By the time I reached Main Street, I felt more like an imposter than a holiday miracle. The hardware store clerk gave me a polite nod as I browsed through bins of tangled lights and chipped wooden ornaments.
“You’re the Henderson girl, right?” he asked.
I smiled tightly. “I guess I am.”
“You’ve got your mother’s eyes.”
I froze. “You knew her?”
He shrugged. “Not well. But folks remember.”
Those two words—Folks remember—followed me like a cold breeze slipping through a cracked window, settling into my bones.
At the next shop, a woman near the register whispered something behind her hand, her friend glancing sideways at me with a soft shake of her head.
It didn’t feel mean exactly. Just… hesitant. Like I was a page from a story everyone else had read but I’d just been handed, and I had no idea how it began, or where my mother fit in it all.
Outside, I paused by the community bulletin board. Amid flyers for lost pets and church concerts, there was a faded newspaper clipping from fifteen years ago—“Starcrest Ranch Hosts Annual Tree Lighting.”
The grainy photo showed a younger version of the ranch house, glowing under a canopy of twinkling lights. A man who looked a lot like Max—but wasn’t—stood beside a teenage boy I now recognized as him.
I gathered up some faded red ribbons and a tin star tree topper and headed to the bakery, trying to ignore the tightening in my chest.
***
Sarah’s bakery smelled like heaven wrapped in cinnamon, a warm, inviting cloud. The windows were gloriously fogged from the heat of the ovens, and the shelves gleamed under soft yellowlight, lined with golden pecan pies and rows of gingerbread shaped like proud longhorns.
“Ella!” she called out from behind the counter. “Your timing is perfect. Just pulled a batch of cranberry scones.”
“Dangerous words,” I said, the warmth of her welcome cutting through my unease.
She slid a plate across to me and poured two mugs of coffee. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just been gift-wrapped in everyone’s assumptions,” I muttered.
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “This town talks, Ella. It’s what we do instead of watching TV. But it doesn’t mean they know everything.”
I followed her gaze to the far wall, where an old bulletin board held faded photos and hand-drawn holiday posters.
One picture stopped me cold. A black-and-white snapshot of a little girl in braids, grinning wide as she clutched a gingerbread cookie almost as big as her head.
“That’s your mama,” Sarah said softly, stepping beside me.
“She was just a kid.”
“Right around your age when she left.”
I blinked fast. “You knew her?”
Sarah nodded. “We were close once. She used to help me decorate the cookies, back before things got complicated. Your granddad… he could be stubborn. Proud. But he loved her, even if he didn’t know how to show it.”
A thick, painful lump lodged in my throat. “She never talked about this place,” I whispered, the words heavy with years of unspoken questions.
“She wanted to protect you from the hurt. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t remember.”
She walked behind the counter and rummaged in a drawer, returning with an old cookie cutter shaped like a star. “She used to say the dough always stuck in this one. Wouldn’t use it unless you floured it twice.”
I smiled, blinking back the unexpected tears. “Sounds like something I’d say.”
