"Don't worry about a thing, Daddy," Diamond Tiara says, and I don't. Not really.
Even during all the years when this was my office, one window looking toward the outskirts of town, the window opposite looking out over Barnyard Bargains' salesfloor, I never really worried. This is Ponyville, after all. Work hard, stay smart, keep your snout clean, and you'll do fine.
And we did. Better than fine. Grand-dad used to say that when he and the other settlers arrived here, there wasn't any "here" here. It was all of them together that made it into a place, that made it into Ponyville, that made it—
"Daddy?"
I blink. Tiara's blinking back, and for an instant—just an instant: nothing more—I'm wondering what she's doing out of school, if she's caused another incident, if I'll be needing to take my grin and my patter and my best smoothening manner down to call on Ms. Cheerilee again.
But like I said, it's just for an instant. "Sorry, Precious." I smile and decide to be honest, a word we didn't use much in the Rich family for way too many years. "It's only been a week, so seeing you on that side of the desk still chokes me up a bit."
Her eyes waver, and she rushes forward, presses her muzzle to the side of my neck, gives me an actual nuzzle. Not wanting anything from me or trying to convince me she's innocent or whining for me to throw my weight around for her: just sharing a nuzzle the way fathers and daughters do. Regular fathers and daughter, I mean.
Regular's another word we never used much in the Rich family. We were always so proud of that. Till we nearly tore ourselves to shreds...
"Ms. Tiara?" a familiar voice calls, and I look to the office door, Gunny sticking his head in. "We've got a customer who—" His eyes go wide. "Mr. Rich? I...I'm sorry, sir! I didn't know you were—"
"It's all right, Gunny," Tiara and I say at exactly the same time in exactly the same patient tone of voice.
We both chuckle the same way, too.
But I know who's the outsider here now. I step back, touch Tiara on the shoulder, and turn away. "I'll let you all get back to work. Good to see you, Gunny." I give him a smile.
He gives me one in return, and I push myself through the exterior door, not wanting to walk across the salesfloor, not wanting the customers to see anypony other than Diamond Tiara going down those stairs to solve whatever issue might've arisen. Her cheerful face and caring attitude will carry Barnyard Bargains into the new era we entered a couple or five years ago: the new princess, the new Friendship Council, the newcomers from every part of the world who've come to Ponyville looking for the best of the best.
It's all I can do not to stumble down the outside stairs to the employee patio behind the building. Because I shouldn't've come here. I knew it was a mistake the minute I hopped out of bed before dawn, slipped on my collar and tie, and headed out as if nothing had changed, as if I wasn't retired the way Dad and Grand-dad had in their time, as if Tiara taking over wasn't the regular, natural way of things.
I mean, I miss it. Of course I miss it. I'd miss my hind leg if it got sliced off, too, wouldn't I?
But it isn't my store anymore.
I lap at the water fountain, try to let the coolness of it soak throughout my middle. Then I straighten my already straightened tie, raise my head, put on a smile that's not shaky in the least, and head out the little gate at the back of the patio onto the streets of Ponyville.
Folks nod and call, and I nod and call back: McIntosh and Sugar Belle at the Sweet Apple Acres cart; Lyra and Bon Bon still nearly glowing whenever they're together; the mayor, pausing to share a few words as she rushes from one place to another even though I'm not anypony she needs to worry about now that I'm not interested in taking her job anymore.
Which makes me wonder, there in the middle of the town my family half built.
What am I interested in now?
By the time I get home, Honey's stirred herself and is seated in the sun room, her dressing gown a diaphanous cloud around her.
Stopping in the doorway, I have to stare, the mare every bit as beautiful as the day I first saw her at the Milk family ball all those years ago...
Her ears flick—I must've made some little sound—and she looks up from the Financial section of the Canterlot Times. "Fil? I almost thought I'd dreamt you heading out this morning. Did something happen at the store?"
Not quite able to find words, I shake my head and drift more than walk into the room. The wrinkles on her brow deepen as she tilts her head back, never breaking eye contact. "Fil?" she asks again, but by then I'm right in front of her, bending down, touching my lips to hers, tasting the blackberry jam she must've had on her scone at breakfast.
I straighten up after a moment, her cheeks pink and her eyes wide. And when she says my name a third time, there's an eager little waver there that I've not heard in some time.
Another kiss, and I murmur against her lips, "There anywhere you have to be the next half hour?"
Her blush deepens, the warmth of it soft against my face. I pull back just enough to see her smile, to see her shake her head. Her forelegs brush up along both sides of my mane, and she pulls me down into a much deeper kiss.
A good deal less than half an hour later, she's curled against my side, the two of us stretched along the sofa as languid as the sunbeams wafting through the window behind us. "Well, now," she purrs. "I think I'm going to enjoy your retirement." She gives me one more little kiss on the cheek, then she's sliding away, her hoofs shuffling against the carpet, a lovely sway to her hips as she heads toward the door. "But I'd best get a shower in before I head over to the castle for the Beautification Committee meeting. I've got to make sure they're spending our money correctly, haven't I?" She glances over the shoulder. "Care to join me?"
"For the shower or the meeting?"
She laughs deep in her throat. "The meeting, Fil."
"Ah." I shake my head and settle back against the throw pillows. "A lot less interested in that, I have to admit."
With one of her little snorts, she traipses out, closing the door behind herself and no doubt telling Randolph that I'm not to be disturbed. Though it's an open question who would've been more disturbed if he'd wandered in a few minutes ago...
Lolling my head over, I gaze out the window at the patio, the marble esplanade, the lawn, the pool, the hedgerows and trees standing beyond.
When was the last time I swam in the pool? When was the last time I tasted the lawn?
Half awake and half drowsing, I have to chuckle, imagining Honey's face if she found me doing either...
Maybe I should go to one of these meetings of hers, join our fellow Ponyvillians in keeping the town neat, the school running, the library well-stocked.
Not that these committees actually do any of that. They hire ponies to do the work, watch that work being done with a gimlet eye, and pay for it with as few of somepony else's bits as they can get away with. And meetings? I held them, of course, back when I was running the store, but as near as I could tell, productivity rose when the number of meetings fell.
So eating the lawn it is, I guess.
I don't, of course. Scandalizing Honey is all well and good, but by the time I've roused myself, it seems likely that she's already off to her meeting. And knowing Randolph, he'd likely just shrug and join me.
Which makes me wonder what he's up to.
It takes me a good forty-five minutes, but I find him at last downstairs in my study, the feather duster in his mouth the spitting image of the one on his flanks. "Randolph," I say—
And I have no idea how to continue. Why did I just spend the better part of an hour crashing through the house looking for him? What do I even want to say? There's nothing I need him to do for me. Is there?
"Yes, sir?" he responds.
Practicality rears up behind my eyes as it always does whenever I find myself at a loss for words. "It just seems to me that, since I'll be here a lot more than I have been before, we should perhaps coordinate our schedules—or rather I should coordinate my schedule with yours—so I don't go tripping over furniture in the parts of the house you're taking care of at any given time of the day."
Randolph's eyes usually take second place to his eyebrows, but now, those eyes open so wide, they nearly take over the entirety of his face. "Sir!" he retorts. "That's the exact opposite of correct! I'm to be reconfiguring my schedule around you!"
As much as I love Honey, this has the slightly sour scent of her touch to it. "I refuse to be a bother, Randolph," I inform him.
"Again, sir, that's the exact opposite of the case." He relaxes a bit, or at least his eyes return to more or less the right size. "As Madame regularly and rightly reminds me, I am The Help." And I'm absolutely sure I can hear the capital letters when he says those last two words. "It's my job to be of assistance, and that requires me to always be aware of your comings and goings so that I may provide optimal service."
I rub my snout, the word 'assistance' rattling around in my head like popcorn just beginning to pop. "And yet, Randolph, I'm not doing anything. So how can you be assisting me if you're in here working?"
To his credit, he keeps his eyes under control this time. "I am assisting you, sir, by maintaining the physical environment within which you operate."
"But by that logic—" And for all that I know I'm being difficult, know I'm being foalish, know that arguing with a stallion who's been a family retainer for three generations is the absolutely least productive thing I could be doing with my time, I continue talking. "I should be in here working with you. An assistant, after all, by the very definition of the word, can't be performing a task unless he's assisting somepony." I point my snout at his feather duster. "If you've got another one of those, then, I'll get to work."
It surprises me even as I say it, but at the same time, it strikes a note so deep and resounding through me that I might as well be a bell. I need something to do, and here's something that needs doing. The simplest solution to a problem, after all, is often the best, and this can't be simpler.
I mean, yes, Honey'll have a fit if she comes home to find me covered in dust up to my withers, but, well, if I'm being honest—that word again—I'll have to admit that Honey's always having a fit about this, that, or the other. For a pony like me who enjoys solving problems, Honey's been a blessing ever since I met her...
Randolph's smiling, something I don't recall him doing much over the past decade or so. "I'm wondering, sir," he says, and there's a smile in his voice, too. "Do you recall your grandfather's cook?"
"Marigold?" I nod, though I doubt I've thought of her since her funeral. "How could I forget? Many an hour I spent back in that kitchen sifting flour and cutting shortening before my cutie mark came in." My throat tightens unexpectedly, and I have to swallow before I can go on. "Why do you ask?"
"If you're truly insisting that you'd like to help—" Randolph shakes his head quickly. "Or as Madame would skin me alive with a single withering glance should I dare to summarize the situation that way, let me rephrase. If you're truly insisting that I should be helping you with your tasks, may I perhaps suggest that, instead of cleaning, you apply yourself to something of a more culinary nature?"
My ears twitch. "Baking?" I try to recall the last time I put so much as a pie together and find myself coming up completely blank. "That's something that needs doing, certainly..."
"And should you choose to apply yourself in that direction..." Randolph gestures to the bookshelves along my study walls. "I would gladly assist you in the overall upkeep of the house by taking care of the dusting." The innocence of his expression would do credit to a puppy seated beside a tipped-over trash bin. "If that would be satisfactory, sir?"
It takes me less than a heartbeat to decide. "I think that'll do quite nicely, Randolph."
The kitchen smells exactly the way I remember. Tomatoes, cinnamon, pepper, squash: the mixture of spicy and sweet shouldn't work, but it does the way it always has. The granite countertops appear new as do the oven and the stove. Sticking out of the blocks, though, I'll swear, are the very same knives I watched Marigold juggle so expertly all those decades ago.
I'm tempted to try my hoof at them, but foalishness of that sort doesn't much run in our family. Instead, I open the cupboards I recall rooting through in my long-ago youth, pull out the canisters of flour and sugar and salt, measurements and directions and ingredient lists drifting up from the bottom parts of my mind.
Apparently the thought of pie earlier has colored my memories, and seeing a golden-yellow jar of corn oil pops a recipe into my head as if I'd just used it yesterday. It's for a bottom crust that bakes along with the pie, a recipe that only works, Marigold's voice tells my inner ear, for pies that don't use a top crust, pies like—
Lemon meringue. How long has it been since I've tasted lemon meringue pie? We don't sell it at the store since it doesn't keep well. "Meringue," Marigold always told me while I was perched on a stool beside the counter, my eyes drinking in the flow of her hooves, my ears perking to the clattering music of cup and tablespoon and beater, my nose inhaling the aromas. "Meringue's gotta sit in the ice box through the afternoon and get eaten that evening or the next. Otherwise, it turns to rubber and ain't no good for nothing but glazing up windows."
Her laugh! How could I have forgotten her deep, rolling laughter? The double and triple negatives that sometimes made her instructions involve an extra step to decode them. And her double boiler! I'm already moving across to the pots and pans cupboard and pulling the item out, the top saucepan fitting just as neatly into the bottom as ever.
"Don't start mixing," Marigold always said, "till you know you've got all what you're gonna need." The biggest, lumpiest lemon I can find, of course. Cornstarch, flour and water, sugar and salt. Two bowls to separate the eggs—it takes me more than a couple tries to remember the trick, tapping a hairline crack all the way around, then turning the egg gently end over end between the hooves so the whites can ooze out and leave the yolk whole and alone inside—because the yolks go in the filling and the whites, beaten hard and with sugar added tablespoon by tablespoon, become the meringue. But not till after the pie's baked for thirty minutes...
And that's where Honey finds me an hour and a half later, my various fits and starts stacked and piled over every available surface. "Filthy!" she exclaims, and starting up from my work, I realize I must be exactly that: dusted with flour, sticky with egg white, stray bits of lemon peel spotting my apron. "What in the wide, wide world of Equestria is going on here?"
The timer on the counter chimes and gives a little hop—I don't believe Marigold ever allowed magical implements in her kitchen, so I'm guessing this item must be new as well. "You're just in time, Honey." I give her a smile, pull the oven open, clench a padded mitt in my teeth, and draw out the baking sheet. Because sitting on that baking sheet, the meringue exactly the right mix of brown and white, the aroma wafting up from it the perfect sweet and sour tang—
"A pie?" Honey asks, her right forehoof drawn back against her chest as if ready to ward off a blow.
A tip of my head slides the pie from the sheet and onto the waiting cooling rack. "Lemon meringue," I say after dropping the mitt. "Just the way Grand-dad's old cook used to make it."
She's swishing her horrified look back and forth between me and the pie now. "Cook? You...can cook?"
"And in about ten minutes, we can eat." I nod toward the door behind her. "But till then, we can have a seat in the back parlor, I can fetch you a seltzer, and you can tell me all about your meeting."
Whirling, she slams into the door and crashes out.
I follow the scent of her gardenia perfume until the sound of her yelling becomes a better guide. It leads me upstairs to the family room where she's lambasting somepony: Randolph, I assume, since the house is otherwise empty. "—Like a servant!" she's screeching as I draw near enough for the sounds to resolve into words. "That I should live to see the head of the Rich family laboring like some commoner, and at some menial task like baking? I hold you personally responsible and will see you discharged before the day is out!"
Stepping into the room, I bark, "Spoiled!" And while her name doesn't have quite the wincing effect upon her as mine has upon me, it still brings her up short whenever I shout it.
She spins, and for the briefest of instants, I see the face she's always so careful not to show me, the face she unleashes regularly on the rest of Ponydom, the face that matches her name and her personality when I'm not there to smoothen her and soothe her. It's just for an instant, though; then she's my loving Honey again despite the sourness that fills her scent and the fear that fills her eyes.
Gently, slowly, I continue forward. "Why don't you sit on down, Honey? I'll ask Randolph to bring us up some seltzers, and I can tell you my latest plan."
"Plan?" Her ears twitch, and I know I've got her. That's the talent that gained her her cutie mark, after all, knowing where to find money and where not to bother looking. So I know she's on board before I even start explaining.
"Wowie zowie, Mr. Rich!" Pinkie's vibrating in place, her starry eyes fixed on the pie in the new bakery display case at Barnyard Bargains. "That meringue looks as sweet and melty as my hubby-wubby!" She shifts her hips sideways to bump Cheese Sandwich, grinning beside her.
I bow my head at her. "Coming from you, Ms. Pie, that's a real compliment."
Pinkie gives a little hop. "Pie's my name, and pie's my game!"
Honey's trying so hard not to sneer, I give her extra points for the attempt. "Well," she says, and the word isn't quite as sharp and cold as an icicle. "Isn't that...festive..."
Stepping in both literally and figuratively, I drop my voice to make sure Pinkie has to focus on me. "Like every creature in Ponyville, I love Sugarcube Corner's pies. But that's the beauty of baked goods, isn't it?" I wink at her. "They're all good even though they're all different." Already knowing the answer, I gesture to the nearest of the three lemon meringue pies in the case. "Would you and Mr. Sandwich care for a slice? On the house, of course."
A bib has already appeared around Pinkie's neck, and she's finished tying Cheese's into place before I can finish the sentence.
With a grin I couldn't hide if I wanted to, I nod to Slicer behind the counter; she nods back, activates her horn, and slides the pie out of the case. "Enjoy!" I say, turning and starting across the salesfloor toward the front door.
Honey moves right beside me. "Shouldn't we stay?" she hisses softly. "Or at least get some photos? Our main rival trying our product? It's a publicity bonanza!"
I kiss her on the cheek. "We need to stick with word of mouth on this, Honey. We can't go as big as the Cakes' operation, not with just me doing the baking, so we keep things boutique for now. Once we've built some capital, we can increase our production capabilities and than start to look at diversification."
Hoping I've used just enough buzzwords to satisfy her, I glance over to see her looking thoughtful. It's one of the reasons I never involved her in the day-to-day operations at the store: Honey has infallible instincts when it comes to making money, but she refuses to trust those instincts, relying instead on formulas and concepts I'm not sure anypony really understands. I know what to watch for in her reactions, though, so when I tell her a new idea, it's just a matter of reading her like a barometer, then helping her justify her feelings with a boatload of fancy talk.
This baking plan might take a little more finessing, though. "Why," she demanded with that cute little petulant pout during our first talk on the subject, "do you have to be the one doing the actual kitchen work? We have servants for that!"
But Tiara got it right away. "I can see the sign right now: 'From our family to yours,'" she said after okaying my proposal. "When we get around to expanding, we should talk to Thunderlane—Rumble says he's quite the cook. Right now, though, I'll start putting some feelers out to Soarin'. He's close to retirement, everypony knows he's got an eye for pie, and Wonderbolts always make good spokesponies."
Outside, Honey's become a bit less leery and a bit more smug. "You're right, of course, Fil," she says, leaning over to nudge my shoulder with hers as we walk down the street toward the town square. "But then you've always had such a way with ponies. I don't see how you can do it."
I give her a nudge in return. "It's in the blood, I guess." Coming out at the end of the street, I look at the non-ponies here and there in the crowd: griffons, changelings, yaks, hippogriffs, some of them tourists, some of them students at the school and their relatives, some new settlers looking for the promise that Ponyville offered up even before it was Ponyville, more different types of creatures than Grand-dad ever knew existed.
My throat tightens. "It's all about getting folks what they want before they can start wanting it," I manage to say, not looking at her. I failed her and our daughter in exactly that regard, after all, the three of us almost lost before Ponyville reached out and set us right.
Well, set me and Tiara right. Honey's just a Rich by marriage, so she doesn't feel the place. She tries in her own way—and I'll always love her for it—but she's more a fire starter than a fire douser, more about riling folks up than smoothening them down.
That fire's what I want, though, what I need. And not just me. The monsters we keep at bay, the fires we keep tamped down, that's the heart of Ponyville. It's what we taught Princess Twilight, and now she's teaching it to the rest of Equestria and beyond. Work hard, stay smart, keep your snout clean, and you'll do fine.
And me? I've got pies to bake.
Picking up my hooves, I maybe strut just a bit as I head toward home, Honey matching me step for step.