The Christmas Cookie Crush (Arcadian Falls Christmas #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Austin

Nana wraps me in a big hug after I set my last bag down on the floor in the spare bedroom. “We really appreciate this,” she says, her voice choked with emotion.

I hug her back, a lump rising in my throat in response. “I’m happy to help, Nana.” It’s difficult to see them like this—Nana sad and worried and Grampy stuck in his chair. Okay, he’s not really stuck in his chair. It’s just that he’s been in his chair since I got here about ten minutes ago, which is unlike him. Usually, he’s grabbing as many bags as he can carry when I come to visit, barely letting me help. When I arrived, he stood from his chair and shuffled over to me with his walker, and it’s so weird to see him like that. He almost immediately went back to his chair at Nana’s insistence, which was a relief. I know he’s supposed to be up and moving around. Mom told me the physical therapist said so, but he’s far less enthusiastic than I’m used to seeing him.

My grandparents have always been healthy and active. In my mind, they’re frozen in time about ten years ago, which was when I moved away from Arcadian Falls. Even though we came back every summer after that, the visits were always short, and I was just a kid, wrapped up in my own life and unconcerned with the adults. And in the last six years since I graduated from high school, I’ve only been back a few times.

They’ve aged. When did that happen? And how? I mean, I know how. But I’ve been able to ignore it before. Now it’s hitting me in the face like a two by four. The lines in Nana’s face are etched deeper, her always-thin frame feeling more frail as she hugs me, and Grampy using a walker …

This is the man who’d take me hiking as often as he could. It was painful seeing him shuffle to the door with his walker, his frustration obvious that he couldn’t help me carry my bags in, grumbling at Nana when she told him I could get my things in just fine. No, this time I’m here to help them .

It’s mid-November, and the early cold snap at the beginning of the month turned their front steps into a mini skating rink. Grampy fell on the steps in the process of putting out ice melt, shattering his hip.

There was a lot of back-and-forth between my mom and her sisters about who could go help, and Mom ended up coming up from Portland for the surgery—the other two live halfway across the country and have younger kids, and could only come for a couple days at the most. They did, which was good, but it wasn’t a solution to the real problem—who will run the bakery kiosk during ChristmasFest?

In a tourist town like Arcadian Falls, capitalizing on the major tourism draws is the lifeblood of most retail businesses here. The summer season has its own ebbs and flows, but once Labor Day rolls around, tourism drops off until ChristmasFest. This is the big cash injection that keeps everyone afloat from January until June.

Oh, sure, the locals come in for pastries and cakes and cookies as a treat or for a special occasion. But even I know that’s nothing compared to the booms of ChristmasFest and the summer high season.

Grampy’s been the lifeblood of Give and Cake since they opened before my mom was born. She grew up in that shop, officially working there as a teenager and young adult, only stopping when Dad got the job in Portland that made us move away. When Grampy got hurt, my aunts made noises about shutting down the bakery, and I could see that Mom hated the idea. But she didn’t have a solution.

“I can run it,” I said, almost without thinking. I’d moved home after graduating from college, working a string of dead-end jobs. I got a degree in business because it was supposed to be practical, choosing to minor in art even though I loved drawing. If I could turn that into a career, I would. I just don’t see how. Sure, graphic design jobs exist, but more and more of those are freelance gigs, and I’d be scraping by just as much as I am now. I might’ve enjoyed college more as an art major, though. Because despite my attempts at practicality, my business degree hasn’t led to any amazing jobs. Truthfully, I’ve felt pretty adrift since graduating a year and a half ago, unsure what to do with myself now that I’d completed the obvious paths through high school and college. I’ve barely even been doodling since I graduated, only having the energy to sit and stare at the small screen in my hand while the big screen in front of me plays something I mostly ignore. At least coming back to Arcadian Falls and helping my grandparents gives me some sense of purpose, even if it won’t last forever.

Because Grampy’ll be back up and going by spring, ready to tackle the summer tourist season.

He has to be.

Nana’s always done the books and ordering, and Grampy’s been in charge of everything else—the menu, the seasonal rotations, managing the crew, though I don’t think he bakes much anymore. He hired a new head baker—Sheila—a few years after we moved to Portland, though I’m pretty sure he still worked in the kitchen during high traffic times and just whenever he wanted to schedule himself.

Since Grampy’s accident, all their attention has been on his recovery, with Sheila taking over all the day-to-day work, but she’s only one person. She can’t pick up all of Grampy’s slack forever on top of taking over Nana’s duties, especially with ChristmasFest right around the corner.

Blinking back the moisture forming in my eyes, I pull away from Nana. “I’ll stay as long as you need me. Don’t worry about a thing.”

She gives me a watery smile. “I don’t. Well, that’s not true,” she corrects herself. “I worry about your Grampy. And I can tell you do too, or else you wouldn’t be here. But I don’t worry about you getting things done here. And we’ll be sure to get Grampy up and going again as soon as possible so you can get back to your life.”

I give her a tight smile. My life’s not anything worth getting back to, though I’m pretty sure most people would consider moving from my parents’ house to my grandparents’ house more of a lateral move. At least here I know I’m useful, though, rather than feeling like a directionless failure who had to move back in with Mommy and Daddy.

My parents don’t make me feel like that, of course. Nope, it’s all me.

It certainly doesn’t help my dating life, though. Not that moving here will help that, but since it’s been on hold indefinitely anyway, I’m not too worried.

Nana gives me one more pat. “I’m going to check on Grampy and let you get settled. Come out in a bit, and we’ll figure out dinner.”

“Be sure to add me to the cooking rotation,” I call after her, and she lifts her hand in acknowledgment, though I’m not sure if that means she’ll do it or not.

Well, I’ll just start cooking some of the time anyway. Though I suspect both of my grandparents will object to that. Yes, I’m here to help out, but according to them, I’m here to work in the bakery and run the kiosk in the main ChristmasFest space once that opens in a couple weeks. It’ll be up to me to build it this year—though it’s a prefab thing kept in storage when it’s not in use, so the building isn’t difficult.

Standing alone in the room, I look around, hands on my hips. Not a lot’s changed since the last time I was here. Not much has changed since my childhood, when we lived only a block away. They’ve lived in this house my whole life, and it’s decorated with family photos, comfortable furniture covered in handmade quilts and afghans, and heirlooms from my great grandparents. This room is no exception, with collage frames bearing photos of my cousins and me growing up, my mom and her siblings as kids, a black and white of my grandparents standing in front of the house when they bought it, looking young and happy. The full-size bed is covered in one of Nana’s quilts, and the lamp on the bedside table looks older than me. But it’s dust free and functional, so why get rid of it?

Cozy and comfortable are the words for everything to do with my grandparents, and being here feels like coming home in ways even my parents’ house doesn’t achieve. I spent so much of my childhood here, whereas my parents have moved a few times since we first relocated to the Portland area. Plus, my mom loves decorating the house, which means she changes things up every few years—in addition to changing out little things for holidays and seasons—painting the walls and buying new furniture, though the artwork on the walls tends to rotate in and out of storage more than anything, with only the occasional new purchase if she doesn’t have enough to match the current aesthetic. The only room there that goes largely untouched is mine, but even that isn’t entirely free from her need to buy new blankets and sheets every so often.

Grampy and Nana’s house, by contrast, feels like a time capsule. Very little has changed since the afternoons and summers I spent here in elementary school while my parents worked, running around the neighborhood, climbing trees, and riding bikes before Nana called us home for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on bread from their bakery, cookies as big as my head leftover from the day before, and tall glasses of milk.

Just being here makes me crave those things, and it’s not like they’re a large part of my diet anymore.

But the unchanging nature of this house is what makes the evidence of my grandparents’ advancing age even harder to take. This place feels frozen in time, and always has, but it’s clear that it’s not.

Taking a deep breath, I quickly unpack my suitcase and store it in the closet before heading out to the kitchen where Nana putters around. She smiles when I walk into the room. “All settled?”

“All settled. What should I make for dinner?”

She swats a hand in my direction. “Oh, you. I know you think you’re here to rescue us from our feebleness, but I can still make dinner, thank you very much. We just need help at the bakery. You know how it is at ChristmasFest. We always need extra hands, and that’s with your Grampy at full strength.” She shakes her head. “It’ll take you plus three other seasonal workers to make up for him.”

I grin. “It won’t be the same without him, but I’ll make sure we don’t take too much of a hit this year. But even if that’s the main reason I’m here, I want to help around the house too.”

She lets out a soft chuckle. “You say that now. Talk to me again after you’ve been working ChristmasFest all week. By then you’ll be glad I made a casserole for you to come home and shovel into your mouth before you fall into bed.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But for now, at least, let me help?”

“I never turn down help,” she quips. “I was thinking stew and sandwiches. It seems good on a blustery day like today. Why don’t you get the pot out for me.”

We bustle around the kitchen—me getting out the pot and unloading the dishwasher while she gets a container of stew out of the freezer and plunks it into the pot on the stove, turning the burner on to slowly warm it up.

“What are you two doing in there?” Grampy calls from the living room.

“Fixin’ to poison you!” Nana calls back, the southern expression from her youth creeping in.

“I knew it!” Grampy shouts, and I can’t help grinning at their antics.

I’ve missed it here. Why have I stayed away for so long?