“And that is?”
“On the other side of the dessert bridge,” Dean says, swallowing a mouthful of potato salad.
Xavier nods and Sam looks at me. I reach over and pat his hand comfortingly.
“We’re going to the tree farm tomorrow, right?” Bellamy asks.
“Yep,” I nod. “Opening day. Oh. That reminds me. We have to bring our own saw.”
Sam gives me a blank expression. “Do you have a saw?”
“No. Don’t you?” I ask.
“Power saws. I don’t have a hand saw.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I?” he asks.
“I don’t know. It just seems like something you would have.”
Xavier stands up, wipes his mouth with his napkin, and starts toward the front door.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Aren’t we going to get a saw?” he asks.
Dean stands up, followed by Sam. “I guess we’re going to get a saw.” He kisses me. “Be back in a bit.”
As they walk toward the door, he shrugs into his coat. “Xavier, what’s with the gingerbread men? Can you not eat them because they’re shaped like men? Because they’re made with ginger? Or is it their faces?”
“It’s the clothes,” Xavier says. “They’re always dressed for winter.”
He opens the door and walks out.
“So, could you eat a naked gingerbread man?”
Dean closes the door behind him before I hear an answer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Damn. Now I want to know if he could eat a naked gingerbread man,” I say.
Bellamy and I look at each other.
“Are we going to make gingerbread men?” she asks.
“I don’t think we have any other option.”
I pull up a recipe and Bellamy and I gather up the ingredients. As I’m raiding the spice cabinet, she looks at me, her eyes moving up and down my face as if she’s scanning me for information.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“That was a lot of denial,” she quips. “Are you worried about my being pregnant? I don’t want you to think that it’s going to change anything between us.”
“Bellamy,” I say with a laugh. “I’m not jealous of the baby. And it is going to change things between us. You’re going to be a mother. But I think that’s wonderful. I get to be an aunt and the two of you are going to be great parents. Just don’t let Eric start teaching the baby to hack until it’s at least like, three.”
“I’ll do my best.” She reaches up into the cabinet over her head and pulls down a mixing bowl. “But are you sure you’re okay? There just seems to be something on your mind.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You look as if you want to convince me of that,” she notes.
“I got a really bizarre Christmas card yesterday,” I say.
“From Xavier?” she asks.
“See, I thought that, too. But no.” I go over to the drawer where I stashed it and show her.
She reads the inscription and nods. “That is definitely weird. But it could just be from somebody who doesn’t know the song. Or thinks he or she is being funny? I mean, you are an FBI agent. Isn’t it your job to go find naughty people?” She cringes. “That’s not a sentence I ever want to say again.”
“Maybe. And I probably would have thought that, too, if it was the only bizarre thing that happened in the last couple of weeks.”
As we start mixing the ingredients in the cookie recipe, I explain to her about the emails from the unknown address while I was in Feathered Nest, then the call from the University.
“And it’s not the same email address?” Bellamy asks. “I mean, the one that the University got and the one that you got the email from. They’re not the same?”
“No,” I say. “I checked it just to make sure.”
“And yet I get the impression you think they’re connected,” she says.
“Do you remember Julia Meyer?” I ask.
“No,” Bellamy says.
“I knew her in college. We were in a class together, and then started running into each other on campus, so we started to be pretty good friends. Then sophomore year, she just wasn’t around anymore,” I say.
“What do you mean she wasn’t around anymore?” Bellamy asks.
We are each rolling out a massive piece of gingerbread dough and I hand her a cookie cutter to start cutting out the little men.
“Just that. She wasn’t there anymore. She went home for Thanksgiving just the way she was supposed to. Then she came back to campus and we were supposed to get together to study for our last exams, and she didn’t show up. I never heard from her again.”
“Was she reported missing?” Bellamy asks.
“No,” I say. “According to her parents and the school, she left of her own accord. They say she must have decided that she didn’t want to continue her studies and was going to start a new life. There was never an investigation.”
“Maybe they’re right,” Bellamy says. “College isn’t easy for a lot of people. And you mentioned there were some rumors about her. Maybe she was just embarrassed by a guy and didn’t want to deal with it anymore.”
“But why wouldn’t she tell me? We were super close. At least, I thought. If it was some guy who embarrassed her, why wouldn’t she tell me about it, or at least get in touch with me after she left and let me know what was going on?” I ask.
Bellamy shrugs as she transfers another cookie onto her baking sheet.
“I hate to put it this way, but the two of you weren’t friends for that long. If she really did get overwhelmed by everything that was going on in her life and just needed to get away, maybe you didn’t factor into that. Don’t read too much into it, Emma. Don’t let yourself immediately go for the worst possible case.”
I nod. “You’re probably right. It’s just the time of year and everything. It brought up a lot of memories.”
That afternoon, Xavier sits at the kitchen table, staring at the row of gingerbread men Bellamy and I lined up on a platter. Each of them
