“I’m sure.”
“Call or text me if you do need anything, okay?”
She nodded. He gave her hand a squeeze, and Aiden pushed into the space between them and gave his mom a tight hug. “I’ll tell you all about the parade later, okay?”
She kissed Aiden on the forehead, and Jack led him out of the room.
The two of them looked at the bag of supplies that Noelle had dropped off that they somehow had to make a dog costume out of. He was already feeling lost without Noelle and was hoping that Rachel would be feeling great and could give them some direction.
“Well, buddy,” he said, “it looks like it’s up to us to figure this out.”
“When is Noelle going to get here?”
This was the question he’d been dreading. “She’s not going to be here. I’m sorry.”
Aiden let out a breath that made his chest sink and his shoulders slump. “Will she be at the costume parade?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
They moved the coffee table in the family room off to the side then emptied the bag’s contents onto the floor. The little colored puffs were obviously meant to be ornaments, and the ribbon, he was guessing, was probably a garland. Oh, and there was a hot glue gun; he plugged that into the outlet and put it on the coffee table. He was glad he found out how that worked on Saturday night. But the two foot square of green felt? He didn’t have a clue what to do with that.
“Well, where do you think we should start?”
“Noelle didn’t tell you how we make it?”
He shook his head. He hadn’t even thought to ask.
Aiden tapped a finger on his lip, thinking, a mannerism that always made Jack smile. Aiden grabbed hold of the felt and turned it, smoothing it out. “We should make it a diamond, like this, instead of a square. Maybe this point at the top can be the top of the Christmas tree, then these points at the side can wrap around onto Bailey’s stomach.”
He was impressed at the kid’s ability to figure this out. “Come here, girl,” he said to Bailey, and the dog walked right over to him like she was all-in on this project. He and Aiden laid the fabric on Bailey’s back, and Aiden pressed the sides down and held them in place under Bailey’s stomach. Okay, that could work.
“And then maybe we should just cut this bottom point off,” Aiden said, marking it with his hand, “so it’s flat, like the bottom of a tree.”
He nodded and spread the fabric out on the floor. He handed the scissors to Aiden and said, “Do you want to do the honors?”
Aiden grinned and started cutting as Jack drew a line with his finger just ahead of Aiden's cut. It was an extremely jaggedline, but Christmas trees were like that, anyway. And Aiden was so proud of it.
He looked at the ribbon and pom-poms, then to the glue gun. “This glue gets really hot, so I think I better do that part. Do you want to just choose an item, I’ll glue it, then you point where to put it?”
Aiden nodded, and they went to work. Aiden hadn’t exactly had the same picture in his mind as Jack did about how the ribbon should go on, but he let him make it his own. In the end, the ribbon went in wavy lines in three crisscrossing directions, and pom-poms were stuck everywhere.
Aiden sat back on his heels, surveying their work, and grinned. Then he put out a fist, and Jack bumped it with his.
Then he looked down at his hands in his lap. “I really wish Noelle had come. I miss her.”
“I do, too, buddy.” So much.
Aiden nodded and reached out to scratch the top of Bailey’s golden head. “Do you want to try this on? Stand up, girl.”
Bailey complied, and they laid the fabric on her a second time. It looked better than Jack thought it would. But then Bailey barked and wiggled her back in excitement, and the tree costume fell right off.
“It needs to connect,” Aiden said. “How do we do that part?
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted. They couldn’t exactly use hot glue to glue it into place without endangering Bailey or one of them. Plus, he didn’t know if they’d be able to get the costume off after that.
“Can we tie it?”
Jack tried, but it wasn’t quite long enough for a knot. He also had the idea to pull off one of the pom-poms and glue it to one point underneath and cut a slit in the other point to use it as a button, but he’d apparently used way too much glue on the pom-poms to be able to remove one.
