The Recipe Card at the Bake Sale

Paul

I drove home from the circle meeting with the radio off. It was getting dark early, the way it does in October, and the milo was standing red and ready in the fields along the county road.

Paul was at the kitchen table with his shoes off and his feet up on the other chair. He carries a rural route, a hundred and ten miles of gravel and blacktop, and by the end of the week his feet look like they have been through a war.

“How was circle?” he said.

I set my purse down and told him. All of it. The cover, the twelve thousand dollars, Linda’s whisper, and Janet’s smile, and the four words she said.

When I was done he rubbed his face with both hands.

“Hon,” he said. “Let it go.”

I looked at him.

“I mean it kindly,” he said. “Think about what it is. It is a church cookbook. It is a roof. Nobody in that room thinks Janet Hoyle invented those rolls. Everybody who has been to a funeral in this town knows whose they are.”

“Then why is her name on the cover?”

“Because she is the president and she wanted it there,” Paul said. “That is small, Missy. You are not small. Don’t let her make you small.”

“You could talk to Pastor Dan,” he said. “But you know what happens then.”

I did know. Pastor Dan had been with us four years. He was a good young man with two little girls, and this was the anniversary year, with the district superintendent coming for the dinner and a roof to pay for.

If I went to him, he would have to call Janet in. Janet had been in that church forty years. Half the circle would take one side and half would take the other, and the anniversary would have a crack running down the middle of it.

I did not want a fight in God’s house over cinnamon rolls. I did not want to be the woman who made one.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

Paul reached across the table and put his hand on mine. “That’s all I’m asking.”