She nodded.
He pointed at a chair with his chin. “Take a load off.”
Cherry nodded again. She stood, resting one knee on the chair, and took a long drink of tea. Tom must have freshened her cup.
She squinted at the spread of cookies in front of her. There was no way she was going to be able to guess these cats. Tom made her try anyway.
Cherry held up a cookie. “This is... the Golden Gate Bridge. Or maybe a bat?”
“That’s Rufus fromThe Rescuers.”
“Awww... Rufus.”
Cherry used her phone for reference. She iced the cookies with a plastic knife, her index finger, and a round-tipped tool made for nail art.
Tom let Stevie out of her kennel. She lumbered under the dining room table and promptly fell asleep.
Cherry didn’t know what time it was. Probably late. “I’m not icing all of these myself,” she said.
Tom hummed. He was eating Manchego and fig jam. They were listening to “Silver Bells”—the Stevie Wonder version. “Maybe you are.”
“Tommm,” Cherry whined.
He laughed and ate another piece of cheese. “They’ll be so much cuter if you do them, Cherry.” They had this argument every year.
The kitchen timer went off, and Tom went to pull more cookies out of the oven. He took too long. “What are you doing?” Cherry called.
“Finishing the Jell-O. There’s yellow squash in the fridge. Are you making casserole?”
“I was,” she said, “but forget it. We’re the only people who eat it anyway.”
“I’ll get it ready. It’s quick.”
“Come help me decorate cookies!”
Cherry had iced Rufus. And Figaro fromPinocchio. And she was working on Dinah fromAlice in Wonderland, with a wreath of daisies.
She felt more awake. She felt more calm.
Christmas Eve was her favorite day of the year. She liked it even better than Christmas.
(Christmas Eve was her favorite day of the year because she always spent it with Tom. Listening to Christmas carols. Staining her hands pink and green. Working too hard on work that was their own. Tom brought out the best in Cherry—more often than he brought out the worst.)
When he came out to the dining room with the last batch of cookies, Cherry was staring at a gingerbread shape. “Who’s this?”
“Tigger.”
She frowned. “Tigger isn’t a cat.”
“He’s a tiger. There aren’t enough Disney house cats for all of the kids to get a cookie.”
“All right.” Cherry set the cookie down. “Tigger it is.”
“I made two Maries, so Lily and Samantha can both have one.”
“That was smart.”
Tom was looking at the platter of finished cookies, smiling softly. “You should have been the professional cartoonist.”
