Original short fiction from Rarle USA. Characters and events are fictional.
Mark signed up for the community pie contest because his daughter had asked whether they could do something together that did not involve fixing her car. He was good at practical help: changing a tire, assembling a bookshelf, checking a strange engine noise. Standing in a kitchen without a problem to solve made him unexpectedly nervous.
His daughter, Lucy, chose apple pie. Mark assumed she had selected something easy. She laughed at that and handed him an apron. “We’re making one we can eat,” she said. “The contest is just a deadline.” He wrote the deadline on the calendar as if the pie were a minor construction project.
The first practice crust tore. Mark tried to repair it with the concentration of a man patching drywall. Lucy showed him how to ease the dough rather than stretch it, then asked him to stop apologizing. He said he was not apologizing. She pointed out that he had just said sorry to the rolling pin.
They worked on two Saturdays. Some of the apples were cut too thick, and the edges browned faster than they expected. They adjusted their tested recipe and took notes. Mark discovered that following instructions carefully did not remove every uncertainty. Lucy discovered that he was capable of laughing at a mess before cleaning it.
On the morning of the contest, he woke early and rearranged the countertop twice. Lucy arrived with coffee and found him comparing two slightly different crust designs. “Which one looks more like a winner?” he asked. She took a sip. “Which one looks like we’ll finish before lunch?”
They made a simple lattice. One strip broke, and another ended up wider than the rest. Mark started to remove them. Lucy put a
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