one hundred word story #47: Pies

You're eating Grandma's pies, Dad says. We look down and the boysenberries are impossibly ripe for late November. She made them in August, he says. She was always so efficient. He guts the last turkey and we feel it now, turning in our bellies like a knife. They’re just pies, you say. Sugar is sugar. But it isn’t the sugar I’m worried about. It’s the kneading. It’s those four months without light. Someone dies and everything they touch is sacred. Might pie be sacrament? The berries are sour and plump. Someone wears her apron. We eat until we’re full.