Page 22 of Christmas Charms
“Mom must be baking Christmas cookies,” I say, because I’m apparently becoming the sort of person who talks to strange dogs as if they’re human.
I can’t help it. He’s so sweet. So…devoted. A flicker of panic passes through me at the thought of Aidan actually tracking down Fruitcake’s real owner, which is absurd. This dog isnotmine. He didn’t just magically appear on the porch with a big red bow on his neck just for me. He’s probably supposed to be a Christmas gift for someone else and somehow got lost, but he’s gazing up at me as if I’m the long-lost inventor of dog biscuits.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I say, and his ears prick forward. “Aidan is going to help me figure things out, so you can go home.”
“Ashley, is that you?” my mom calls from the kitchen. She sounds utterly delighted that I’ve only been gone an hour instead of a full day.
When I round the corner, she’s wearing a full bib-style apron covered with little cartoon gingerbread men and pulling a tray of sugar cookies from the oven. There are at least two dozen of these, already decorated with colored icing and sprinkles, piled onto platters on the kitchen island next to a fresh batch of chocolate walnut cookies. The big electric mixer is poised, ready for another round of batter, and I know instantly what’s going on.
“Do you still make cookies every year for the firemen?” I take a closer look at a vanilla-iced snowman cookie and, sure enough, my mom has piped a cute little firefighter’s helmet onto his round head.
“Of course I do.” She peels the oven mitts from her hands and arches a brow at me. “It doesn’t look you made it very far.”
“I didn’t.” I shake my head. “Dad was right. The train station was closed.”
“I’d ask how you got home, but I saw the ladder truck’s flashing lights out front just now,” Dad says, strolling into the kitchen from the direction of his man cave down the hall, where he’s apparently been spying on me from the window overlooking the house’s snowy street.
I don’t need to ask if he knows who was behind the wheel of the ladder truck, because his amused expression says it all.
“About that.” I jam my hands on my hips. “How am I just finding out that Aidan is a firefighter?”
“You were in a terrible hurry to leave this morning, honey,” Mom says.
My dad shrugs. “If you’d stuck around longer, we might have had a chance to get you caught up on things around here.”
Touché. “Point taken, but seriously? We talk all the time and Mom texts me every day. How has this never come up in conversation?”
“Well. A while back you said you didn’t want to talk about Aidan, remember?” My mom flips through her recipe book—the same one she’s used since I was a little girl. The pages are soft and worn, with faded ink and dots from spilled vanilla.
“That was seven years ago. I was trying to get over our breakup.”
“And are you?” Dad says. “Over it?”
Of course I am. I can’t believe he’s even asking me that question. But when I try to form an answer, the words stick in my throat. I blink back at him until Mom changes the subject.
“Now that you’re back, why don’t you join me?” Mom offers me an apron covered with layer upon layer of peppermint-striped ruffles. It’s the very antithesis of basic Manhattan black.
“You know I can’t bake.” The stove in the apartment I share with Maya has a grand total of one useable burner, and the tiny oven is filled with takeout menus. I’m not even sure it actually works. “These cookies are gorgeous. I’d only end up ruining the rest of the batch.”
My mom shakes her head and forces the apron into my hands. “You’re forgetting something very important—holiday baking isn’t about a perfect end result. It’s about the process. Besides, Aidan just rescued you and brought you home in a fire engine. The cookies will be a nice thank-you gesture.”
The kitchen window doesn’t look out to the driveway, but Mom’s not guessing—she’s absolutely certain that Aidan’s the fireman who drove me home. I knew it. My ride with Aidan has already made the Owl Lake gossip rounds. There was probably a phone tree or something, and now everyone in town is talking about it.
“It was hardly a rescue.” I tie my apron strings into a bow with a tad too much force. “He offered me a ride, that’s all. And he didn’t exactly seem thrilled about it.”
But he’d also offered to help solve the Fruitcake mystery, so maybe I should overlook his comment about me being in such a hurry to get back to the city. Besides, I had been in a hurry to get back to Manhattan. I still am.
“You two have fun.” Dad winks at me before swiping one of the chocolate walnut cookies for himself. “I’ll go check the smoke alarms, just in case.”
“Very funny,” I say, but already I’m forgetting the difference between baking soda and baking powder. Which is the one with the arm swinging the little gavel? Or is it a hammer? And what do either of those have to do with baking?
“Here you go, honey.” My mom slides the recipe book across the counter toward where I’m standing beside the mixer. “Why don’t you get all the ingredients together and get the batter started while I frost the batch that just came out of the oven? Put twice the amount listed for everything so we can make a double batch.”
I can do this. It’s just measuring things and stirring them together, right? It’s got to be easier than wielding a pastry bag and drawing cute little details with icing, like my mom’s doing. Already, she’s drawing a tiny, intricate fire hose in the hands of a gingerbread firefighter.
Automatically, I move to unfasten the charm bracelet from my wrist so it won’t get dirty in what’s sure to be a messy attempt at holiday baking. But of course the clasp still refuses to budge. Why didn’t I bring my jewelry-making tools with me on this trip? If I could get my hands on the right pair of pliers, I could probably get this silly thing off in no time.
For now, I tuck the charms into the sleeve of my black turtleneck sweater as best as I can.
