“We agreed to forget.”
“Have you, Jill?” he asks. “Have you forgotten?”
I haven’t. I relive those stolen kisses Max and I shared all the time. I can’t quit thinking about his hands in my hair, his breath on my skin, the adoring way he treated me under the mistletoe, like I was special. Likewewere special. I can’t stop thinking about kissing him—I can’t stop thinking abouthim—and even though I’m too scared to confront what that might mean, I can’t bring myself to lie outright.
He laughs through my silence, dull and dismal. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
He turns, shoving the tree-laden cart toward the Durango. I trail him and, without a word, do my best to help lift the tree onto the roof. He knots and double-knots the twine, and when my dad still hasn’t returned, we take our respective seats to wait within the relative warmth of the car.
The quiet is agonizing.
“So,” I say, facing the windshield, twisting and untwisting my hands. “Are you and Becky, like, done?”
“No. I don’t… I don’t know what we are. She’s humiliated—she made that very clear, right after she burst into tears and slapped me. Ivy’s pissed, too. I betrayed her best friend; she knew I was cheating; how can I even live with myself? That’s a direct quote.”
“God, Max.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
I want to tell him a lot of things: I’m sorry he’s having a tough time, it sucks that his sister’s upset with him, he can do better than Becky—he’sworthyof better than Becky—but my dad picks that moment to open the driver’s-side door. He collapses into his seat, like he’s the one who just toppled a seven-foot fir.
“Everything okay in here?” he says, eyeing Max, then me.
“Great,” the two of us say in unison.
14
MARCY INVITES DAD, MEREDITH, AND ME OVERfor dessert two days before Christmas.
In the past, we’ve spent Christmas Eve at the Holdens’, playing board games and devouring a feast of prime rib, twice-baked potatoes, roasted asparagus, and Victorian Christmas pudding (brown sugar and almonds and currants and spices, among other flavorsome things). Until last year, Bill dressed up in a Santa costume and handed out gifts to his kids, me, and, more recently, Zoe and Brett’s son. Before my family walked back across the street for the night, Dad would produce his childhood copy of “The Night Before Christmas” as if by magic, then read it aloud, his deep voice reciting the verses with perfect, rhythmic cadence.
This year, we’ll miss Christmas Eve with the Holdens. Meredith has suggested we travel a few hours south to Portland, where we’ll spend the holiday with her too-old-to-travel parents. Dad protested because lately, that’s what Dad does, but Meredith won the battle—she is pregnant, after all.
Today in the kitchen, I dip a sampling spoon into the nearly done sweet-potato filling I’ve spent half the afternoon working on. Soon, it’ll fill the flaky, from-scratch pie crust that’s chilling in the fridge. The filling tastes smooth and rich and sweet; I added a couple of tablespoons of bourbon pilfered from my dad’s liquor cabinet in hopes of intensifying the flavor, and it’s perfect.
Any pastry chef worthy of her rolling pin knows how important it is to check for taste and texture and doneness. Baking is a science: measuring and mixing, a series of actions and reactions, separate parts of an aspiring whole. Heat is almost always involved because heat forces change, melds the ingredients into something different. Something better.
Meredith appears in the doorway, assessing the kitchen with her hands on her bloated waistline, back arched, the way I’ve only ever seen pregnant women do. She frowns at the mess I’ve made but, to her credit, refrains from complaining. “How’s it going?” she asks instead, brushing a few spilled sugar crystals into the sink.
“Okay. The pie’s almost ready for the oven, the cranberry tartlets are nearly done, and the peppermint sugar cookies are already in Tupperware.”
“Do you think you’ll be ready to head to the Holdens’ in a few hours?”
“Should be. When will Dad be home?”
She glances at the microwave clock. “Hopefully by five. I told Marcy we’d be over at six, and I don’t want to be late.”
I pour the sweet potato filling into its chilled pie shell and ask a loaded question. “What’s he doing at the office again anyway?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Meredith says with annoyance that makes my ears ring. Sighing, she lifts the lid of the Tupperware housing the peppermint sugar cookies and inhales their cool scent. “May I?”
I nod, using an offset spatula to smooth the pie filling.
She snags two cookies before toddling out of the kitchen.
I slide my favorite ruffled pie pan, loaded with sweet potato goodness, into the oven, trying not to stress about Dad and Meredith and tonight, our first attempt at a Holden-Eldridge gathering in the wake of Bill’s stroke, and the first time I’ll see Max since our awful outing to the tree farm.
***
