Upon a Midnight Clear (Legend, Colorado 2)

"… And Sandy Osborne's been divorced now for the third time," Catherine was saying as she watched Quinn roll out sugar cookie dough on the marble countertop she'd had installed for just that very purpose. "She finally threw in the towel on marriage, I guess, 'cause she moved back into her folks' home in town."

"Poor Sandy," Quinn mused. "She never really did know what she wanted, did she?"

"Only on a temporary basis, it would seem," Catherine muttered. "There now, Quinn, flatten out that corner there, so all the dough's the same thickness."

Quinn did as she was told, secretly smiling. In her search for perfection in all things, Ca

therine would continue to instruct until her kids got it right.

"Stars?" Quinn asked, holding up the old tin cookie cutter, and her mother nodded absently. Quinn proceeded to press the cookie cutter into the dough, and Catherine lifted the little stars and placed them on the waiting baking sheets.

"I cannot wait until Susannah gets here with that darling little Lilly of hers," Catherine sighed, then grumbled. 'To think I'd end up with only one grandchild, after all these years."

"Mom, you haven't 'ended up,'" Quinn reminded her. "None of us are even married yet."

"Don't think I don't realize that." Catherine held up her hand. "Goodness, six children and no sons- or daughters-in-law."

"Sunny was married for a while."

"Please, him I'd rather forget." Catherine shook her head. "I just don't understand why none of you has found someone to fall madly in love with so I could go to my grave knowing at least one of my children would live happily ever after."

"Mom, your grave isn't ready for you, and we all will live happily ever after. Eventually."

"Well, I wish you'd get on with it" Catherine opened the oven and slid the sheet of white-dough stars inside. "A house should be filled with children on Christmas."

"The house will be filled with kids, Mom, since well all be home," Quinn reminded her, "and we're all just little kids at heart."

Catherine raised her eyes above the oven door and glared at her middle child. "You've all long passed that cute, cuddly stage where you believed in Santa and couldn't wait to get up on Christmas morning to see what toys he brought you. I miss that excitement, Quinn. It's been all too many years since little hands have tapped my cheek to wake me at dawn." She brightened, adding, "At least I have Lilly to spoil, though every year I look at you and your brothers and your sisters and wonder if I've raised a bunch of crabby old maids and grumpy old bachelors."

Quinn laughed and kissed her mother's cheek. "You worry too much, Mom. We're just all taking our time to find the right person, that's all. Now, how long will those cookies take?" She peered at the recipe book. 'Twelve minutes. Just enough time to go up to the attic and bring down a few boxes of Christmas decorations."

"Well, it might be a good idea to do that now. Your dad is afraid that the storm they've been predicting for tomorrow might hit early, so he wanted to go out after lunch to cut down the tree."

"CeCe will be disappointed if we go without her."

"She'll be more disappointed if we end up with no tree at all because we waited too long to go."

"True." Quinn turned on the light to the attic and opened the door, setting loose a cold whoosh of frigid, musty air. She climbed the steps and set about the task of selecting the boxes that would be stacked and carried to the first floor to trim the family tree. One of the advantages of being the first one home, she mused, is that you got to choose what decorations would go on the tree. She peeked through this box and that, piling up the ones that held her personal favorites. After several trips up and down the steps, she had several piles of boxes assembled in the great room. She began to lift lids, and to reminisce.

The timer from the kitchen signaled that this present batch of Christmas cookies had finished baking. She heard the oven door open, then close, smelled the pure vanilla aroma. Her mother would finish up the batches of sugar cookies, then start on the oatmeal raisin cookies, the orange drops, the shortbread. Everyone's favorites would be made, from her father's chocolate chip to those of Lilly, the youngest member of the family, who had a preference for the butterscotch brownies she had sampled the last time she had visited. Sky would want gingersnaps, Liza would want lemon squares, Susannah chocolate thumbprints, and Trevor and CeCe, the twins and oldest of the Hollister brood, would be scouring the cookie tins until they found the big, soft molasses cookies they both loved. Her mother would continue baking for days, and from now until Christmas, the old ranch house would smell like a fine bakeshop.

"Hey, Sis," Schuyler called from the doorway, "if you're planning on going with us to find the tree, you'd better start to get ready now."

"Can't you wait another hour or so, Sky? Mom and I were going to make the dough for the gingerbread houses next."

"Dad and I are thinking we should go before lunch." Schuyler pointed out the window and frowned. "It's getting white back toward the mountains. Dad thinks the storm might come early, and he'd just as soon take care of the tree now."

"I think I'll pass, then. Mom wanted to have a little village of gingerbread houses all baked so that when Sunny gets home, Lilly can have fun decorating them." Quinn lifted the lid off a box. "Look here, Sky. All the old colored-glass Christmas balls."

"You mean all the ones that didn't get broken the year the cat jumped onto the Christmas tree," her brother called from the kitchen, where he would be snitching a few golden sugar cookies off the cooling racks. "Good idea Liza had, to tie a ribbon around the cat's neck and take her for a walk."

The young orange tabby had taken off across the room, jumped onto the back of the sofa, from which it had been a mere hop onto the back of the Christmas tree, which had smashed forward onto the hardwood floor with all the might of a falling timber. Liza had been six or seven at the time, and had never lived it down. Knowing how upset Catherine had been to have lost so many of her mother's fragile glass balls, the children had spent the next several days making things to hang on the tree to take the place of those that had shattered. Paper chains and popcorn balls, diamond shapes made of aluminum foil and toothpicks, clothespin dolls and stars made of drinking straws, all had been hung on the tree to surprise their mother. Quinn would never forget the look on her mother's face when they led her into the great room and turned the lights on the tree. Liza had been vindicated, and the integrity of the family tree as a sort of family journal had remained intact.

From the pink tissue lining of the box that lay open on her lap, Quinn uncovered a stack of white paper hearts. She lifted it and let the paper chain unfold, remembering the year she had been ten and a bad case of chicken pox had kept her confined to her bed. Catherine had done double duty that year, supervising the tree decorating downstairs and trying to keep Quinn entertained in her sickroom at the same time. To make Quinn feel a part of the family effort, Catherine had brought her stacks of paper and a pair of scissors. With careful folding and a few quick snips, Catherine had shown her how to transform the paper into a chain of hearts. Quinn had spent all of Christmas Eve making chain after chain, and Catherine had patiently taped them together into one long chain before hanging them on the tree. Over the years this one or that section of Quinn's heart-chain had been ripped or torn or mistakenly tossed out, but here, in the corner of the box, cushioned by pink tissue, the last of the paper chain rested.

I could probably still do this in my sleep, Quinn thought, as she folded the chain back into itself again, I made so many of them that night. Holding the hearts in her hand brought that night back to her so vividly, and for the briefest second, Quinn felt that if she closed her eyes, she could still hear her mother's gentle voice, feel the cooling touch of those soothing fingers, taste the cold tartness of the orange juice Catherine had brought her.

The timer buzzed rudely from the kitchen and Catherine turned it off. It was time to start another batch of cookies if they were to be done by the end of the week. Quinn loved having this little bit of the morning to spend alone with her mother, just as she loved sorting through the old boxes that contained the fragments of Christmases past, as she loved the little pieces of herself and her family that she found within them.