Page 59 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

"Honey? Is everything okay? You sound like you're being chased," her mother said.

Vivi cupped her hand over the phone and whispered, "I am being chased. By responsibility. By pie. By the entire female population of this town. Mom, I need Grandma's peach pie recipe. Now."

"Oh! Her famous pie?" Her mom brightened instantly. "Aw, sweetheart, that makes my heart so happy. Is this for a boy?"

"No, Mom. It's for twelve old ladies who could snap me in half with a single look. The town drafted me into baking a dozen pies for some fair. I need the recipe or I'm going to die."

"Well, it's easy," her mom said, like she was sharing instructions for making toast. "You buy the frozen pie crusts, the deep-dish kind, not the cheap ones that buckle like bad knees. Then you get two cans of sliced peaches, drain them, toss with cinnamon and sugar⁠—"

“Frozen pie crusts? Canned peaches? I’m so dead."

"Is that a problem?"

"Epic problem." Vivi slapped a hand to her forehead. "Mom, they basically swore on the bones of their ancestors that if I dared show my face with anything frozen or canned they'd banish me to the cornfields."

"Oh, don't be dramatic."

"I'm not! These women carry church-lady judgment like concealed weapons!"

"Your grandma did say the secret was love."

"Mom, love isn't going to save me from death-by-Midwestern-biddies."

"Do you still want me to text you the brand names?"

Vivi let out a strangled noise. "Yes. And also maybe start praying."

"Oh, sweetheart," her mom laughed. "I've been praying for you ever since you were five and made a dress for one of the pigeons that lived on our stoop."

Vivi groaned and thunked her head against the planter. "Send the recipe. If I die, bury me with a can of peaches so they know what took me down."

"You got it."

Vivi hung up, staring at her phone like it was the devil incarnate.

Frozen crust. Canned peaches. She was doomed.

Flour coated the countertop and Vivi's shirt.

She stared down at the peach pie carcass on the counter, which was a sagging, collapsing crime scene of fruit and tears.

"It should not be this hard," she muttered, shoving a sticky strand of hair out of her face. "People on the internet do this all the time. There are teenagers on YouTube who make this look like breathing."

The crust was either too wet. Or too dry. Or too cursed. The peaches had turned into something between soup and sadness. And the lattice she'd attempted looked like a drunk spider had lost a bet.

Her phone screen blinked beside her with the recipe titled: Peach Pie Perfection!

Lies. Absolute lies.

She leaned over the counter, knuckles sinking into flour, staring down her enemy. "Why won't you behave? I'm following the instructions. I'm doing everything right. Why are you melting?!"

That's when the door swung open.

“What in the bloody hell is going on in here?” Rea demanded, standing in the threshold like an offended deity, eyebrows lifted high enough to have its own zip code.

"I’m, uh, I’m baking."

Rea took one sweeping look around the kitchen—the flour drifts, the peach sludge, the crust that looked like it had survived a natural disaster—and clicked her tongue like she'd walked into a moral failure.