I saved up my monthly aid and bought ingredients like flour, fruit, and butter. I kneaded dough on a scratched-up Formica counter, rolled it out with a wine bottle I found in the trash, and baked them in the slightly off-kilter oven in the communal kitchen.
Sometimes I managed to make 10 in one evening, but my highest number was once 20.
Then I boxed them up and delivered them anonymously to the local homeless shelter downtown and the hospice center down the street. Always at night, and quietly. I’d drop them off with a nurse or the volunteers.
I never gave my name or left a note, just the pie. I didn’t want credit. I’d lost my family, but I still had love, and I needed to put it somewhere.
But I also never met the people who ate them. That was too hard.
My aunt, who made random visits and calls to “check in on me,” didn’t understand.
“You’re wasting money,” she told me over the phone. “Those people don’t even know who you are. That money should be going to me. I lost my sister, too!”
But she didn’t sound sad. She sounded annoyed, as if I was a problem she hadn’t expected to last this long.
Still, I kept baking, kneading dough by hand, chopping fruit with a donated paring knife, and setting timers on a scratched-up microwave oven. It was the only time my hands felt steady, the only time my brain stopped spinning, and it gave me purpose for my grief.
Then, two weeks after I turned 18, an unexpected box arrived for me.
The receptionist at the dorm handed it to me during lunch. It was brown cardboard with my name written in delicate cursive, but no return address.
I opened it right there at the front desk.
Inside was a pecan pie!
It was perfect, with a golden crust, a braided edge, and a light dusting of powdered sugar like snow. That pie smelled like magic—warm, buttery, familiar. The scent was enough to make me dizzy!
I was surprised! I had no idea who sent it.
But as I cut it with a knife the receptionist kept in a drawer, I nearly blacked out when I saw what was hidden inside!
It was a folded piece of thick stationery packaged in a small, clear plastic. It was cream-colored, with the ink smudged slightly at the corners. The note read:
“To the young woman with the kind heart and golden hands,
Your pies made my final months feel warm and full of love.
