Page 75 of The Best Christmas Choir Ever

She pulled back. “I can hear my five star rating crumbling.”

“I don’t know. This kissing thing is kind of nice, too. Might make up for the lack of food.”

“Well, you’ve never had one of my bacon, egg, tomato breakfast sandwiches.”

“You’re telling me I’m going to prefer this sandwich to kissing you?”

“You just might.”

“Now I’m curious.” He gave her backside a pat, and Charlie smirked. “Can I help? I have been known to make some eggs in my day.”

“You can help yourself to coffee,” she said. “Or there’s orange juice in the fridge. And then you can get out of my kitchen.”

“Understood.” Julian poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table where he could watch her move back and forth, dropping the bacon into a large frying pan. In another, she cracked eggs. While everything cooked, she took a cutting board from behind the toaster and diced up thick slices of tomato.

“You’re not committed to a specific kind of bread, are you?”

“No,” Julian said. “Should I be?”

Charlie popped a couple slices of bread into the toaster. “Gram only ever ate one brand of multigrain, and I feel like she ruined all other bread for me.”

“It’s funny the things that stick with us from childhood,” Julian said. “Every time I see a woman with a giant purse, I swear I can still taste the caramel candies my grandmother used to keep in hers. I would sneak them on long car rides and spend twenty minutes trying to open the wrapper without getting caught.”

Charlie laughed. “Gram used to keep a dish of sour candies on the coffee table in the living room. I can’t tell you how many shops I’ve searched trying to find the same ones.”

“No luck?”

“Never. It’s like they only existed in my imagination.”

“That’s how I felt about my grandmother’s gingerbread. She only ever bought it at Christmas, and I’ve tried so many places around town and can’t seem to find anything remotely similar. The bakery I get the gingerbread house kits from is good but…” he sighed “…I miss that gingerbread.”

Charlie tilted her head, regarding him. “Gram used to make these cookies with plum jam inside them around the holidays. They were dusted with powdered sugar and literally so good. She’d always know when Tom and I had been sneaking them, and I’m only now realizing that was because we probably had sugar all over our faces.”

Julian waited for the mention of Tom to upset her, but she chuckled like she’d remembered it fondly.

He sat up, encouraged by her good memories. He wanted this for Charlie. He wanted her to be able to remember things without the weight of grief dragging her down. “Did you ever learn how to make the cookies?”

Charlie snorted, flipping the eggs and bacon as the toast popped. “If I ever mastered that plum jam, I’d eat it straight out of the jar. It’s addicting.”

“We’ll have to ask Doris for the recipe.”

Charlie added mayo to the toast and layered on a slice of tomato. “No chance. She hasn’t even handed that trade secret down to my mom.” She turned to him, blinking slowly.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing, I…have all these Christmas memories flooding back.”

“Tell me,” he said softly.

She crossed her arms, leaning a hip against the counter, taking a moment to process. “I remember this one Christmas—I must have been about five or six, Tom just a bit older—Gram bought us recorders. They were under the tree, and we got them Christmas morning. Tom had been learning at school, so he was actually quite good, but I wanted to be good, too, and I just kept wailing on this instrument.” She caught her lip between her teeth, shaking her head. “My poor parents sat there all morning enduring that.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t take it away.”

“Oh, Tom took it from me and hurled it into the basement.”

Julian laughed. “Is it still down there?”

“Probably. My dad went down to look for it but he couldn’t find it in Gram’s museum of junk. I cried for hours.”