“Right.” He picked up Molly’s leash from the floor, and she trotted back to him, panting happily. “Thanks for the break from the cold.”
“No problem,” she said as Henry made for the door.
“And, uh, sorry you’re feeling shitty.”
She jerked her head toward Molly. “Careful.”
“Oh, she doesn’t care. She’s got a horrible mouth herself. Mostly because she’s a dog.”
Catherine gave him a look she knew was too long. This kept happening to her lately, a thousand-yard stare she couldn’t quite shake, as though her eyes were taking longer to see things. Henry didn’t look away.
“Sorry.” She cleared her throat and looked back at the presents. “I just realized I forgot the jars.”
“Jars.”
“Cookie jars,” she said unhelpfully, then added, motioning with her hands, “You know, layers of everything. Flour and sugar and stuff. I was going to make some for my parents. Different kinds of cookies.”
“Cookie jars,” Henry said again.
“They’re good gifts.”
“Yeah, but so are actual cookies.”
She walked to a nearby cabinet. “I was going to do chocolate chip, and then this cranberry one and then a third, maybe peanut butter, but I don’t know if that’ll work in a jar.”
Henry came up behind her, looking into the cabinet as well. “And you’re using your parents’ ingredients for their own gifts?”
“Flour, brown sugar—shut up, Henry—powdered sugar, baking soda,” she mused, pushing aside various jars and bags. “Yeah, everything’s here except baking powder and white sugar. And chocolate chips.”
“They have brown sugar but not white sugar?” Henry asked, surprised.
“When I’m at school I think my parents live off expired eggs and white bread. Actually, some of this stuff might be expired too. Can flour go bad?” she said, carefully turning over the bag to search for a date.
“Maybe you should come home more often,” Henry suggested. “Or get them one of those pet-feeder things off Amazon.”
Catherine turned from the cabinet to look at Henry, flour bag still in hand. “Molly’s sick, isn’t she?”
“Nothing gets past you, Catherine.” He shifted where he stood. “She’s got time, we think. She can still go on walks.”
Catherine tried not to look at the dog. “She’s all skinny. She was always fat before. And on her neck, I felt stitches.”
“Labs, you know, they tend to get—”
“Cancer.” A short silence. Catherine swallowed, hard. “I had a shit time at college.”
Henry didn’t say anything for a moment; then he glanced back at the cabinet behind her. “Those pet-feeder things on Amazon are really expensive, and they don’t do those cookie jar things you want to make. I’m pretty sure Safeway has sugar, though.”
“Safeway?”
He frowned, then seemed to understand. “Oh, you weren’t here. Yeah, the Albertsons is totally gone. There’s a Safeway now. It’s massive.”
“Will they even be open?”
Henry glanced at the oven clock. “Now? No, they close at ten. But you could try tomorrow.”
“They’re open this close to Christmas?”
“Probably be riots if they weren’t. I’m going tomorrow too, actually. Have to pick up some last-minute things for my mom. Bread crumbs or something. We can go together if you want.”
She considered this for a moment, not quite believing the invitation but feeling strangely comforted by it all the same. She glanced down at Molly, who met her eyes and began to wag her tail. Catherine smiled. “Can I buy her, like, a steak or something, while we’re there?”
* * *
—
Henry said he’d come back in the morning, around nine. Once he left, Molly in tow, Catherine finished wrapping the two presents and then placed them carefully under the tree in the living room. The tree was slender but beautiful, with silver and gold ribbons, and ornaments that caught the light on the edge of their circumference. The tree’s lights suddenly reminded her of Henry’s backyard. Fourteen years old, the tail end of a summer party: distant, adult chatter; a kernel of corn wedged in her back teeth; the stinging haze of smoke from the grill whenever she walked by. The grass had been damp under her bare feet, the backyard glowing from the string of pastel garden lights draped across the deck. Henry’s face had been very close to hers, a weird mirror image. But then he’d kissed her, and it felt so normal, so natural, like he’d kissed her before, more than once, a hundred times in fact, and would kiss her again. But he never had the chance.
She’d left the very next day: six weeks at summer camp. By the time she’d come back, things had changed somehow. She looked at Henry and it was as though she couldn’t remember all the different pieces of him, not even the kiss. Like the kiss hadn’t happened, or it had happened a million years ago, or it had happened to another girl entirely.
So, maybe they hadn’t just drifted apart. At least, not in equal amounts, if she was being honest with herself. Whatever their ending had been exactly, she had started it. She had pushed him away for no reason and hurt him and never given him an explanation. Because there wasn’t a good one, was there? She put a hand to her chest. It was happening again, that pressure out of nowhere, like someone was crushing her lungs into her back, her spine. Through her tears, the lights of the Christmas tree wavered, gold and glimmering.
It was almost Christmas. Tomorrow she would go to the store to get white sugar. She would pour it in layers with flour and chocolate and wrap the whole jar in a ribbon and put it under the tree.
And there was that word again: tree. Trees everywhere. Inside and outside, draped in lights and snow and sniffed at by kind, dying dogs.
I don’t want to die.
She thought it to herself like a mantra.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
And by the time Henry knocked on her front door the next morning, Molly waiting in his parked car with a happy expectancy, she told herself it was almost true.
Henry was right; the Safeway was massive. A guy in an apron yawned behind a sushi display as they passed to browse the deli section. Molly sniffed the air eagerly. Catherine watched her for a moment, then glanced around, wondering if someone would say something. But it was early, and she saw no one besides the Starbucks girl, now stacking coffee lids with a morose air.