Rafe Mendez, 53, had spent the last three years treating his small western North Carolina hometown like a layover between scouting trips. As a minor league talent evaluator for the St. Louis Cardinals, he logged 220+ days on the road annually, sleeping in cheap motel beds, eating gas station burritos, and only coming home to wash his clothes and restock his cooler before heading out again. He’d skipped every town fundraiser, fish fry, and rec league game since his wife Karen died of ovarian cancer, sick of the tight, pitying smiles people shot him when they thought he wasn’t looking, sick of the mandatory “how are you holding up?” small talk that always ended the same way. The only reason he showed up to the summer beer garden fundraiser at all was because his college roommate, now the town mayor, had called him three times in one week, begging him to bid on something, saying inflation had gutted their rec league budget and half the single-parent families couldn’t afford uniform fees for their kids.
He stood at the back of the packed parking lot, cold IPA in one hand, beat-up Cardinals cap pulled low over his eyes, when he spotted the pie booth. A woman with silver streaks running through her dark hair, wearing a bandana printed with tiny baseballs and flour-stained high-waisted jeans, was arranging pecan and peach pies on a folding table, wiping a smudge of cinnamon off her cheek with the back of her hand. He recognized her immediately: Lila Hart, widow of the old high school baseball coach, who’d died of a heart attack two years prior. He’d donated a stack of brand new gloves and bats to her husband’s JV team back in 2019, never told anyone it was him.
He drifted over before he thought better of it, boots scuffing the cracked asphalt. She looked up as he approached, and her smile didn’t have that pitying edge he’d grown to hate. “I knew you’d show up eventually,” she said, pushing a small paper plate with a sample slice of pecan pie across the table toward him. Their fingers brushed when he took it, and he noticed the callus on the pad of her thumb, from years of pitching batting practice to kids too nervous to step up to the plate against the boys’ varsity pitcher. She noticed the thin, pale scar across his left knuckle, from when he’d broken his hand catching a line drive during his senior year of college, derailing his own shot at the majors.
He took a bite of the pie, and it tasted exactly like the ones Karen used to make every Thanksgiving, buttery and sweet with just enough salt to cut the richness. He stood close enough that he could smell lavender hand lotion mixed with the cinnamon and vanilla coming off the pies behind her, the twang of the bluegrass band playing at the other end of the lot fading to a low hum like they were the only two people there. For half a second he felt a sharp, hot twist of guilt, like he was doing something wrong by enjoying talking to her, by noticing how the corner of her eyes crinkled when she laughed at his joke about the terrible minor league stadium hot dogs he ate on the road. He’d spent three years walling himself off, convinced any joy he felt after Karen died was a betrayal, but this didn’t feel like betrayal. It felt like breathing again, for the first time in a long time.
When the auction kicked off ten minutes later, the first pecan pie Lila had baked went up for bid. The crowd called out numbers: $20, $35, $45. Rafe raised his hand before he could overthink it, yelling “$150” loud enough that the whole lot went quiet for two beats before people started hooting and clapping. He won the pie easily, and when he walked up to collect it, Lila leaned in close enough that her shoulder brushed his, her voice low enough only he could hear. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said. He shifted the pie to his other hand, shrugging. “I’ve got a whole week off before my next trip up to Ohio to scout a left-handed pitcher. I’m terrible at baking. Haven’t made a pie that didn’t burn to a crisp since Karen was around. Maybe you could show me how to do it right?”
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, nodding. “I’ve got a porch swing and a pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge that’s already cold. Come over tomorrow at 3. Don’t be late.”
He walked back to his beat-up Ford F-150 an hour later, the pie sitting on the passenger seat, the summer air thick with the smell of cut grass and fireflies blinking low over the outfield of the adjacent rec league ballpark. He hadn’t looked forward to anything this much in three years, hadn’t felt like he was actually home instead of just passing through. He tapped the top of the pie tin twice with his scarred knuckle, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out of the parking lot, no longer in a rush to get to an empty house.
