Page 69 of Piece By Piece

The feeling of her work mattering to someone that she could actually see.

SuAnn’s pie-eating contest started, and it was a huge disaster in every measurable way. It was also the highlight of the entire festival.

The setup alone was quite a spectacle.

SuAnn had grabbed the largest table in the square and lined up twenty-five pies—blueberry, key lime, cherry, pecan, and one that she said was a mystery flavor, but Janine later confirmed was just the one the seagull had partially destroyed, since reassembled and replated.

Twelve contestants sat down, and most of them were locals who had been talked into it through a combination of SuAnn’s enthusiasm and immense pressure.

The rules were simple. Just eat as much pie as you could in three minutes with no hands.

The winner got a trophy that SuAnn had ordered from the internet and which, upon closer inspection, was actually a bowling trophy that had had the plaque replaced by a label that said “Pie Champion.”

The starting whistle blew, and twelve faces plunged into the pies.

It was glorious and disgusting.

It was everything a small-town pie-eating contest should be.

Blueberry filling went everywhere - on shirts, faces, the tablecloths, and, in one memorable instance, someone’s hair.

The crowd cheered. Kids screamed.

A tourist recorded it on her phone and then put it on social media, muttering, “This is incredible,” to nobody in particular.

SuAnn stood at the end of the table like a referee, shouting encouragement.

“You keep going, Roger! You’re almost at that crust! Patty, you gotta use that chin of yours. Your chin!”

At the two-minute mark, a man Liza didn’t recognize stood up and said he was finished, promptly knocking over an entire cherry pie onto SuAnn’s shoes.

SuAnn looked down at her feet, then looked at the crowd and said, “Well, at least it’s not the key lime, because that would stain.”

The crowd lost it.

By the end, SuAnn had blueberry filling in her hair, cherry juice on her dress, and tears streaming down her face from laughing.

Or maybe she was just overwhelmed.

The scholarship fund had raised more in that afternoon than the original goal for the entire summer.

Janine stood next to her mother, taking photos and shaking her head, smiling the smile of a daughter who was exasperated and proud.

The Seagrove Scholars scholarship was announced at 3:30 on a little stage that someone had built from shipping pallets and then covered with a tablecloth.

SuAnn stepped up to the microphone.

She had changed her shoes but not her dress, so she still looked like she had been in battle with a pie.

Janine stood beside her and held a folder with the scholarship details.

“You know, when Janine and I started talking about this,” SuAnn said, her voice quieter and steadier now, “we just wanted to help one child. One child who needed books or school supplies and someone to say, hey, we believe in you, because that’s really all a scholarship is. It’s a group of people saying, we see you, and we think you’re worth investing in. Thank you to the community, to the bookstore, to The Puzzle Post, and every person who ate a pie or bought a book or solved a clue today. We’re going to have enough to fund the first Seagrove Scholars award, and we’re going to keep going.”

The crowd applauded.

It wasn’t a big crowd, maybe eighty people plus some kids, but the applause was genuine and the kind that comes from people who live in a place together and care about each other.

Dixie was sitting in the front row in a folding chair with her braced wrist on one knee.