When she was upright again, she pushed her hair off her face. The perfume she wore earlier still lingered.
“So—” He took a sheet of paper and demonstrated how to twist it. “What happened?” He peeked up at her.
She concentrated on his twisting. “Your hand is shaking.”
“It’s from the workout. What happened with Dalton?” He wasn’t going to let her change the subject. She’d called him over here in tears, and he was done trying to be patient.
“Nothing horrible. Well, his depth of character is about”—she held a piece of paper horizontally—“this deep, so, there’s that.”
“Figured that out, huh?” He took his twisted paper and showed her how to tuck it into a space between the kindling.
She followed. “He took me to Leavenworth.”
He pulled back.
She finished tucking her piece of paper in and then brushed her hands. “He didn’t tell me where we were going. He wanted it to be a surprise. And he didn’t know my history. So . . .” She looked up and lifted a shoulder. “I’m not sure it would’ve mattered, though.” She took another twist of paper and wiggled it under the logs.
“Maybe.” He liked to think Dalton would have considered her feelings if he’d known about her thing with Christmas. “Maybe not.” He handed her the box of matches, trying not to look too eager to be rid of them. “You do the honors.”
She took the box from him, and he sat back. She struck a match, and a whiff of sulfur dioxide hit his nose. His pulse kicked up, and his jaw clenched. She held the match close to the papers. They caught fire and flamed up.
He pointed. “Do the same over here.”
She obeyed, and in a couple of minutes, the kindling was burning, and the flames had begun to lick up the sides of the logs.
Mark retreated to the rocking chair, putting some space between him and the fire, wiping sweat from his brow. He wondered how he’d ever get past this fear.
“Thanks,” she said, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders. She looked back at him. “It’s hard for you, isn’t it?”
He tried not to be drawn in by the orange-hot light. Instead, he focused on her eyes. “It is.” He narrowed his gaze. He didn’t want to talk about him. “What happened in Leavenworth?”
“I couldn’t eat a bollen.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Bollen are our thing, right?”
He stilled at the words “our thing,” then nodded quickly. They had a thing.
The weight of fear from the flames started to dissipate.
She continued. “I was doing okay. I remembered what your dad said about how you used to pass out candy canes.” Her smile flickered and faded. “But then we went into this Christmas store, and I don’t know . . . By the time we got to the Holy Hall of Nativities, I was ready to lose it, and Dalton didn’t seem to notice—or care—so I came home and curled into the fetal position.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to sort through her explanation. But he knew the feeling of being on an emotional edge, and he didn’t want it for her.
“Me, too. I actually wanted to enjoy the schnitzel.” She shook her head and looked back at the fire.
“Why am I here,” he finally asked, “if it wasn’t to help you build a fire?”
She sighed and gestured to the drawings on the floor. “I need a face.”
“You have a face.”
She crossed her eyes at him, and he laughed. She crawled in front of the sofa and drew her legs beneath her. She’d dragged her blanket along with her. “I need a face for the baby. You need to help me.”
He joined her on the floor and sorted through the sketches she’d done. A page of eyes. A page of noses. A page of mouths. Hair. All babies, definitely.
“Riley, the figures are more abstract. You won’t need this much detail.” He lifted the page of eyes and ran his fingers over them, impressed with how she’d given them depth and even reflection. “How do you people do this?”
“‘You people’?” She took the page from him.
“Artists. Painters. People who draw. Draw-ers.”
She smiled at him. “We draw. A lot. Every day. All the time. We study people and other draw-ers. We learn. We erase. We start over. You know that.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Sounds a little like physical therapy.”
She looked back down at the eyes. “I know the nativity is more abstract. This was just exercise. I’ve done some other images over here that take the styling into account.”
She handed him another page from the floor.
Sure enough, she’d pieced together several different baby faces in his mother’s style. “Any of these would work,” he said.
“No. These all have a slightly different expression, and I’m not sure which to give him.” She scooted closer, brushing his shoulder with hers. “This one is pretty generic, like, ‘I’m a baby, but I’m kind of important, look at me.’ And this one is more like, ‘Whee, I’m loving this king gig.’ And this one kind of— Well, I was going for wise, but he looks like he’s filling his diaper—”
Mark barked a laugh, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
She grinned up at him. “Then help me.”
He was grateful she sat to the left of him. They were so close he could count each and every freckle across her nose, even in the soft light from the fire and the single floor lamp behind them. “I’ll try,” he said, begrudgingly turning his focus back to the page they were studying.
“This one has the right eyes, I think.” He tried to picture his mom’s baby Jesus. “Yeah, I think these are really close. You know, looking up but really simple. Maybe not such a round nose.”
She picked up a pencil and the sketch pad and drew the eyes.
“The nose was more of just a swoop underneath. And the mouth was like this one here.”
She followed his directions, filling in the space around the baby, the swaddling
