Page 24 of Love, Lies and Sleigh Rides
The room hushed when Elaine stood next to her granddaughters’ house with two ribbons. Kyah hopped from one foot to the other with excitement.
“For Kyah’s and Della’s house, they get the “There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Frosting Award,’” she announced to whistles and clapping.
“Grandma, I would have used more, but you said we were out,” Kyah said, planting a hand on her hip and pointing to the three unopened frosting containers in plain view.
The room erupted with laughter while Elaine pinned the ribbons on Kyah and Della.
“I was afraid your sister would have eaten those too.”
Not to be outshone by her big sister, Della climbed onto her chair again, hovered over the prize-winning house, and promptly bit off a portion of the roof.
Shouts of surprise and more laughter made the walls vibrate. Kade had never seen his parents laugh so hard. Frosting clung to little Della’s forehead and all the way down to her chin. A wheat square from the roof stuck on her cheek.
He looked for Fallon amid the commotion. She’d found a spot next to the dessert table and talked with Tyler. His brother noticed Kade’s attention and shot him an overdone smile. Oblivious, Fallon didn’t stop talking. A little seed of jealousy took root in his gut, so he preoccupied himself with the football game on television.
Elaine awarded the other ribbons after she helped Della’s mother clean his niece’s face. He got the “Gingerbread House Most on the Verge of Collapse” award due to gumdrops falling off throughout the judging. She awarded Pops the “Sugar Rush” claim to fame for painstakingly tiling his roof with mini chocolate candies.
When Elaine stuck an adhesive blue ribbon on Fallon’s sweater for her cabin with pretzel rod logs and announced to the room she’d won for “Structural Integrity,” Fallon’s face lit up. She glanced at him across the room and proudly tapped her ribbon. Kade gave her a thumbs-up. Even at a distance, her smile caught him off guard, making it impossible to look away.
* * *
Later on,after everyone except Tim’s family had left, and Elaine and Jeannie were in the kitchen putting away leftovers, Kade found Fallon in the small library. She leaned to one side in an overstuffed armchair, studying one of the family albums. Across from her, his father nodded to him when he came into the room and got up from the loveseat.
“Here, you sit here. I should go see if your mother has a task for me. She’ll call me out for slacking if I don’t,” Fred said with a wink.
Kade settled across from Fallon and pulled a pillow across his lap as he sank into the couch.
“This day goes way back, doesn’t it?” Fallon asked as soon as Fred left the room. He could see her pointing to a photo of him in high school. The twins had to be around four. The three of them each held a gingerbread creation. Kade’s frown almost ruined the photo if it weren’t for his brothers’ cheesy grins.
“I told you it did. It all grew out of watching the lighting of the Rockefeller Tree on television. Mom has been making it a bigger deal every year since then.”
She nodded absentmindedly, a small smile playing on her lips. “You don’t look very happy.”
“You’d be hard pressed to find a photo of me smiling back then.”
“So, a grumpy teen?”
“To say the least.” He leaned back and hooked his hands behind his head. It wasn’t a subject he wanted to linger on. “What traditions do you have in your family?”
Fallon closed the album with a perfunctory snap and set it on the side table. “We really don’t have any,” she said dismissively.
“Impossible.”
“I’m serious.” She folded her hands in her lap and studied the bookcase across the room crammed with Pop’s extensive collection on World War II history books and his mother’s crime mystery novels. Her brows dipped.
“Sorry. Maybe that was an intrusive question.”
Fallon dismissed his statement with a quick shake of her head. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Did you not celebrate Christmas?”
“Not on purpose, I guess. We went to church on Christmas Eve. Sometimes we visited Santa at the mall when my brother and I were young.”
“How about a tree? Did you have a special ornament? One that you’ve kept and hang up each year?”
“We never had a tree.”
He didn’t know why this surprised him but he tried not to let it show.
