"There was a place like this when I was growing up." Talk to her, she said, so David obliged without preamble, as though it were what he had been about to say anyway. For all she knew, it might have been. "Well. There was a place like this where I was growing up - after my Dad died, my Gran came in and set up a little pie shoppe out of the kitchen window. Like something you'd see out of a fifty's movie, only it was downtown Chicago instead of the suburbs."
He laughed, reaching out to squeeze her hand, once. "I used to have to come home after school and spend a few hours a day helping her with dough, passing plates around and getting them back again, scaring off the crazy guys who wanted to sit and talk about their dead parrots. Kind of a wonder I can stand the smell of it anymore, but I guess you always go one of two ways with that kind of thing. Either run away and never look back, or keep looking for it everywhere. And it's pie."