She baked coconut cream pies for anybody. If somebody died, she'd get a call and someone would ask her to bake a couple of pies. She sent pies to people we had no idea who they were.

I brought a coconut cream pie, Mom's favorite. Coconut's hard, dirty, shaggy exterior didn't promise much. But when you cracked it open and then cleaned it up, it surprised you with the smooth white riches inside. In a coconut shell, this was my mother's mission in life- to tackle the litter, the dust, the stains, the residue of life and tidy them all up. Her sweet reward was that exotic state of everything-in-its-clean-place, always a mirage in the distance while she was living with Helen. Coconut cream pie fed her soul.

Nicole craved sweets. Her list included peach pie, rhubarb pie, and pumpkin pie, all of which would be on hand the following week for the Fourth of July cookout on the bluff, so she knew Quinnie cooks would have their recipe cards nearby. In addition to pies, she wanted recipes for blueberry cobbler, apple crisp, molasses Indian pudding, Isobel Skane's chocolate almond candy, and, of course, Melissa Parker's marble macadamia brownies.

This is a shockwave. Bulls are going to have to sit back and ask if they have baked in too much good news,

The woman's cart accidentally bumped into a table display of pies, cakes and assorted baked goods. The table collapsed and all that it contained went tumbling to the floor.

When everything gets muddled up inside my head, there's nothing better than making pies.