Squash casserole again.
And a relish tray.
She should have enough time for everything. She should have enough baking sheets.
She set out the butter and cream cheese to soften. She made four different colors of Jell-O and stacked the dishes in the fridge to cool.
She made the filling for the meat pies. It was her grandmother’s recipe. (Cherry doubled the garlic and the parsley.)
Her back hurt by lunchtime. Russ Sutton may be gone, but all those high-heeled dates were still with her. Cherry ate some of the parsley-and-hamburger filling with crackers, and kept going.
She’d decided to make the pastieri gluten-free. The dough felt a little gummy in her hands, but she figured it was supposed to be that way. The first two pans went into the oven, and Cherry went looking for the Christmas Jell-O mold. It was shaped like a wreath. She couldn’t find it.
She made more pies. She took the first batch out to cool. She walked Stevie in a rush. Her lower back was killing her.
When she got back, she ate a meat pie off the cooling rack. It was hard as a rock. They were all hard as rocks. Fuck. Cherry should have tested the dough—she didn’t have enough parsley to start over.Fuck.She dumped the whole rack into the trash.
It was already midafternoon, and Cherry hadn’t finished anything—she hadn’t even started the cookies. Cherry and Tom always brought gingerbread cookies to Christmas. Those were nonnegotiable. Also,Cherry had a new recipe she wanted to try, for rolled tuile cookies. She wanted to bring something that she’d never made with Tom—something spectacular.
Tuiles weren’t complicated, but you had to be precise: You spread the batter in very thin circles, baked for just a few minutes, then rolled the resulting wafers into a cigar shape while they were still hot. Cherry had an idea to pipe little red and green flowers onto the cookies before she put them in the oven, so the design would bake in.
Piping the tiny flowers calmed her down a little. Working with her hands always did.
Stevie bumped into her legs, wanting attention. Cherry ignored her. Red flowers. Green dots. Maybe she should dip some of the tuiles in chocolate after they cooled...
She got the first two pans into the oven—and immediately felt stressed again. The kitchen was a disaster. Cherry hadn’t cleaned anything up or put anything away, and she’d gotten red cookie batter all over her hands and then all over everything else.
Cherry got messy whenever she went into the creative side of her brain. When she painted something, she used her fingers as much as the brush. (Tom could paint the Sistine Chapel without getting anything on his clothes.) (Tom could probably paint the Sistine Chapel.)
Cherry made messes while she worked, but then she couldn’tthinkinside of them. She should clear some space. She should clear her head.
She looked in the cupboard over the sink for the Jell-O wreath. Maybe she should get a ladder. Stevie was barking at something outside. Cherry ignored her. Her back waskillingher.
When the doorbell rang, Cherry thought about ignoring that, too. She walked into the foyer and peeked out the window...
It was Michelangelo himself. (It was Tom.)
Cherry pushed Stevie out of the way. She got cookie batter in the dog’s white fur. She got cookie batter on the doorknob. She probably got it on her face when she pushed her bangs out of her eyes.
“Hey,” Tom said. “Sorry. You weren’t answering your texts.”
“Sorry,” Cherry said.
He hooked his thumb toward the driveway. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up that I’ll be in the garage.”
She rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist. “That’s fine.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just, you know—Christmas. Hey, do you know where the Jell-O wreath is? The mold?”
“Yeah, it’s in a box in the attic.”
“Cripes, I never would have looked there.”
“You want me to bring it down?”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
