Page 72 of Five Stolen Rings
I know Jack’s bracelet he made for me all those years ago was black, but I am just not a black-bracelet girl. I don’t even know that Jack is a black-bracelet guy anymore. He was angry and lonely and emotional back then in a way he’s not anymore.
So I think some blues and greens and grays would be nice, like the ocean. I’ll make myself one that’s purple and yellow—my favorites.
I do mine first, because I want to practice before I actually do Jack’s. And although my handiwork is uneven and wobbly at the beginning, by the tail end of my bracelet, I’ve got nice, uniform sections of alternating purple and yellow. Jack’s looks even better when I finish his, if I do say so myself.
I spend the rest of the morning baking with my mom while my dad putters around the house, humming off-key Christmas carols and tidying up and tinkering and dusting. He’s a small man, jolly and cheerful and alwaysdoingsomething—he can’t sit still for longer than five minutes. Every time he passes by the kitchen, he kisses my mom on the lips, me on the forehead, and then he ducks out again, off doing who-knows-what.
I really lucked out with my family. My parents are alive and happy and loving, and there are no half-naked portraits hanging anywhere in their house.
It’s the little things.
“So what time is Jack coming over?” my mom asks now, and I startle out of my wandering thoughts.
“Noon,” I say. I line up my reindeer-shaped cookie cutter and press it into the dough, giving it a little wiggle. I remove the cookie carefully, place it on the baking sheet, and then do another.
“It’s wonderful that you’re reconnecting.” There’s a heavy pause from where my mom is greasing another baking sheet next to me; after a few more seconds of silence, she goes on, “I always wondered what happened between you two.”
Of course, what she really means isTell me what happened between you two.Parents have many ways to ask questions withoutactuallyasking questions.
“I basically ditched him once I got to Windsor because people made fun of him, and I didn’t want them to make fun of me too,” I say bitterly.
“Stella!” my mom says, a mixture of shock and disapproval, and I nod.
“I know,” I say, grimacing. I shove the cookie cutter into the thin dough harder than necessary. “It was horrible. I deeply regret everything. Please don’t give me a hard time about it.”
When I glance over at my mom, it’s just in time to see her mouth snapping closed, her eyes hesitant, her light hair frizzy from the warmth of the kitchen.
“Well,” she says, drawing the word out. “If you’re sure you know better now…?”
“I really, really do,” I say with a sigh.
“Because Jack was such a sweetheart.”
I snort at this. He wasnota sweetheart—or, rather, he wasn’t a sweetheart to anyone but my mom. I think he treated her the way he wished he’d treated his mom when she was alive. Still, I just nod again.
“Well, we’ve moved past all that,” I say. “And I actually like him a lot.”
“Do you?” my mom says as she sprinkles flour on the countertop. Her voice is just a little too casual,which makes me think she either already knew this, or she’s trying not to make a big deal about it so I’ll open up more.
“I do,” I admit with a little smile. “He’s…”
Home.He feels like home. And safe—secure. He’s always been that way for me.
“He’s pretty great,” I finally say. “And the woman whose house I watched—Maude?”
My mom nods.
“She’s actually his stepmother. That’s how we ran into each other again.”
It’s not technically a lie, though I’m inclined to think we would have run into each other eventually anyway. Lucky is a small town.
“Everything went okay there?” my mom says. “She’s back today, right?”
I shrug. “It was fine.” More or less. “She’s supposed to be back today. If I haven’t heard from her by the day after Christmas, I’ll call her.” Because I could see Maude being the kind of woman who tries to hold out on paying someone.
“That’s good,” my mom says absently. “Good, good. Here”—she taps me and holds out her hand—“pass me that ball of dough.”
We work more or less quietly for the next half hour, humming Christmas songs and chatting and sampling little bits of dough.
