Page 97 of The Twelve Months of Christmas
“Punch with lime sherbet?” suggested Sunny. She could handle that.
“Absolutely,” Molly said.
And so it was decided. There would be some Fourth of July–style games like a water balloon toss, and Travis would be assigned the job of adapting the popular cornhole game to Christmas, making them a game that involved getting bean bags inside Santa’s mouth.
The day of the party was sunny and in the mid-seventies, perfect picnic weather. Rae and her man were present, along with Sunny’s parents, and a cheer went up when Travis put an arm around Sunny’s waist and announced, “We’re pregnant.”
Except for Bella, of course. If looks could kill, Sunny and the baby would be goners.
Watching Bella, Arianna vowed she would never let her daughter act like that if the day came when Wyatt remarried. It would come, of course. He wasn’t wired to be single.
Neither was she. Who knew? Maybe someday she wouldn’t be. Having Alden present made her nearly giddy, and she realized she was laughing like a kid with her first crush at everything he said. But how could she not. He was funny.
“No one should be feeding Santa beans,” he said as he aimed his beanbag at the plywood Santa’s mouth. “He’s gonna leave behind more than presents.”
“That whole feeding Santa thing, where’d that come from?” Travis wondered as he stepped up to make his throw.
“From some poor dad who was tired of everyone eating the cookies before he could get to them. My mom was always taking the cookie tin away from dad, telling him they were for the company,” Alden said.
I’d let you have all the cookies you wanted, thought Arianna.
“Then by the time the whole family came over and swarmed the dessert table, there was nothing left but crumbs,” Alden continued.
“That’s rough, dude,” said Travis.
“Yeah, but she always baked him his own batch of sugar cookies for New Year’s,” Alden said.
Alden’s family life sounded so idyllic. Siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins. It had always been just her and Mia after her dad died. They’d spent time with Wyatt’s parents when they were married, but he was an only child, too. What would it be like to have so many people to celebrate with?
Never mind having a lot of people, she prayed,I just want my mom.
The game ended and Travis and Alden were ready for a rematch, but Arianna called in Paisley to take her place. She went to join her mother up on Molly’s deck, where she sat next to Bella, who was eating ice cream.
“Do you like my tattoo?” Mia was asking. She put out her foot to show off the tattoo on her ankle and smiled. It was of a cupcake and had the number twenty-five inside it.
“It’s cute,” Bella said, managing a polite moment.
“Want to know why I got it?”
Bella shrugged. “Okay.”
“My husband and I got matching tattoos on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I was a baker and we liked the idea of the cupcake.”
Arianna knew what was coming next. It was a heartbreaking story.
“We didn’t get any more after that,” Mia said. “There was no time.”
“No time?” Bella asked, her curiosity piqued.
“He was a fisherman. Every year he’d go up and fish in Alaska.”
Bella wrinkled her nose. “Working with smelly fish all day sounds gross.”
“Gross I could handle, but it was also dangerous work,” Mia said. “I’d just convinced him to quit. It was going to be his last season.”
Bella’s eyes began to widen. “What happened?”
“He was lost overboard in those awful frigid waters.”
