every one of those orders before it did.
Six-fifteen
“I’m calling every name on that clipboard tonight,” I said. “Every one of them. I’m telling them there won’t be a single pie on this porch, and that Nana Lola never asked anybody for a dime. Then you’re driving me to Galveston in the morning. The ship leaves at four.”
Rebecca sat down in the chair I’d pulled out for her. She still had one oven mitt on.
“Ninety-six phone calls,” she said.
“Less. Some of them bought more than one.”
I picked up the clipboard and tipped it toward the light over the sink. Angelica had typed the orders into a table with four columns: name, phone, pie, and a little check mark under PD.
The first line said Ernie Sikes. Four pecan. Check.
Ernie ran David’s crew at the plant for nineteen years. He was a pallbearer. Nine days ago he carried the front left corner of my husband’s casket.
The second line said Aleksandra Correa. Two pumpkin. Her baked ziti was in my refrigerator right then with Rebecca’s masking tape on the lid.
I ran my finger down the page. The crew. The choir. The woman who cut David’s hair. The man who cleaned our gutters every March and wouldn’t take money for it.
Angelica didn’t know any of these people. She came to church on Easter and left before the coffee.
“Becca,” I said. “How did she get our people?”
The Easter pie
At Easter, Angelica stood in this kitchen while the pecan pie cooled on the stove and asked me for the recipe.
“It’s my mother’s,” I said. “It’s not written down anywhere.”
“Then text me a picture at least,” she said. “For my page.”
Her page was called Angelica’s Holiday Table. The logo was a rolling pin with a bow tied around the middle.
I sent her the one with the scorched edge, because David had already cut into the good one.
That same spring she started posting about David.
She came to the dialysis center one time, in April, and stayed eleven minutes. She took a picture of her hand on top of his, with the tape on his arm showing, and put it up with the words Grandpa David’s Fight. Four hundred people wrote prayers under it. Half the plant. Most of the choir. Ernie wrote, “Strong as an ox, that man.”
David saw it on my phone the next Wednesday.
“Who’s the lady with the nails?” he said.
I never posted anything. I was in the chair next to his three mornings a week with a crossword and a thermos, and there was nothing to take a picture of.
The truck payment went out of my checking on the third of every month. Six hundred and twelve dollars, into an account at First Coastal with both our names on it, Corey’s and mine. We opened it when he turned sixteen so he could cash his checks from the car wash, and I co-signed because David was at work. Corey said every few years that he’d take my name off.
He never did.
The account sat on the same screen as my checking, one line under it. I sent the money, he paid the truck, and I never once clicked on it to see what else came and went.
Rebecca had turned the flyer face up again.
“There’s one of those square codes on the bottom,” she said.
“In a minute,” I said.
I took the phone off the wall and dialed Ernie Sikes.
Ernie Sikes
He picked up on the second ring with a ballgame going behind him.
“Lola,” he said. “Is everything all right?”
“Ernie, did you order pies off Angelica’s flyer?”
“Thirty-two,” he said. “Whole crew went in on it. I’m taking two to my girl in Beaumont.”
I sat down.
“Thirty-two,” I said.
“Angelica told us it was your idea,” he said. “Said you wanted to bake for David’s people one more time, and you weren’t up to taking calls, so it all goes through her. Said it’d help with what Medicare didn’t cover.”
Medicare and the plant pension covered every dime. I had the letters in a folder on top of the refrigerator.
“Ernie,” I said.
“Don’t you thank me,” he said. “We carried him, Lola. We can buy a pie.”
I told him I had to go. I hung up and kept my hand on the receiver until it stopped being warm.
Then I called Corey.
Four rings and the recording. “It’s Corey, leave it.”
“Corey, it’s your mother,” I said. “I’m not baking these. Call me back tonight.”
I hung up and filled the kettle, because my hands wanted something to do, and I stood there while it ticked on the burner.
My cell phone buzzed on the counter before the water was hot.
Rebecca got to it first, read it, and held it out to me without a word.
Corey played me your message. Don’t be dramatic. These people paid for NANA LOLA. If Nana Lola isn’t on that porch Wednesday, everybody at that church is going to know who took their money.
Then a second one came in under it.
It’s your name on the flyer, Lola. Not mine.
November first
Rebecca held her phone over the flyer until it chirped.
A page came up with David’s face on it.
The picture from the program. I’d picked it out of a shoebox in the hall closet, our thirtieth anniversary, his hair still dark at the sides and half my shoulder cut off at the edge.
Under it, in pink letters that leaned to the right, it said Nana Lola’s Holiday Table.
Rebecca read it out loud.
“Nana Lola lost her husband of 44 years last night. This Thanksgiving she wants to do what she loves most, baking for the people who loved her David. Every pie goes straight to Nana to help with the bills Grandpa David’s illness left behind. Nana has asked for privacy, so please send all questions to me. Love, Angelica.”
“Last night,” I said.
Rebecca scrolled up to the top.
Posted November 1, 9:40 a.m.
David died the night before, a little after eleven, with the TV on mute and me holding the remote because I couldn’t find anywhere to put it down.
At 9:40 that morning I was at Heller’s Funeral Home with Corey, picking out a casket from a book of pictures. The man kept saying “your loved one.” Corey had his phone out the whole hour. I thought he was letting the family know.
“When did you ask for privacy?” Rebecca said.
“I didn’t know there was a page.”
She kept scrolling. Under the picture of David there was a little banner that said 96 OF 96 SOLD, THANK YOU FROM NANA, with a pink heart.
Then the comments.
Aleksandra Correa wrote that she’d lit a candle. A woman from the choir wrote that I was the strongest person she knew. Ernie wrote, “For the big man. Crew’s got your back, Lola.”
Rebecca stopped scrolling.
She turned the phone around so I could see the one under Ernie’s.
Corey had written it at 9:52 that morning, from the chair next to mine.
Mom’s so excited. Love you Mom.
The account ending in 0416
I opened David’s laptop on the counter. The crossword from Tuesday night was still up.
I logged into First Coastal to stop the truck payment. That was all I meant to do.
My checking came up first. The policy deposit on Monday. Sanjiv’s charge on Tuesday, thirty-six thousand four hundred dollars, which I didn’t look at long.
One line under it: PETERSEN, COREY OR LOLA, ending in 0416.
The balance said $1,655.12.
On the third of every month, after my six hundred and twelve went in and the truck payment went out, that account had never held more than forty dollars.
I clicked on it.
The deposits started November 1, at 10:15 in the morning. HOLIDAY TABLE PAYOUT, $216. Then $108. Then $54, $54, $162. They went down two whole pages. One was $1,728 by itself, and I knew whose that was without counting. They stopped on November 6.
I added them on the back of David’s program, under the math I’d already done.
Five thousand, five hundred and fifty-six dollars, with the lattice.
Then the money going out.
November 7. ARUBA PALMS RESORT. $3,212.00.
November 7. GULFGATE JEWELERS. $689.00.
Rebecca was reading over my shoulder with her glasses pushed down her nose.
“Lola,” she said. “That’s your name on there.”
“So it went to Nana,” I said.
She took her glasses off and didn’t say anything else.
I moved the $1,655.12 into my checking. I could. I’d been on that account since 2001, and nobody ever took me off.
Then I canceled the six hundred and twelve for December, and January, and every month after.
I got out my checkbook and asked Rebecca to read me the first name again.
Seven a.m.
We called until a quarter to midnight. Forty-one households. Rebecca dialed and I talked.
I said the same thing forty-one times. There won’t be any pies. I never asked anybody for money. Your check is in the mail tomorrow, with my signature on it.
Aleksandra Correa cried. Ernie didn’t say anything for so long I thought the line dropped, and then he said, “I’ll tell the crew.”
I wrote forty-one checks on my own account, $5,556 in all. The money from 0416 covered part of it. The rest came out of David’s policy, out of what I’d set aside for the ports. Rebecca addressed the envelopes from the church directory with her reading glasses on and stacked them in a shoebox.
At 7:04 Saturday morning a key turned in my back door.
Corey came in first. Angelica followed, holding her phone up in front of her like it was evidence.
“Do you know how many messages I have?” she said. “Forty. FORTY. Aleksandra Correa called me a thief on my own page at midnight. My page, Lola. You’re calling every one of them back today and you’re telling them you got confused. Grief makes people confused. Nobody’s going to blame you.”
I licked an envelope and pressed it shut.
“And you took money out of our account,” she said. “That’s stealing. Corey, tell her that’s stealing.”
“Mom,” Corey said. “That was for the trip.”
“It has my name on it,” I said.
“Because your name’s on EVERYTHING,” Angelica said. “The house. The policy. Corey’s going to get all of it anyway. We were getting a head start, that’s all this was, and you couldn’t even let us have Aruba.”
Corey wasn’t listening to her. He was looking past the flour at the blue suitcase.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“Galveston,” I said. “Four o’clock.”
“Galveston for what?”
“A ship. Three hundred and thirty nights.”
Angelica put her phone down on the table for the first time since she’d walked in.
“With what?” she said. Then she looked at the funeral program and the numbers on the back of it. “How much?”
“Thirty-six thousand, four hundred.”
She turned to Corey.
“That was the pool,” she said. “Corey. That was the POOL.”
Corey’s face went red from the collar up, the way David’s used to before he sneezed.
“You get on that boat, Mom, don’t call us at Thanksgiving,” he said. “Or Christmas. I mean it.”
I held out my hand.
“The key,” I said.
He looked at Angelica. She had her phone back up.
He took it off his ring and put it down on David’s program, right on top of the math.
The screen door only banged once.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving
I woke up at five-thirty in a cabin with no window and had to wait for my phone to find the ship’s internet before I knew what day it was.
Rebecca had sent a picture at eight her time.
My porch. A card table with the church’s coffee urn on it, and the peace lily on the rail. A sign taped to the front of the table in Rebecca’s capital letters: NO PIES THIS YEAR. NANA LOLA IS AT SEA. Ernie and three of the crew were standing behind it in their work jackets, holding up paper cups.
Under the picture she’d written, Flour went to the pantry. Everybody cashed their checks.
There was nothing from Corey. There’d been nothing for eleven days.
I put the phone in the drawer with the program and went up to the ninth deck.
The bakery window was already open. A young man in a paper hat was sliding foil tins onto a rolling rack, row after row, for tomorrow.
“Pecan, ma’am?” he said. “They’ll be out at dinner.”
I looked at the edges. Every one of them was perfect.
“Leave one in a few minutes longer,” I said. “Just till the edge goes dark. Then put it back for me.”
If this one got to you, send it to somebody who’s been told it’s good for her to stay busy.
For more family heartbreak and hard choices, read the dispute over a son’s inheritance and the grandchildren, a sister’s apology at the hardware store, and the old apprentice who disrupted a family birthday.
