The old man looked at the pie. Then he looked up at her, and his face did something complicated, a whole argument going on in it, pride against the cold against the girl beside him, who had stopped breathing. Coralee had seen that face before. She had worn it. She knew exactly what was going on in his face, and she knew there was nothing she could say that would make it easier, so she didn't say anything. She picked up one of the forks and cut off the point of the slice, the very tip, and ate it standing up.
"It's real good," she said with her mouth full. "If I say so."
Dovie looked at her grandfather. The old man let out a long breath through his nose and something in his shoulders gave way.
"Go ahead," he said.
The girl took the fork in her fist, like a child much younger, and cut off a piece of the custard so big that half of it fell off on the way to her mouth, and she got the rest in, and closed her eyes. She sat there with her eyes closed and her cheeks full. She chewed. She swallowed. She opened her eyes.
"It has mountains," she said.
Coralee laughed out loud. She could not help it. "That's right. That's what my grandma called them. The mountains."
"Why?"
"So people would know she meant it."
Dovie nodded as if that were a perfectly sensible reason for anything. She took another bite, smaller this time, and then, to Coralee's surprise, she put the fork down and pushed the plate an inch toward her grandfather. "You have to have some, Pa. You have to. You didn't have any of the crackers."
The old man picked up the third fork. His hand was big and spotted and had two fingers that didn't bend right at the last knuckle, and it shook a little, not a drinker's shake, Coralee thought, or not only, but the shake of somebody who had been holding a steering wheel very tight for a very long time. He cut a small bite from the side, where there was more crust than filling, the poorest part, and ate it. He chewed slowly. Then he put the fork down on the edge of the plate, very carefully, lining it up with the rim.