Jolynn tasted hers standing up. "Mama's had a lattice," she said, surprised, and then, "This is good. This is really good."
Ozias looked at the slice in front of him. Then he picked up his fork and turned and held it out, not to the pie, but toward his daughter, and his hand shook.
"That vinegar pie," he said. "Winter of 'sixty-eight. You remember."
Jolynn went still.
"I never ate it," he said. "I never told you. It was good, honey. I know it was. You made it out of nothing and it was good, and I never said so, and I'm saying so now." He set the fork down. "I'm sorry it took me fifteen years and a strange woman's pie."
Jolynn stood holding Dovie and looking at him, and Coralee could see that it was not going to be fixed this morning, or this month; it was not that kind of thing. But after a moment Jolynn reached across the counter, broke the point off his slice with her fingers, and ate it.
"There," she said, roughly. "Now you know it's all right. Eat your pie, Daddy."
He ate it.
Before they left Coralee wrote out the recipe on the back of an order ticket, raisins plumped fat as ticks, clove less than you think, leave the mountains on top so they'll know you meant it. Jolynn read it at the register, and folded it, and put it in the breast pocket of the laundry jacket, behind the coin. The two of them looked at each other.
"Does it get—" Jolynn said, and didn't finish.