Andi looked at the macaroni angel with gold-painted hair and white wings, then nodded to her daughter. “Looks like Mia when she was younger. Now she’s growing so fast. She lost the baby fat in her cheeks.”
“I guess first grade will do that to you.”
Andi sighed. “I miss having her little. She doesn’t want me to coddle her as much anymore, especially now that Taylor’s living with us, and we’re all one family.”
“I can’t wait to get married and move in with Mike,” Rachel said, excitement bubbling up and making her giddy. “Only two more weeks until the wedding.”
“Then you and Mike can start your own family,” Andi teased.
“Oh, no,” Rachel corrected. Had Mike said something to the others? “No babies for me. At least, not right away. It would ruin my figure.”
“I guess you’re right. Now that I’ve lost those dreaded ten pounds, the last thing I’d need would be anything to make me gain it all back.” Andi held up another ornament. “This is my absolute favorite. My mother made it for me.”
Rachel watched Andi put the gray felt bakery mouse clutching the silver spoon on one of the upper branches of the Christmas tree in the corner of the shop. Kim usually set up her art easel and painted in that corner, but they’d convinced her to pack away her paints and brushes until after the holidays.
“Do you think I made a mistake when I planned my wedding for Christmas Eve?” Rachel asked.
“Of course not. Christmas is the season of excitement, glad tidings, and love.”
“I had thought the date would be so magical, but now I’m wondering if it will just be interfering with everyone’s holiday plans. Several people have told me they can’t come.”
“What about your cousin? I thought you said she would be here tomorrow.”
“Stacey’s the one person I wish wouldn’t come,” Rachel said with a frown.
“Is she bossy?” Andi teased. “Like me?”
“No,” Rachel smirked. “More like a bad luck charm. I can’t prove it, but every time she’s around, disaster strikes. Stacey’s quiet, withdrawn, and has no fashion sense. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her while she’s here. I don’t have anything in common with her.”
“She could help out in the shop,” Andi suggested. “That way we can keep an eye on her for you.”
Rachel laughed. “I can’t picture Stacey in an apron. Maybe a jail uniform, but not an apron.”
“Rachel, drool alert!” Kim warned, from the front counter. “Hot, hunky hero coming through the door.”
“I don’t drool over anyone but Mike,” she called back, but when she saw the man dressed in the Santa suit, she knew he was one and the same.
“Ho, ho, ho!” he greeted her and leaned in close. “Do you have a kiss for Santa?”
She brushed aside the fake white beard. “I prefer my man to be clean shaven, so we can kiss cheek to cheek. I hope you don’t intend to wear this to the wedding.”
“Don’t you want to be Mrs. Claus?” Mike teased.
“Me? In a granny hat, glasses, and an apron?”
“Well, you’re already wearing the red apron,” he pointed out, and handed her a bag. “Here’s the rest of your costume.”
Rachel shook her head. “No way.”
Andi took her arm. “In exchange for gift donations for the foster kids, I promised some of the local businesses cupcake deliveries from Santa and crew.”
Kim leaned over the counter and laughed. “Are you serious?”
“You’re going, too,” Andi told her. “As an elf. Your first stop is the prenatal class at the Columbia River Health and Fitness club on Olney Avenue. We have an order for a dozen triple-chocolate cupcakes.”
Rachel glanced between Andi and Mike. “Prenatal? Isn’t that a birthing class?”
Andi smiled. “You’re the one who suggested we offer a holiday coupon titled ‘Christmas Cupcakes for Stressed-out Dads.’ ”
Rachel groaned, pulled the white wig and red granny hat over her hair, and followed Mike and Kim out to the Cupcake Mobile. At least she didn’t have to wear pointed ears and curly green elf slippers like Kim.
When they arrived at the club, Rachel peered through the door of the prenatal class, hesitant to interrupt. Twelve couples sat on the floor, each with a pillow and a mat. It looked like the instructor was teaching the women different ways to stretch and breathe. The men were there to support and lift, but many had clueless expressions on their faces as if they had no idea what to do.
“See what we have to look forward to?” Mike murmured against her ear.
Rachel stared at all the fat stomachs. “Is that how you want me to look? Like a big, round snowball with only my head, arms, and feet sticking out?”
“Chasing after our children would whip your figure back into shape,” he said, giving her waist a quick squeeze.
“Yeah, dragging around a brood of drooling, dependent kids in diapers seems like the perfect workout,” she drawled.
The instructor must have either seen them by the door or heard them whispering, because she stopped the exercise and looked right at them. “Can I help you?”
Rachel stepped forward with the delivery box. “Which dad gets the cupcakes?”
None of the men acknowledged her, but a woman with a very large stomach struggled to her feet and pointed to the man beside her. “They belong to him.”
“I didn’t order any,” he protested.
The pregnant woman who stood, wobbled forward and took the box from Rachel’s hands. “I called.”
The man Rachel assumed was the woman’s husband asked, “You did?”
“I have this coupon titled ‘Christmas Cupcakes for Stressed-out Dads,’ ” the woman explained. “And you look really stressed.”
As the woman took a series of deep breaths, Rachel thought she was the one who looked stressed.
Her husband looked around the room, embarrassment coloring his cheeks. “I’m fine.”
The woman stumbled, tucked the bakery box against her chest with one arm, and clutched Rachel’s arm for support with her other. “Believe me, you are stressed,” she told her husband. “Now, come get the cupcakes so you can share them with me.”
Rachel winced from the tight grip the woman had on her arm and looked to Mike for help.
“Here, let me take the box for you,” Mike offered.
“No!” the woman shouted and bared her teeth in a near snarl. “I need these cupcakes, and I need them now!”
Her husband gasped. “Dolores, what’s gotten into you?”
The other couples started closing in on her as Dolores opened the box, and the aroma of freshly baked chocolate cupcakes with triple-chocolate creamy frosting filled the air.
“I could use a cupcake,” another woman said. “I’ve been having a craving for cupcakes all morning.”
“So have I,” said another.
“Back off!” Dolores warned. “They’re all mine!”
Another worried husband asked, “Do you have any more?”
“Yes,” Mike said, “out in the truck.”
“You better hurry,” the instructor told him. “I’ve seen this happen before, and believe me—it can get ugly.”
When Rachel, Mike, and Kim returned, each carrying four boxes of cupcakes, Dolores was on the floor in obvious pain, her cupcakes abandoned.
“She’s going into labor,” the instructor announced and snapped her cell phone shut. “I called the hospital, but the ambulance can’t get through for another twenty minutes. There’s been an accident, and some of the roads have been blocked off.”
“He drove me here in a Volkswagen Beetle,” Dolores said, glaring at her husband between puffs of breath. “I can’t lie down in a Beetle! He wanted that stupid car, not me.”
“The ambulance will be here in just a few more minutes,” her husband said, patting her arm.
“I don’t have another few minutes!” Dolores screeched. “I’ve been having contractions all day but didn�
��t want to say anything until the cupcakes arrived. I thought it was just more false labor like I’ve been having all week . . . but this . . . is . . . real.”
Another contraction must have started for she grimaced, drew in a breath, and let it back out between clenched teeth in a series of short huffs and hisses.
“We can take her in the Cupcake Mobile,” Mike said and met Rachel’s gaze.
Take Dolores to the hospital? Hey, why not? At least the woman had helped sell a truck full of cupcakes. Rachel took off her Mrs. Claus granny glasses and put them in the pocket of her apron. “Kim, you stay here and serve cupcakes, and we’ll come back for you.”
Kim nodded. “This is one trip I’d rather not take.”
AFTER TEN MINUTES getting Dolores into the back of the Cupcake Mobile and another fifteen minutes on the road, Rachel had to agree with Kim. Dolores was sweating like she’d come out of an oven and snapping at her husband ten times worse than William Burke snapped at his daughter, Andi.
“I see the head!” Dolores’s husband shouted.
“What?” Rachel looked into the back of the Cupcake Mobile. “This is no place to give birth!”
“The Nativity didn’t take place in the most ideal conditions either,” Mike reminded her. “And still a miracle was born.”
The next few minutes whirled past in a fast and furious blur. Mike pulled over, and Rachel helped him push aside boxes in the back of the truck to give Dolores more room. A police car pulled up behind them and two uniformed officers, whom Dolores’s husband had conversed with on the phone, prepared to assist with the birth. The woman screamed, and Rachel thought she screamed with her.
Then there was another person in the Cupcake Mobile, and when ready, Rachel used her red apron to wrap the newborn and hand him to his mother. Dolores smiled, her husband smiled, and Rachel found that despite the horrific panic she’d felt moments before, she was now smiling, too.
She’d never witnessed a baby’s first cry or seen such tiny fingers and toes. Even after the first few moments of birth she thought the child had his father’s mouth and his mother’s eyes. Certainly, he had their love.
Dolores appeared a tired but transformed woman. Her husband, whom Rachel thought to be one of the most forgiving people in the world, held her close as if she’d never uttered an unkind word against him. Together, they held their baby and looked like the happiest family on the planet.
Rachel looked at Mike, and he put his arm around her as they shared in this family’s special moment.
“What do you think now?” Mike asked, his eyes lit with mischief. “Still against motherhood?”
“No,” Rachel conceded. “Someday . . . when we’re ready, a family of our own might be . . . nice.”
And when that day came, she’d want to be right here in Astoria, not down in Hollywood amid glitzy lights and movie star billboards. Mike had mentioned moving, but she couldn’t imagine ever bringing a child into the world without her mother and best friends by their side.
No, Astoria is where she’d stay because, together, they’d always be okay.
KIM DIDN’T THINK she’d ever forget the expression on Rachel’s face when she came back to the Columbia River Health and Fitness club and announced, “It’s a boy!”
Her friend’s exuberance stayed with her as she and Nathaniel accompanied Andi, Jake, and their girls sledding the next day.
Seven inches of snow had blanketed the hillsides of Astoria overnight, closing the schools. Eighth Street, one of the steepest streets in the whole country, with its wavy, forty-five-degree angle, had also been closed and transformed into a premier sledding hill for local residents.
As a light flurry of snow continued to swirl down, Kim tightened the scarf around her neck and pulled the wool hood of her coat up over her head.
“Bye, Kim!” Mia yelled. She waved as she and Andi doubled up on a saucer sled and slid down the snowpack.
Kim sat down on her elongated two-man sled and called, “Taylor, are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”
Taylor rolled a large ball of snow with her father and shook her head. “We’re building a snowman.”
“I’ll go with you.” Nathaniel scooted behind her on the sled and wrapped his arms around her. “Ready?”
Kim tucked her boots into the front of the sled and nodded. “I haven’t been sledding in years.”
The sled dipped, flattened out over the next cross street, dipped again, gained speed, and sent them tumbling off into a snow bank.
Nathaniel laughed. “Want to go again?”
“Oh, yes!” Kim smiled, wishing she could preserve this moment forever. She and Nathaniel—together—not just for the present, but for all time.
As they trudged back up the hill, she waved a mittened hand toward the dozens of children laughing and playing all around them. “Do you ever picture yourself having kids someday?”
Nathaniel’s blue eyes sparkled as he turned and gave her a sideways grin. “Ja, of course.”
“But . . . you can’t travel much when you have kids.”
“Sure you can. Just strap them on your back and take them with you. Fredrik, Linnea, and I never tied my mother down. We’d each been to seventeen countries before the age of five.”
“Are you serious?” Kim studied his face and found he was. “Your mom must have been a strong woman.”
“She just loved us too much to leave us behind.”
Nathaniel took her hand and pulled her up a steep stretch of the slippery slope. “Fredrik bought tickets to fly to Göteborg for Christmas. I think he wants to show off his new wife to the folks back home who couldn’t come over for the wedding.”
“Do you picture yourself getting married someday?” She held her breath, unable to bring herself to look at him.
“Ja, I suppose it would be hard to have a kid without being married,” he teased.
“Some people do,” she protested.
“I’m not ‘some people,’ Kimberly. Before I have kids, I will marry.” He grinned. “If the woman I choose accepts me.”
“First you’d have to propose.” There! She’d said it. Oh, my gosh! She’d actually said it out loud.
“Ja,” he said, his voice warm. “I suppose you’re right.”
She sneaked a peek at his face. He was smiling, grinning from ear to ear, but wasn’t getting down on one knee.
“I have a proposal for you,” he said, when they crested the top, sled in hand.
Kim could hardly breathe. “Yes?”
“What if we take a trip to the Flavel House this evening? I hear they’re serving Christmas tea with plum pudding.”
“Plum pudding?” she demanded. After coming so close to actually talking about a possible future together, he was offering her plum pudding?
“Or we could go to the Liberty Theater to see The Nutcracker.”
“The Nutcracker,” she repeated, her throat dry.
Then her heart quickened. What if he proposed to her this evening? Of course! He probably already had the whole thing planned out. Instead of a haphazard proposal on a sled hill, he would propose tonight when they were dressed nice and out on a real date. A romantic date.
She flung her arms around his neck and gave him a quick kiss. “Plum pudding at the Flavel House sounds perfect.”
Chapter Six
* * *
Sing hey! Sing hey!
For Christmas Day;
Twine mistletoe and holly.
For a friendship glows,
In winter snows,
And so let’s all be jolly!
—Author Unknown
MAX SCOOPED UP a handful of snow, packed it into a ball, threw it in the air, then hit it with his drumstick.
Not a good idea. The cold, powdery remains flew into his face. Then it melted against his skin and ran down his bare neck. He turned up the collar of his flannel shirt so it wouldn’t happen again.
As he packed his next snowball, he looked toward Mia and her family. He’d been
watching them for an hour—laughing, playing, sledding. Maybe when his mother came back they’d go sledding and have good times—like them. Like a real family should.
He thought about going over and saying “hey” to Jake, but . . . the guy was too busy tossing snowballs back and forth with Mia’s mom. Maybe some other time.
He sliced another snowball with his drumstick, then turned his head toward the raised voice of a mean, fat kid from his class at school.
The boy, Toby Pittenger, better known as Toby the Pit Bull, was arguing with some little kid over a sled. Max edged closer to listen in.
“You’re in the way!” Toby shouted. “Get off the hill, or I’ll break your sled in two.”
“That’s my sled,” a small voice whined. “Give it back.”
Toby turned sideways, and Max sucked in his breath when he saw the kid being bullied was Mia.
“Give her back her sled,” Max said, closing the distance between them.
“Who are you, the kid’s brother or something?”
Max stuck out his chin. “That sled isn’t yours. Give it back. Now.”
“Like I would listen to you.”
Max growled and raised his drumstick, ready to strike.
“I was just foolin’ around,” Toby said, throwing the saucer sled at Mia’s feet. “Since when do you care, anyway?”
Max didn’t lower his arm until Toby was a safe distance. Then he took Mia’s hand and pulled her back up on her feet.
“Thanks, Max.”
“No problem.” He held the sled steady while Mia climbed on. “No one should treat you like that. No one. If that kid bothers you again, I want to hear about it.”
“Okay, Max,” she said, a smile back on her face. “Do you want to sled with me?”
“Maybe later.” He glanced over at Jake, who caught sight of him and waved. “There’s someone I need to talk to.”
Jake might be the first person he’d met who could help. He must have connections—know people—from working at the Astoria Sun. Maybe he could write up an ad to find his mom, let her know he still waited for her, let her know he’d been placed in foster care.
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