SAL
It took four hours to bake the pies. The cherry ones were the easiest, just canned cherries and sugar poured into a*****e-bought crust. The pumpkins were easy, too: canned pumpkin with whole milk, an egg, and a sprinkling of ginger and cinnamon. The apple pies took the longest, because you had to slice the apples. Sal wasn’t very good at that, so Mr Merkel had him stir the pumpkin and cherry fillings on the stove while he peeled and pared. The pies baked two at a time, one on each rack.
While they measured and sliced and stirred the sun set and the moon rose, and Mr Merkel talked. He seemed relaxed, as though a burden had been lifted, and Sal felt better, too, the further they got from the moment when he’d pretended to talk to Benjamin. Mr Merkel told him he and Benjamin had baked pi
