me.’ I heard a voice behind me. I turned and saw a round man with thinning brown hair and a dark green cardigan hurrying towards me. He stopped by my side and pushed his gold-rimmed glasses further up on his nose. ‘You seem to have forgotten to pick up after your dog.’
‘What?’
‘You need to pick up after your dog,’ he repeated.
‘Pick up what?’ I asked.
He pointed to the pile in the grass. Mitzy assumed we were admiring her handiwork and wagged her tail proudly at us.
‘Ew, no,’ I said horrified.
‘It’s the law,’ he said almost joyfully. ‘I’m Sheriff Buddy.’
I glanced around uncertainly. ‘I’m Susanna. How do I…’ I trailed off. Was this some kind of new girl hazing? He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket. I’m guessing he always kept a stash on him in case opportunities like this arose. He demonstrated putting it over his hand and mimed picking up the pile before pulling it off his hand and giving it to me.
Disgusted, I put the plastic bag over my hand and picked up Mitzy’s mess under his watchful eye. With a satisfied nod, he was off.
‘Nice to meet you,’ he called over his shoulder.
‘You too,’ I said, not really meaning it.
Once inside, I disposed of Mitzy’s mess before heading upstairs to Aunt Erma’s apartment. There was a door at the top of the stairs that stood open. Had it been left open or could Mitzy open doors?
The apartment was colorful and cozy, just like Aunt Erma’s house had been when I was a kid. She used to have a secret room in her house that only she and I were allowed to go into. It was filled with toys and games and books. We would pile blankets and pillows on the floor and spend hours in there. In retrospect it was probably just a walk-in closet, but at the time I thought it was the most fabulous place in the whole world.
The door opened into the living room where there was a soft red sofa in front of a small television. The sofa had a blue and green quilt draped over the back. Fairy lights lined the bookshelves on the wall. One of the shelves was full of toys. I recognized some of the toys from the secret room. There was a new addition, a doll with blue hair, wings, and a wand. When I picked her up she said, ‘Can you feel the magic?’ in a sing song voice. Hmm, a little creepy. I set her down facing the back of the shelf.
I walked through the living room to the kitchen. It was small. There wasn’t even an oven, only a toaster oven on the counter. A small wooden table with two chairs was pushed into the corner. There was a bedroom just through the kitchen and a bathroom off of that. The bathroom had decals of frogs and monkeys on the walls. Mitzy followed me for about ten seconds before deciding I was boring and settling down to sleep in the middle of the queen-sized bed.
I was on my way back to the door when a framed drawing hanging on the wall caught my eye. As I looked closer, a lump formed in the back of my throat. It was a picture I had drawn for her when I was eight. It was me and Aunt Erma standing in the middle of a giant blueberry pie. Or at least that’s what it was supposed to be. I squinted at the mess of jagged marker lines. I had presented it to her on her birthday, and she had fawned over it in the way only a loving aunt could, but a few months later she left and I never saw her again. I shook my head a little and turned to go back downstairs.
I opened one fridge door. It was packed full of butter, cream, apples, cherries, and blueberries. When I opened the door of the other fridge, I found shelves full of pies. I pulled them out, sixteen in total. Each pie had a yellow sticky note on top that said what kind it was and gave baking directions. I preheated three of the wall ovens at different temperatures to bake the four apple, four blueberry, and four cherry pies. There were four mocha cream pies that didn’t require baking.
Once I put all the pies in the ovens to bake, delicious smells filled the whole shop. My mouth watered. I checked the timers every few minutes, the excitement building. I was going to get to eat Aunt Erma’s pies again. I felt guilty for wishing that no customers would come today so I could eat all of them myself.
I dragged myself away from watching the pies bake to look for a recipe book so I could start planning for tomorrow. I started with the desk. The top drawer had jars full of pens, pencils, scissors, paper clips, rubber bands, and twist ties. The next drawer down had a stack of paper. I pulled the whole stack out and flipped through it, but every page was blank except for one that was in the middle. That piece of paper had a list of names on it. Maybe a guestlist for a party. I tossed it back on top of the pile, and then opened the bottom drawer. It had file folders with the top tabs labeled ‘receipts’ and ‘bank statements.’ None of them were labeled ‘recipes.’ I grabbed a sheet of paper that was crammed at the back of the drawer and hoped it would have a recipe or two printed on it. I unfolded it. It was a map. Hocus Hills was circled on the map, and Aunt Erma had drawn little stars with dates next to the names of surrounding communities. The dates were all within the last few months. Knowing Aunt Erma, she was probably keeping track of some butterfly migration patterns. I put it back in the bottom drawer and moved on to the rest of the kitchen. I opened up every single cupboard, but there was nothing – not even a recipe card.
Just like when I was a kid, I closed my eyes and wished Aunt Erma would come back. I was just getting ready to go upstairs and check the apartment for recipes when the timer beeped, letting me know it was time to take the first set of pies out. After a frantic search, I found oven mitts in a drawer to the left of the ovens. The mitts had cow faces on them and mooed every time I grabbed a pie.
Once all the pies were cooled and cut, I lined them up in the display case and wrote the different flavors on the chalkboard out front. I took one slice from each kind of pie and stashed them in the kitchen. If I was going to bake tomorrow, I had to have something to study I reasoned.
I flipped the sign from closed to open and unlocked the door just after noon. According to the sign in the front window, I should have opened at 11 o’clock, but I hadn’t anticipated doing this on my own, and baking the pies had taken awhile.
My heart was pounding and I couldn’t decide if I wanted someone to walk through the door or if I wanted it to stay safely empty in here. I was suddenly aware that the only sound in the shop was my breathing, so I found a CD player behind the counter and hit play. Show tunes filled the air. I slowly swayed and was just about to burst into the main chorus of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ when I noticed some people were approaching the door. I quickly turned the music down as the group walked inside.
The first one through the door was a man in a red fedora who wore a royal blue shirt with a red vest and dark brown pants. His slightly overgrown white hair stuck out the sides under his hat and dark thick rimmed glasses sat on his face. He looked like Spider-man’s grandfather.
Next through the door was Flora, and right behind her was a pleasantly plump woman with her white hair pulled into a bun on the top of her head. Her bright blue eyes sparkled, and she had a face that looked like it spent a lot of time smiling. She was wearing a lime green sweater with jeans and carried a very large yellow purse.
‘Hello, Susanna,’ Flora greeted me in her soft sing-song voice. ‘I want to introduce you to Lena and Mr Barnes.’ She gestured towards her two companions.
‘Nice to meet you.’ I was relieved that Flora was going to be one of my first customers. She seemed so sweet, like one of those people who would tell you what a wonderful job you were doing even if you were totally messing everything up.
‘I
