Miracles Retold (3 page)

When she got home, Hannah
sniffed
—
and
blinked
—
at the
kitchen. “Grandma!” she said. “You’ve been making cookies without
me!” Jars and bags were spread across the counters, flour was
sprinkled across the floor, and used baking sheets mingled with
platters of warm, delicious-looking cookies. Ryder and Carter,
already home from school, were arguing over whose turn it was to
stir in the next ingredient in a new batch of dough.
“Snickerdoodles?” Hannah asked.

Grace smiled. “I just made
one batch. I can’t make anything fancy with one hand, but I can
show you and the boys what to do
—
unless you want to spend time with your
friends.”

“Grandma, you’re a saint!
How did you know I wanted to make cookies? I mean, I want to see my
friends, too, but … they’re busy, and … I don’t have any plans.”
Hannah took a small bite of a snickerdoodle. “This cookie is so
amazing.” Hannah heartily shoved the rest of the cookie in her
mouth.

“Yeah, and they look too
good to eat!” Ryder said, although it looked as though he had
already eaten a couple himself, judging by the crumbs stuck to his
mouth.

Carter held a cookie and
stared at it. “Does Mom know we’re eating cookies now? I don’t know
if she would like this.”

Grace kissed Carter on top
of the head. “It’s OK. It’s not every day you have a last day of
school, right? This is your last day of school until next
year!”

“Whoa!” Carter
said.

“And Ryder, these aren’t
even the pretty cookies,” Grace told him. “You can make those
next.”

Ryder grinned.

“It’s Christmastime!” Grace
said. “What would Christmas be without cookies?”

“Exactly!” Hannah
said.

Grace led Hannah, Ryder,
and Carter through making several batches of cookies. Hannah put an
iTunes Radio holiday station on the laptop computer so they could
listen to music while they worked. The warm, sweet scents of baked
brown sugar, cinnamon, and anise and the cool whiff of peppermint
filled the kitchen. Carter eventually got tired of standing and
wandered off to build Lego towers on the floor, but he came back to
the kitchen now and then to nab a fresh cookie. Ryder hopped from
one cookie project to another, sometimes joining Carter in playing
with Legos. Hannah, however, wanted to hang out with Grace, go
through each recipe she had set out to make, and be on hand to do
whatever Grace couldn’t. Hannah loved hearing her grandmother’s
stories from her past, or just whatever was on her mind, because
nobody talked to Hannah the same way Grace did. Her grandmother was
fun to listen to. When Grace wasn’t telling stories, Hannah was
focused on rolling dough as Grace instructed, piping icing on
cooled gingerbread people alongside Ryder, filling thumbprints with
strawberry preserves, and washing bowls for the next batch of
dough. She sang along to the holiday songs. They continued baking
through the afternoon. Eventually, there were so many cookies that
the family ran out of platters and containers and had to make room
on sheets of waxed paper spread across other counters and tables in
the house.

Her hands busy and her
mind filled with stories and songs, Hannah had forgotten the hurt
in her heart about Allison’s vacation condo
—
for a few hours,
anyway.

- - - -

It was dark when Annie got
the chance to leave her office. It seemed ironic to her that the
shortest days of the year
—
those right before and right after the winter
solstice
—
were
her longest at work. The end of the year was a busy
time.

Annie checked her to-do
list on her phone before getting into her vehicle. Presents. She
still needed to buy gifts for the kids, Lon, and Grace.
Fortunately, Annie knew what they wanted and had purchased some
gifts online. She’d had them shipped to her office to keep them
hidden. The rest of the gift ideas she had added to her list on her
phone. Now all she had to do was fight traffic, find a parking spot
at a few stores, pick up the gifts, and wait in lines of shoppers
at the registers. By then, the traffic shouldn’t be as bad, but she
still had to get home and hide the gifts.

“It’s a wonderful life,”
Annie said out loud to herself, waiting for her chance to change
lanes on the road.

Five large shopping bags
and several swipes of her credit card later, Annie digitally
checked off the gifts from her to-do list. She was going to be
really late getting home.

When Annie finally arrived
and walked inside, she was surprised by the neat row of cookies
covering her dining table
—
and Angel the cat sitting among them, her fluffy
white tail fanning a batch of decorated gingerbread
people.

“Aaack!” she screamed,
clapping her hands at the cat. “Shoo! Shoo!”

The kids came running into
the room to see what the fuss was about, arriving in time to see
Angel leaping off the table and running for cover.

“Oh no, guys,” Annie said,
letting her purse fall to the floor. Grace caught up to the
children and entered the room. “I’m afraid Angel sat in your
cookies here.”

“Oh man!” Ryder said.
“Those were the ones I decorated like Star Wars characters!” he
said. “See?” Ryder held up a cookie that Annie identified as a
gingerbread Stormtrooper.

“They’re very nice,” Annie
said. “That’s too bad.”

“Ugh,” Hannah said, picking
up wisps of white fur from the cookies.

“It’s OK,” Carter said,
“She doesn’t know any better because she’s just a cat.”

Grace put her hand on her
hip and sighed. “Guess you can’t turn your back on a cat for a
moment! They’re so quiet, you don’t know what they are up to. If
you had a dog, he would have eaten the cookies but at least you
would have heard him doing it!”

Annie glanced at Grace.
“I’m sorry, guys,” she said. “Maybe next time, one of us should
shut Angel in a room so she is out of the way.”

“And leave her there,”
Grace said.

“We made more cookies,
Mom,” Ryder said. “These aren’t all of them. Come see!”

Annie followed her family
to the kitchen.

“Grandma is a cookie
genius!” Hannah said. “Look!”

Annie couldn’t help but put
on a frozen smile as she saw both the dazzling array of cookies and
the extremely messy state of the kitchen. “I see.” She prevented
her thoughts from turning into spoken words about who was going to
clean the kitchen and how dinner was going to be made among the
piles of dirty bowls and utensils, and every last inch of space
taken up by cookies. Instead, she said, “Grandma has always been an
excellent baker and cook.”

As if she could read
Annie’s mind, Grace said, “We were just going to wrap it up and
clean the kitchen, right, kids?” And she delegated small jobs to
each person.

Annie took Grace’s arm and
whispered in her ear, “I have Christmas gifts to bring in. Think
you can keep the kids occupied while I find somewhere to hide the
presents?”

Grace smiled and nodded,
pretending what Annie said was of no consequence. “All right, while
you kids are doing your jobs, I’ll find somewhere to put all these
cookies!”

Annie went to her SUV (it
was really just a tall wagon) and bent to take the boxes of gifts
out of the shopping bags, whose crinkly sound would be a giveaway
for sure. She had brought towels to cover the boxes just in case
one of the children happened to see her. Annie thought she could
clear her wagon of the presents in three trips this way, which
meant finding three different hiding spots around the house. Hannah
had never been a present-hunter, but Ryder had been caught twice
tearing into gifts before Christmas. Under his tutelage, Carter was
now starting to realize there were presents to be found around the
house, if you looked hard enough.
They
certainly keep me on my toes
, Annie
thought as she threw a towel over two boxes and headed for the
garage. From there, she could pull down the ladder that led to the
attic and stash the presents there. On a second trip, the shelf
space behind a torn cardboard box containing a tent would do for
another gift.

Before Annie could get the
last group of gifts out of the car, though, Carter opened the front
door. “Mom? What are you doing?”

“Oh!” Annie jumped. “You
scared me a little. I’m just cleaning my truck. Go on inside and
help Grandma, sweetie.”

Carter turned back inside,
leaving the door open.
Good
thing
, Annie thought,
Not sure I could have opened the door with this last
trip
. These were the smaller presents that
she could hide here and there around the house without attracting
any attention before Christmas
—
she hoped. Arms full, Annie minced her way to her
room, clutching the towel-covered heap. She would come back and
shut the front door, then help with the kitchen cleanup and start
on dinner, and no one would know about the presence of the
presents.

While Annie was covertly
stashing gifts, Carter remembered he left the front door open and
returned to close it. “Mom?” he called. But she wasn’t outside.
Just as Carter turned to come back in, he saw something white out
of the corner of his eye. “Angel!” he said. “You’re outside again?”
Angel dashed into the closest shrub, disappearing completely in the
dark even though she was bright white. “Come on, it’s too cold!”
Carter called. Carter looked around and saw Grandma’s jacket on a
chair by the front door. He threw it on before heading outside, the
arms of the garment hanging beyond his hands. “Angel, come here,
Angel!” he called.

Angel darted out of the
shrub. Carter followed her down the driveway. He bent over to pick
her up, but he managed only to grab her back legs. Angel poured
like water through Carter’s arms and scampered a few feet away.
“Angel! Come back!” Carter lunged toward the cat again, and Angel
started running. Carter ran after her. Angel stopped, saw Carter
running for her, then started running again. Carter ran behind,
bending to try to grab the cat when he got close, but never quite
got a hold of her. Angel led Carter in a cat-and-boy chase down the
street and through yards. Starting and stopping, bending and
lunging, the pair scrambled across the neighborhood by the glow of
the holiday lights and decorations on everyone’s houses.

Carter realized he was
farther away from his home than he had ever been by himself, but he
couldn’t stop now. He would catch her! “Angel! Let’s go home! Come
on, kitty!”

Angel ran through a
backyard, then another, then another. Carter crashed through
bushes, and dodged around trees, toys, and flower beds to catch up.
Once, he tripped over an extension cord leading to a Santa Claus
inflatable.

Finally, Angel scampered up
a berm and looked down at Carter when she reached the top. Tired of
running, Carter trudged up the small hill. Angel stayed still and
let the boy pick her up.

“You’re a bad cat!” Carter
said, jiggling her fluffy body in his arms to make his point. “Look
where we are. We’re … Where are we?” Carter looked around at the
overgrown trees that created a darkness even deeper than the night
sky.

Carter turned to go back
down the berm to the neighborhood, then stopped. He wasn’t sure he
knew how to get home. He had been so focused on watching where
Angel was going that he didn’t pay attention to his surroundings.
Nothing looked familiar.

“Now what do I do?” Carter
said. He climbed back up the hill and sat down with Angel in his
lap, pulling his grandmother’s jacket around both of them. “I’m …
I’m not going to be scared,” Carter told the cat. “You shouldn’t be
scared when you’re lost. But I’m not
exackally
lost,” he said.

He hoped it was
true.

Searching for a
Miracle

The kitchen was covered in
flour, butter, and sugar, cluttered with dirty pans and bowls.
Cookies lined up on every free inch of counter space. “Kitchen
under siege,” is how Lon put it when he got home a few minutes
after Annie had hidden the presents. So, the family decided a pizza
delivery would be the fastest way to get dinner. While they waited
for the pizza to arrive, Grace insisted everyone should have a
salad as well, so Hannah placed bowls of salad and a bottle of
dressing on the family room table. It was the only place free of
cookies where they could eat.