Page 39 of Meet Me at the Christmas Cottage
Nodding, Bronte took Jonah’s hand. He wished he weren’t wearing gloves right now.
Dani’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t forget to stop by the library and vote for your favorite gingerbread house,” she called after them.
They wove their way through the crowd, Jonah letting himself be pulled along wherever Bronte wanted to go. The band kids from Jonathon Island Public School were selling poinsettias and greenery, someone Jonah didn’t recognize was selling handmade wooden items, but Bronte’s face really lit up when they made it to the booth for the Jonathon Island Public School Art Club, selling hand-drawn cards and art. By the time they’d made their way down the street to the library, they were both sipping on hot apple cider from the Fort Jonathon sponsored booth.
“That tree is huge!” Bronte exclaimed as they came to the end of the street. The vantage point at this end of the street, slightly higher than the other end, gave them a perfect view into the park. “When did they even put it up? Was it up yesterday when we came into town?”
“It’s the magic of Jonathon Island.” Jonah winked at her. “It’s been up since probably Thanksgiving.”
“I can’t believe I missed it. They will light it up tonight, right?” Bronte asked, breathless as she stared over everyone’s heads toward the park and tree at the other end of Main Street.
“As soon as it gets dark.”
“We have to stay for that. Can we?” She turned back to Jonah, the excitement and cold tingeing her cheeks pink.
Jonah wasn’t sure he could tell her no even if he wanted to. “Of course. The tree lighting is the main event.”
Bronte shivered. “I can’t wait.”
“Let’s get you out of the cold for a little bit.” He didn’t want to risk Bronte getting hypothermia. While everyone had been filtering in and out of the warm shops, he and Bronte had stuck to the outdoor canopies. “Come on, the library is right over here. Let’s go throw our vote in for the best gingerbread house. Then we can go hang out in Martha’s until it’s time to build a snowman.”
Holding the door to the library open, Jonah let Bronte go in ahead of him. They said hello to the librarians, got their score cards for the gingerbread house contest, and moved to the community-room-turned-winter-gingerbread-house-wonderland. The room even smelled as if someone had just finished baking gingerbread cookies. Confirming his suspicions, Jonah spotted a table with gingerbread cookies and a carafe of hot apple cider.
“These are seriously impressive. When Dani said there was a gingerbread contest, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.”
Paper snowflakes, probably made by kids during story time, hung from the ceiling, and soft Christmas music played from a hidden speaker. The room had five folding tables set up in a horseshoe shape in the middle of the room so they could see both the front and back of each gingerbread structure. Each table had four to five gingerbread houses—or coffee shops, beaches, and even one that looked like it was supposed to be Hogwarts. A tented index card with a number sat in front of each creation.
“I don’t even know where to start.” Bronte looked like a deer in headlights. Seeming to shake off her indecision, she moved to the first table. “Who makes them all?”
“A lot are from the school on the island,” Jonah explained, following behind Bronte. “A couple weeks leading up to Christmas break, any students who want to form a team and work on a gingerbread house are allowed to. I remember creating a gingerbread house rendition of the school and football field in my day.”
“Did you win?” Bronte asked, looking up from studying a log cabin made from pretzel rods.
“Ha! No. I think we came in sixth?”
“Sixth isn’t too bad.” Bronte wrote something down on the scorecard in her hand.
“There were only eight houses that year.”
“Oof. I guess it’s grown a little since then,” Bronte said, motioning toward the many-more-than-eight creations on the tables.
“It would look like it.”
“How am I supposed to decide which house wins, knowing that all of them were probably made by a bunch of kids?”
Jonah thought for a minute. It was always the dilemma he faced when judging these things in the past. “Look at it this way. If tomorrow something in the world changed and you had to live in one of these”—he pointed at all the houses—“which one would you choose?”
“First of all,” Bronte said as she held up her finger, “that’s a horrible thought, because I would end up eating my house, and then I would be three hundred pounds and homeless.”
Jonah couldn’t imagine Bronte being anything but cute—even at three hundred pounds.
“But I think I’d have to go with this one.” Bronte pointed to the pretzel-stilted house on a vanilla-wafer-crumb beach, surrounded by blue icing water.
“It looks like a warm place.”
“I think I’m cold enough here to last a lifetime.” Bronte shivered. “Next writing retreat, I’m going to make sure I’m on a cruise. Your family has it right.”
“Fair enough,” Jonah conceded.
