Chapter 3

      “The receipt for this fruitcake has been handed down in our family for six generations,” Hazel said, brandishing a sharp knife as she cut candied pineapple into tiny bits and added it to the bowl of batter, already stiff with crystallized fruits, on the table before her. She used the word receipt instead of recipe, just as Katie’s grandmother had done.

       “I’ve never been fond of fruitcake,” Katie admitted as she broke off a small piece of sugar cookie for Kyle, who was sitting on her lap. “Every one I’ve ever had has been dry and tasteless as chalk.” Kyle opened his mouth wide for the bite of cookie, then made a grab for the rest of it. Katie laughed and so did Hazel.

       “It’s good to hear you laugh. I know you must be feeling better.”

       “Much better,” Katie agreed. “I don’t know how I can thank you for letting us stay here these past three days.”

       “By praising my fruitcake to the sky, of course,” she said with another merry grin.

       “That won’t be difficult, I’m sure.”

       “If you’re not still with us when these are done—they have to ripen, you know—you must give me your address and I’ll send you one.”

       “Yes,” Katie said, lying. “I’ll do that.”

       She and Kyle were sitting in an antique rocking chair in the sun, in the window alcove of the Owens’ kitchen. The wide windowsills were crowded with blooming geraniums and potted ferns, the winter daylight filtered through lace curtains, but suddenly it seemed to Katie as if the sun had gone behind a dark cloud. It was Wednesday afternoon. She’d been here three days and soon she would have to be moving on.

       The back door opened and the twins came into the kitchen from outside. Cold air streamed in with them, stirring currents of warmer air, heavy with the scent of growing plants, spices and wood smoke. Katie took a deep breath and held it, savoring the good smells and the good feelings in the room.

       “The reason Hazel’s fruitcakes are in such demand,” Faye said, picking up the thread of the conversation as if she’d been in the room all along, “is because she soaks the things in rum before she stores them away.”

       “That’s right,” Lois said, nodding in agreement. Now that she felt better, Katie had almost no trouble telling them apart. “Even the Methodist preacher thinks they’re great.”

       “And he’s a teetotaler.”

       Everyone laughed. Kyle loudest of all.

       “Come on, fella,” Faye said, offering the baby another bite of cookie. “Want to come play with me so your mommy can rest for an hour?”

       “You can take him to play if you like,” Katie said, lifting Kyle into Faye’s outstretched arms. “But I’m not a bit tired. I’ve spent the last three days resting. Are you sure there isn’t something helpful I can do?” She’d asked the question a dozen times already that day, and each time she’d been politely rebuffed.

       “Thanks, but no,” Lois said. “I’ve already spent the afternoon straightening out the Christmas lights. It seems no matter how carefully I pack them away each year, whenever it comes time to put them up again they’re always a mess.”

       “Gremlins,” Hazel said, shaking her head.

       “Impatience.” Faye sniffed, cooing nonsense words at Kyle while tickling his belly with the tip of her finger. “You’re always in too big of a hurry.”

       “I just don’t like Christmas to be over. And anyway, last year it was freezing cold when we took the lights down. Remember? I thought I’d freeze my…fingers…off before we were done.”

       “Well, anyway, I’ve got about half of them ready to go for when Jacob gets home from school—he always stops in on his way up the hill. I got all the kinks out of the wires, and I replaced all the burned-out bulbs.”

       “You’ll need someone to hold the ladder so Jacob doesn’t fall off the roof and break his neck,” Janet added, coming into the kitchen through the swinging door just in time to hear the last few remarks.

       “Katie can do that,” Faye said without looking up from Kyle’s sugary, beaming face. “She’s dying to get outside, aren’t you, Katie?”

       “Well, yes,” Katie said. “I would like some fresh air.” But she didn’t want another confrontation with Jacob Owens. She’d spent the better part of the past day and a half, since she had come downstairs, avoiding him. He didn’t want her in his aunts’ house. He didn’t want her near him. She wanted the same thing. Didn’t she?

       “Good, that’s settled. If we aren’t the first house in town to start putting up Christmas decorations the twins pout for a week.”

       “Don’t be ridiculous.” Lois sniffed.

       “Never mind Janet,” Faye said, ignoring her elder sister while concentrating on making Kyle laugh even harder. “She’s an old Scrooge.”

       “I am not. I’m just practical. A virtue sadly lacking in several members of this family.”

       “You’re a Scrooge,” Lois said firmly. “Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. I want to make it last.”

       “Christmas should be in your heart, not on the front lawn,” Almeda said, coming into the kitchen from the short hallway that connected the big room with the bathroom and her bedroom.

       “Christmas is in my heart,” Lois insisted. “That’s why I want everyone to enjoy the season as much as I do.”

       “In the spirit of the season,” Katie heard herself say. Christmas had never been her favorite holiday. She knew enough about herself to know why. If you didn’t have a family, Christmas could be a very lonely time of the year. Michael and Kyle had helped keep away the loneliness she always felt at Christmastime. But now Michael was gone and she and Kyle were truly alone. “I’ll hold the ladder for Jacob while he puts up the lights.”

       For some reason she didn’t want to think too closely about, she couldn’t stop herself from offering to do the chore. Besides, it was the least she could do for the quintet of wonderful old ladies who’d given her shelter from the storm. She was almost well; nothing was left of her illness but a lingering cough and runny nose. The Owens sisters had been as kind to her as if she was their own flesh and blood. They adored her son. They treated her like family; more like family than any of her own relatives, including her parents, had ever done. Just because she didn’t like their nephew was no reason not to repay their kindness in such a simple and relatively painless way. In the spirit of the season.

       “You’ll need a pair of boots,” Hazel said, pouring the fruitcake batter into buttered pans. “What size shoes do you wear?”

       “Eight and a half,” Katie said, trying not to blush. She resisted the urge to shove her feet under the rocker. “I doubt if any of you have feet that large.”

       The twins snickered. “Janet does.”

       “Wrong,” Janet said, not showing any sign of malice. “I wear an eight. You’re welcome to my boots even if they pinch,” she went on with a nod to Katie. “But I’ll be wearing them myself, since you’ll need my help untangling Lois’s thousand strings of lights if Jacob is going to get down off that ladder before midnight.”

       “Quit exaggerating,” Faye scoffed, shaking her head. Kyle did the same. “There’s nowhere near a thousand strings. There’s twenty or twenty-five at the most.”