The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie

Lolly Blanchard is almost 33 and manages the Eatery, a Danish comfort food diner in Magnolia, Seattle, that has been in her family for over 60 years. Every morning she bakes six lemon meringue pies using her late mother's secret recipe. When her younger sister, Daphne, a 21-year-old dance student, unearths Lolly's middle school diary, the goals listed there reveal that Lolly has not accomplished a single one. She had planned to live abroad, open a restaurant called Toast in Brighton, England, fall in love, and keep her family happy. Instead, after her mother Irene's sudden death 10 years earlier, Lolly returned from college to care for her grieving father, Marty, and 10-year-old Daphne. On her deathbed, Irene made Lolly promise to hold the family together and keep the diner running, then taught her the secret pie recipe. Lolly has honored that promise at the cost of her own ambitions and her relationship with Rory Shaw, her first and only love, whom she broke up with seven years ago. Rory is now married and living in Florida, working as a team physician for a professional soccer club.

Flashbacks trace Lolly and Rory's history. They meet as teenagers when the Shaw family moves in across the street, bonding at South Beach in Discovery Park. Lolly develops a deep crush but never confesses it. The night before Rory leaves for college, she tells him how she feels. He kisses her but pulls back, insisting the timing is wrong. Three years of silence follow until Rory tracks her down during her semester abroad in England and declares he has loved her since the day they met. Lolly commits to Rory, and the following summer he proposes at the South Beach lighthouse with a vintage emerald ring.

In the present, the Eatery is failing and Marty refuses to modernize. Dr. Gertrude Lund, Lolly's 80-year-old great-aunt and a retired professor of religion and mythology, urges her to "follow your bliss." Her best friend, Eve, a former marketing executive who now runs an organic goat milk soap company on Vashon Island, identifies Lolly's core problem: She is still in love with Rory. Aunt Gert presents Lolly with three magical lemon drop candies, each capable of showing her one day in a life she could have had if she had made a different choice.

Lolly uses the first drop after a frustrating meeting with her father, whispering "Toast." She wakes in Brighton as the owner of her dream restaurant, which is everything she imagined. Her personal life, however, is bleak: no close relationships, no vacations in six years, and a hostile call from Daphne reveals that after Lolly left, the diner closed and their father never recovered. Lolly tells Gert she would not choose this life. The cost of losing her family is too high.

A property tax increase threatens to nearly quadruple the diner's bill, and Daphne announces she wants to quit college to pursue yoga certification abroad with her boyfriend, Damien. Overwhelmed, Lolly uses the second drop, whispering "Mom." She wakes on the Big Island of Hawaii, where Irene is alive and thriving, but a cremation urn reveals Marty died of an aneurysm in this life. Irene tells Lolly that clinging to a broken vision of life prevents new possibilities from emerging and urges her to let things fall apart if they are already broken. These words feel like absolution from the deathbed promise. Lolly falls asleep with her head in her mother's lap, savoring their last moment together.

Back in her normal life, Lolly learns the lemon drops originated with a Romanian fortune-teller who gave them to Gert in 1962, when Gert was trapped on a struggling Ohio farm. Gert also reveals she offered the drops to Irene after her accident, but Irene declined, saying she would not change a thing.

Lolly uses her final drop for Rory. She wakes in Tampa beside him, and two daughters burst in: Sophia Scout, about six, named for Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird because Lolly once told Rory she wanted that name for a daughter, and Freya, about three, who carries Lolly's and Irene's middle name. A wedding invitation on the refrigerator shows Marty married to a woman named Ramona Flores, and pamphlets reveal Lolly runs an organic popsicle company called Lolly's Pops. She spends the day falling in love with the girls. That evening, Rory tells her he is grateful for their life. She falls asleep curled against him, knowing she will never see the girls wake again.

Gert reveals that a lemon drop used to return to an already-visited life makes the stay permanent and gives Lolly one final drop. A flashback explains the breakup: Rory matched with Duke University for his medical residency, and his mother, Nancy Shaw, asked Lolly to end the engagement, warning that Rory would resent Lolly if he sacrificed his career. At South Beach, Lolly told Rory he had to go and threw her ring into the water.

Everything then collapses. Marty discovers the tax letter, and during that evening's dinner rush he suffers a stroke. A subsequent seizure worsens the damage. Lolly resolves to take the final drop, but she had changed into Daphne's yoga pants at the hospital, and Daphne washed the jeans holding the candy. The lemon drop dissolved in the laundry.

Daphne confronts Lolly, telling her the diner is finished and that Lolly is not holding things together but holding everything back. Recognizing her mother's advice, Lolly accepts the truth and tells Marty they must close the Eatery. He tearfully agrees. At the farewell party, Gert reveals she never used a lemon drop to choose a different life. Her career was built through courage and following her bliss. Lolly realizes she does not need magic to change her life.

She finds Ramona Flores, who runs a stroke rehabilitation agency near Seattle, and hires her as Marty's caregiver. Their relationship gradually deepens. Inspired by the popsicle business she glimpsed in Florida, Lolly creates Lolly's Pops, buying an old ice cream truck and launching at the Magnolia Farmers Market to great success.

Nancy Shaw mentions at the market that Rory is back in Seattle. The following week, Rory visits the truck, revealing his divorce from Emily is finalized and that he has a son named Noah. At a nearby booth, Lolly spots a necklace identical to one she wore in the Florida life, a pressed lemon blossom in glass. Rory buys it, saying it should remind her to never give up hope, to seek happiness, and to remember that life is full of second chances, the exact words he spoke in the alternate life. Lolly realizes her day in Florida may have been a vision of her future rather than an alternate past. Rory asks to see her again.

An epilogue eight years later confirms the vision came true. Lolly and Rory are married with daughters Sophia Scout and Freya, and Lolly is pregnant with their third child. Rory's son Noah, now 14, is part of their blended family; Lolly recognizes him as a coppery-haired boy she noticed in photos during the Florida life but could not place at the time. Lolly's Pops has expanded, and she is opening a Seattle store in the original Eatery building. Marty, bearing traces of his stroke, is happily married to Ramona. Daphne teaches yoga in Costa Rica. Aunt Gert, now 88, tends the botanical garden supplying the store. Every Saturday, Lolly bakes two lemon meringue pies with a lemon drop candy in the filling, not for magic but as a reminder that changing your life requires only the courage to follow your bliss.