“Yeah,” he said. “My mom always made it for holidays. I thought it was magic. My dad called it Midwestern slop.” Tom’s dad was from the East Coast.
“They don’t eat Jell-O in Baltimore?”
“As far as I can tell, they drink every meal with a splash of tonic.”
“Hmm.” Cherry bit off the end of a cracked tuile cookie. It tasted fairy-light and buttery. “Oh, these are good. I’m glad I broke a few. Try one.” She held out a cookie, and Tom looked over, but he had lifted the saucepan off the stove and was stirring.
Cherry paused for a second, then held the cookie up to his mouth. Tom paused for a second, too, then took it. His lip brushed her thumb. They were looking in each other’s eyes. Tom smiled while he chewed. “Really nice.”
Cherry wished she had an excuse to feed him another one.
“What’s next?” he asked. He put the pan of Jell-O aside. It had to cool down, but not set.
“The last batch of tuiles is in the oven.”
Tom rubbed his chin with his wrist. “Want to take another crack at the meat pies? With the regular crust?”
Cherry groaned. “I don’t have enough filling to make a full batch, and I ran out of parsley.”
“I can go get parsley.”
She almost told him that he didn’t have to—but he already knew he didn’t have to. “Okay,” she said.
He smiled.
While Tom was gone, Cherry started again on the pastry dough, with regular flour, the way she usually made it. She started cooking more ground beef. She checked on Stevie and gave her a chewy bone, but left the dog in her kennel.
On the way back to the kitchen, Cherry hooked her phone up to the house speakers—Tom had installed house speakers—and started her Christmas playlist. She couldn’t believe she’d been making Christmas cookies in silence all day.
Tom came back triumphant. He’d found premade gluten-free pie crust at the grocery store.
“But pastieri crust isn’t supposed to taste like pie crust,” Cherry said.
“Gluten-free beggars can’t be choosers.” He’d also bought a packaged charcuterie plate. He cracked it open.
“You went to the fancy grocery store,” she said.
“It was the only one open.”
Tom took over the parsley filling. He’d helped Cherry make pastieri a thousand times before.
Cherry ate cheese and crackers while she rolled out the dough. Then Tom helped her cut out circles. She used a teacup as a pattern. He did it freehand.
They filled the circles with meat and pinched them into boats. Tom arranged the boats in neat rows on the baking sheets.
It went twice as fast as it had that morning. And it was more than twice as nice. They were standing next to each other at the island.
“Have you made the gingerbread dough?” he asked.
“Last night.”
“Look at you.”
“I still have to make the icing.”
“What’s the theme this year?”
Cherry’s nieces and nephews always voted on a gingerbread theme at Thanksgiving. Over the years, Cherry and Tom had doneThe Hobbit, Harry Potter... One year, they did the Hall of Presidents.
