“I also got an apron from them this year.” She scrunches her brow. “But I think that’s still in my suitcase. I’m going to use it for a cookie-making class I’m going to next week.”
“Sounds like the only kind of class I’d want to go to during the holidays.”
Mia laughs. “Me too. Let me show you some more stuff.”
Mia’s drawings are taped to the steel fridge, others pinned to a corkboard in the hallway, including an artful illustration dubbedGrumpy Cat.
The tabby, cartoonish but well-drawn, scowls.
“Did you make this?”
Mia shakes her head. “No, but my grams did. She’s a tattoo artist. She said it’s my dad.”
From the living room, Rowan scoffs and calls out, “I am not grump?—”
“You are,” Mia and I say in unison.
“I’m not a grumpycat. That’s what I was going to say when I was interrupted.”
I laugh. “Rowan, if ever anyone was a grumpy cat, it’s you.”
“She’s right, Dad.”
Shaking his head, he grumbles, “Not a cat.”
With a snicker I meet Mia’s eyes. “Such a cat.”
“One hundred percent,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper.
I look back at the corkboard, spotting a stick figuredrawing. One has long hair. The other has short hair and a beard. That figure is much taller. My heart swells. “This one must be yours?”
Mia nods. “I did that when I was…four or five I think.”
“Yep,” Rowan calls out. “And it’s my favorite.”
“I know,” Mia says with an eye roll.
This feels like an insider moment, one I’m lucky to witness. But it ends just as quickly when Mia spins around. “Water! We need water for the tree.”
In the kitchen, she crouches down, grabs a pitcher from the cupboard, and fills it at the sink. “You need to add enough water to cover the bottom inch of the trunk,” she tells me, using my words from the first time we did this at my home earlier this month.
“Good memory.”
“I’ve wanted to do this forever,” she says as she pads carefully to the tree, filling the stand like she did at my house in the city two weeks ago.
She turns on some Christmas music, full of upbeat tunes like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
As we decorate the tree, with Wanda pawing at wooden ornaments and Mia asking me which ones look best as she hangs them, then giving me advice on where to put the little sled, the little snowman, and the little moose, I try to remind myself that all of this is pretend.
Including the time with this little girl who tugs on my heart. I’m not sure I want to have children. But Iamsure I like Rowan’s daughter a lot. And yet, it’s all just part of the fake-dating plan.
I say that last part again silently as Mia hangs her homemade book ornament on the highest branch.
“What do you think?” she asks.
Emotions rush through me, including pride I didn’t expect to feel. “It’s perfect.”
She bounces on her toes. “Even though I hardly remember it, I’m pretty sure from the pics that I haven’t had this much fun at Christmas since Mom was around.”
