Page 47 of Carpenter's Christmas Bride

“Can I swing?” Walt asked, reaching out his other hand to Kenzie, as if to take hers.

“Oh, Kenzie can’t do that right now,” Aidan replied. “Not while she’s on crutches.”

“Oh,” Walt said sadly.

“Maybe we can do that with Uncle Simon,” Aidan told him. “Next time we see him, we’ll ask him to help me swing you.”

“When you get better, I can swing,” Walt told Kenzie.

“That sounds like fun,” she told him, glancing over at Aidan.

But Aidan’s jaw had gone tight, and he didn’t smile or agree.

A family heading up into the parking lot with a cart filled with chrysanthemums and poinsettias said hello as they all passed, and Kenzie didn’t have time to pick apart why Aidan had been offended at the idea of swinging Walt between them.

In no time, they were approaching the big octagonal barn with its grocery store and shops.

“We’ll go to the picnic tables on the side,” Aidan said. “That’s where they have the best snacks.”

Kenzie nodded, wondering if he was planning to get candied apples or apple cider doughnuts. Both were specialties at Cassidy Farm. She definitely wasn’t the only kid she knew who had broken her braces on a Cassidy Farm candied apple.

They passed several people who called out their greetings to Aidan and Walt, and finally made it to the patio on the side, where a bunch of picnic tables were set up.

Just like Kenzie remembered, there were several groups of teenagers camped out at the tables, eating candied apples or drinking apple cider and laughing. But Aidan led them past the candied apple stand and the window with the doughnuts to the little blue cart with soft pretzels.

“How many, folks?” the twinkly-eyed old man at the cart asked.

“You like pretzels, right?” he asked Kenzie without waiting for a reply before holding up three fingers to the man.

“Coming right up, kids,” the man said. “What a good-looking family.”

“I’m going to put mustard on mine,” Walt decided, before anyone could correct the pretzel man.

“Me too,” Kenzie told him. It had been forever since she had enjoyed a nice soft pretzel.

“Hello, there, Aidan and Walt,” Michael from the hardware store said as he sat down at a nearby picnic table with a paper cup of hot apple cider. “And is that little MacKenzie Forrest? Wow. Your grandma used to bring you into the hardware store when you needed supplies for scenery, you know?”

“Hi, Mr. Michael,” Kenzie said, calling him by the slight honorific her grandmother had encouraged when she was a kid.

Michael let out a belly laugh and raised his cider to her before chatting her up about the weather and asking after her grandmother.

A few minutes later, Kenzie, Walt, and Aidan were each holding a warm pretzel in a sleeve of waxed paper. Aidan paid, tossing the change into the tip jar, and the man pointed them toward a small table beside the cart, where bottles of mustard waited.

Aidan patiently got Walt’s pretzel ready for him while Kenzie did hers.

“That looks great, Walt,” she told him, holding out her own so he could see that she had put her mustard on in zigzags.

“Yours is funny,” Walt said, cracking up.

Aidan was finally finishing up the mustard on his own pretzel when a kid on a skateboard came barreling toward them.

Everything seemed to slip into slow motion as Aidan stepped away from the table with his pretzel. Kenzie could see exactly what was about to happen, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.

The kid on the skateboard saw him and called out, but couldn’t change his trajectory in time. And as Aidan started to turn around, the kid slammed into his back, planting the pretzel against Aidan’s chest for a moment before it bounced off and flew through the air, landing in the nearby goat enclosure, where a small black goat bolted it down immediately.

“A-are you okay?” the kid asked, his voice shaking a little. “I’m so sorry, sir. I’ll buy you another pretzel…”

Aidan turned slowly to the kid and Kenzie almost gasped at how thoroughly painted with mustard his flannel shirt was.

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