‘The tree does look good,’ Marc said.
‘The boys did a great job.’
‘I did some also. I did the lights. They nearly broke my spirit. I lost control of an end, and had to lay them out up the hallway to untangle them.’
Christa laughed, remembering her father’s own battles with tangled lights.
‘There is a saying that you can see what a person is really like under stress when they have to untangle Christmas lights. How did you go?’
Marc paused and looked at the tree. ‘Let’s just say, the lights and I have reached a mutual agreement that I will not be doing this task next year.’
‘I think many Christmases have been jeopardised by poor lights management,’ she said, giggling.
Marc crossed his arms and surveyed the tree. ‘Lucky I’m not like that then.’
‘Lucky you’re not,’ she agreed.
He turned to her. ‘Thank you for the chat, Christa. It means a lot.’
She gave a gentle laugh. ‘My pleasure. Baking and chatting are my specialties.’ She paused. ‘Goodnight, Marc.’
‘Goodnight, Christa. Sleep well.’
She turned to give him a small wave goodnight from the top of the stairs but he didn’t see her. Instead, he was staring at the tree, his face clouded in sadness that Christa understood only too well.
10
‘Happy birthday dear Adam, happy birthday to you.’
The song finished and Adam blew out the candles on the cake Christa had made. It was a twelve-layer chocolate cake with honeycomb and toffee shards on top and Chantilly cream on the side.
‘This is incredible,’ said Paul as Christa cut the cake and carefully placed it onto a plate.
‘You should be a baker,’ said Seth as he eyed the slice of cake she had handed to Adam.
‘You think? I will look into that – thanks for the idea,’ she said, laughing, but Seth looked at her with such confusion she felt bad for teasing him.
‘I am a pastry chef actually,’ she said to him. ‘Pastry chefs make all the desserts in restaurants and people love desserts.’
‘I love them the most,’ said Ethan shoving a bite of cake into his mouth.
‘That’s not true, I love them more,’ said Seth, putting a bigger bite of cake into his mouth.
‘Okay, stop the competitive dessert discussion please,’ said Marc. ‘Who wants coffee or tea?’
Christa moved towards the kitchen to take over but Marc put his hand on her arm.
‘Sit. You just made an amazing dinner and this cake; let me make you some decaf tea.’
Christa was unsure what to do but Marc gently pushed her in the direction of the table.
‘Okay, boss,’ she said and went to sit at the table.
Once everyone had cake, and Marc had made coffee and tea for the table and glasses of milk for the boys they sat in the kitchen.
Peggy had given up trying to make them sit in the dining room but she hadn’t stopped being rude to Christa, including telling her that the food she cooked was not good for people’s health and that the boys needed to stay out the kitchen and stop skating in the house.
Christa had ignored her and asked the boys to come and help with the cake.
