Chapter 9: Jilted Jam

I sat up in Luke's sweatshirt and stared at the number.

"Four thousand people," I said.

"Four thousand and twelve," Megan said. "Thirteen. It keeps going up."

"I have six hundred dollars of change."

"Then go to the bank."

"I have one oven."

Gran was standing in the doorway in her robe.

"The church has four," she said. "And the Grange hall has two. Get dressed."

I baked for two days straight.

The women from church took shifts in their own kitchens and drove the pies over warm, in laundry baskets lined with towels.

But the crust was mine.

I rolled every one.

By Friday night I'd made ninety pies and my forearms felt like rope.

Gran and Megan made jam in the farmhouse kitchen until the windows steamed.

The new jars got a new label.

Megan drew it.

A cherry with a little broken heart on it.

JILTED JAM. TORRANCE CHERRY FARM.

At seven o'clock Saturday morning, the cars were backed up past the lighthouse road.

By nine they were backed up to the township line.

Luke stood in the hayfield next to the stand in a bright orange vest he'd borrowed from the road commission.

He waved cars into rows with a flashlight in broad daylight.

He'd drawn a parking diagram on a legal pad and taped it to a fence post.

The rows were perfectly straight.

"You've done this before," I said, going past with a stack of pie boxes.

"I've never done anything like this before."

"Your rows are very neat."

"I have a problem with details."

A minivan with Ohio plates pulled up next to him and the driver leaned out.

"Are you the groom?"

"God, no," Luke said.

"Are you the new guy?"

He looked at me over the roof of the minivan.

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