Emily made a face. “You’d be the first to complain if all you got were gift cards and you know it.”
Jenna eased her packages under the tree, while her mother stood back and regarded her handiwork. She’d done a nice job with the tree, putting up the ornaments that Jenna had made as a child alongside those she’d made for her own mother and father. Her favorite was a raggedy angel with a Styrofoam ball for a head, silver pipe cleaners for a halo, and wings made of cut pieces of a paper plate. It was tacky, all right. But sometimes, tacky can be quite charming.
“Oh, Mom,” Jenna said, spotting the paper plate angel, “can’t we put that in the back where it won’t show?”
“Not on your life.”
“Ugh. It’s embarrassing.”
“Only to you. When you have kids of your own someday—not anytime soon, I hope—you’ll do the same thing.”
“I doubt it.”
“Believe me, when it’s your own child, you’ll love almost everything they do.”
Chris looked a little wistful—his own children were grown, then gone, evaporated into their own lives by a bitter divorce.
Emily caught the look and changed the subject.
“Let’s see about dinner,” she said.
Christmas Eve always meant the biggest turkey that could be found by the cook—first her grandmother, then her mother, then Emily. Emily made a duck sausage stuffing with the fresh chestnuts that Chris bought at Pike Place Market. Roasting the nuts on the stove was his sole contribution to the meal.
In her years as a daughter, wife, and mother, Emily had fixed a turkey every which way—in a paper bag, deep-fried, roasted under a tent of aluminum foil. Jenna had helped with some of the side dishes, of course, and though Emily was far from the point of handing over the turkey duty to her daughter, she enjoyed how much she’d grown into wanting to take over.
“Mom, you and Chris should relax. Maybe there’s something on TV that’ll keep you occupied?”
Emily smiled at Jenna. She was so glad to have her home for Christmas. She would have kept her disappointment to herself if Jenna had elected to have gone west of the mountains to be with her father and baby half sister, instead of staying put in Cherrystone.
“How about we do this together?” she asked, brandishing a whisk.
“Sounds good, Mom. You seem like you’re letting go. That’s good.”
Emily thought of zinging Jenna back, just as she always did. But not that day. For most of the morning, mother and her daughter ruled the kitchen while Chris Collier staked his claim to a football game preview show.
No one said grace aloud when it came time to eat, but inside each of the three gathered around the table knew how blessed they were. After dinner, they opened their gifts. Chris gave Emily an emerald bracelet and a German gun polish that everyone in law enforcement coveted. She gave him a navy cashmere sweater and a tin of Virginia peanuts that she knew were the very best—and his favorite. Jenna was sure her mom had broken the bank with the lovely cream wool peacoat with gold-toned buttons with pink plaid lining from Juicy. She got a pair of black Ugg boots and a Tiffany heart necklace from her father.
“Nice necklace,” Emily said as she fastened it around her daughter’s neck.
Jenna touched the heart as it swung in place. “I circled it on a catalog when I was over there. I knew he didn’t have an imagination, so why not pick something expensive?”
Chris nodded. “Good girl.”
The best gift came from Jenna to her mother.
Emily could have cried when she opened the red box from Talbot’s. Inside, was a pair of fully lined pants made in the same worsted wool fabric as her dreaded A-line skirt that paired with her Sheriff’s uniform jacket.
“Where did you find these?” Emily said, clearly touched.
Jenna beamed. “Chicago, mom. The world’s a lot bigger than Cherrystone and Spokane, you know.”
“Thank you, honey.” Emily hugged her. It was the most thoughtful gift she could have imagined. She could tell the county council members who complain when they see her around town, the truth. She didn’t buy the pants as an FU to their archaic dress code.
“I’m a mother first,” she’d say. “This was a gift from my daughter. I intend to wear them.”
And stay warm.
Mandy Crawford’s disappearance had dominated the week, even the month, as Emily Kenyon tried to put together a puzzle for which there were very few pieces. The photos of Tricia. The affair with Darla. The message on the laptop. Things, she was sure, pointed to Mitch as the purveyor of some kind of evil. But on the other hand, there was still no body. No direct evidence pointing to foul play. Just a bunch of innuendo swirling around a man who seemed to deserve all the bad press and rumormongering that he’d garnered. The pressure was mounting, but the investigation was going nowhere.
Chris stayed over through the weekend, in part to spend time with Jenna, who was back in her girlhood bedroom between consulting assignments at various Beta Zeta sorority chapters in the southern region. When there was a single knock on the door followed by the immediate turn of the knob, everyone directed their attention to the young woman who’d been expected for dinner.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Shali Patterson never went anywhere without making an impression. Subtlety in her dress, hair, and manner seemed utterly foreign to her. She worked at a Nordstrom store in Seattle after graduating from Cascade University but knew that she’d find something better someday. She just didn’t know what it would be. Shali and Jenna had been best friends for years, sorority sisters at Cascade, and were destined to be maids of honor at each other’s weddings.
If either found a steady guy that the other approved of, of course. A good guy was as elusive as a pair of sensible shoes.
Both knew that with true, undeniable adulthood holding them prisoner after graduation, the week between Christmas and New Year’s was likely to be the only chance they’d have to really catch up and hang out together until summer.
Chris Collier hadn’t seen Shali in a while, so when she flopped down on the couch next to Jenna and across from where he sat with Emily, all he could do was grin.
“I think doing hair would have been more fun than med school,” she announced.
“I like the pink highlights,” Emily said, from her place next to Chris on the sofa by the Christmas tree.
“Thanks, Mrs. Kenyon. Magenta is what I’m going for. I did it myself because, well, I just got tired of looking like everyone else.”
“You’ve never looked like anyone else, Shali,” Jenna said, peering up from her laptop, a wide smile on her face. “Not for one minute.”
Shali beamed. “It takes some effort to be me, that’s for sure.” She looked over at Emily and Chris. “Look so cozy, you two.”
“We’re good,” Chris said, resting his hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Doing our best.”
“That’s what my mom says. Do your best!” Shali saw her mother’s words as a rallying cry for mediocrity. She would never consider taking up the cause for “doing one’s best” if that meant life in Cherrystone and nothing more.
“How is your mother? I haven’t seen her for quite some time,” Emily said.
Shali looked at Jenna. Obviously, she hadn’t let the cat out of the bag.
“I thought Jenna might have told you.”
“You asked me not to,” Jenna said.
“I would have told, you know.”
“I know. But this friendship of ours would never survive if it was between two people just like you. One of us needs to keep a confidence.”
“I get that and I’m working on it,” Shali said. She looked over at Emily and Chris, enthralled by the Ping-Pong match that was the two young women’s disclosure. “Mom met a guy online. Texas, I think. She’s sure he’s the one.”