The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters

making a house with Amy. It felt as if thoughts could make him weak instead of strong.

      “We use this icing to glue it all together.”

      Carefully, Ty cut the sheets of cookie into squares. Even being careful, a nice chunk broke off. It was a reminder that he could not be trusted to make any kind of a house with anyone.

      He popped the broken piece into his mouth, passed some to the grasping baby.

      “Hey, it’s not to eat,” she said, and he popped a piece into her open mouth to silence her.

      Focused intently, he took the slabs of cookie and stood four of them up, leaning on each other to form rough walls. Then, pleased, he put another on top.

      “Well?” He stood back and surveyed his house.

      “It doesn’t look like a house, Ty.”

      “What does it look like?”

      “I don’t know. A box.”

      “I’ll fix the roof.” He took another piece of gingerbread, took a bite out of it, and then made a slanted roof instead of a flat one.

      “I told you, it’s not to eat! Did you have to take a bite out of the roof? It looks like—”

      “Hansel and Gretel have been here,” he decided happily. It looked like the whole thing was leaning, ready to topple over. He slathered the joints liberally with the icing glue. It got all over the place, including his hands. He handed the wooden spoon to Jamey, who merrily chewed the end and then bashed the kitchen counter with it.

      She eyed the house critically after he’d made the changes. “Now it looks like a shed.”

      “Perfect. Just what I planned. A manger for Christmas.”

      The thump again.

      “Hey, I’m a cowboy, not a construction guy.”

      And not anyone who could be trusted to make a house with her.

      He made a few adjustments. “It will look fine once we add a few windows.”

      But of course it didn’t look fine. Jamey had to “help” decorate, and the jelly beans and jujubes that didn’t make it into his mouth were rather mutilated by the time they made it onto the house.

      She stepped back from it.

      She surveyed the house: listing badly, part of the roof broken, misshapen candies on it, and then she looked at her baby, sticky with icing and gingerbread, and then she looked at Ty.

      And it was as if that scent that filled his house and made it home was right inside of him when she looked at him like that.

      She started to laugh. “It’s perfect,” she declared.

      Amy stared at the house, and let the feeling it was giving her fill her up. Perfection.

      It was not the kind of house Cynthia made—perfect miniatures from a Swiss village. In fact, it looked only remotely like a house.

      It had a bite out of the roof. The candies were sliding in icing down the walls into a heap at the bottom. The whole thing was tilting quite badly to one side, and looked as if it might fall right over.

      And for all that it looked wrong?

      It had never felt so right. Christmas had never felt so right as it did in this moment, sharing a room with that big golden-haired cowboy, watching his eyes tilt with laughter as he used his finger to clean icing off Jamey’s nose.

      Her other Christmas Eve activities were perfect, too. Ty dug an old sled out of the barn, so they went down the hill in front of his house, sinking in the deep snow, inching along, tumbling and laughing. The snow also was not quite right for making a snowman, not nearly sticky enough, and they ended up with a lumpy pile with an old cowboy hat sitting on top of it, two rocks for eyes and a carrot for a nose.

      What the snow was perfect for was snow angels, and they soon covered that entire slope with the imprints of their bodies.

      Her feeling of having the most perfect day ever solidified.

      Darkness fell. The baby went to bed. She locked herself in her bedroom, door closed. She had not been able to find wrapping paper, but there had been a huge roll of butcher’s paper.

      She had Christmas shopped a little for Jamey back in Calgary, so one-handed, she managed to get a chunky little train and some cars wrapped. Then she wrapped a few of his old toys, knowing full well he would not know the difference.

      Now, what for Ty? She crept out of her room and retrieved his oven gloves. She cut her red toque, and a towel she had brought with her, and managed to patch the hole in the one. She wrapped it up. And then she went thought her suitcase, found the two books she had brought with her and wrapped those up for him.

      Funny, humble little gifts.

      That filled her with the Christmas spirit.

      And when she came out, she had little brown paper wrapped packages, the wrapping lumpy and terrible, which she put under the tree with great and gleeful pride.

      “Now,” she told Ty, who was stretched out on the living-room sofa, nearly asleep, “I’m going to make us some hot chocolate. And then we can sing Christmas carols.”

      He snorted, but didn’t say no.

      Amy was in the kitchen, stirring a vat of hot chocolate when the phone rang.

      “Hey, can you get that?” he called from the living room.

      She picked it up, was thrilled with the caller and the invitation.

      “That was Beth,” Amy said, standing in the doorway. “She realized I was going to be here for Christmas Day. She invited us over for dinner. They have turkey.”

      “We were just there,” he pointed out, something stubborn in the set of his jaw, a shield over his eyes.

      “Surely you would have been joining them for Christmas dinner?” she asked.

      He said nothing.

      “You wouldn’t go and be with your own father on Christmas Day? You’d rather sit here by yourself?”

      Again he said nothing.

      “I want to go. I have Christmas presents for them.” She went and stood in front of him, folded her arms over her chest.

      “How could you possibly have that?”

      “I made them something. I already told her we would go.”

      “You shouldn’t have done that. I’m not going there for Christmas.”

      “But—”

      “I’m not arguing with you. And it’s not open for discussion.”

      “Oh! Now you sound just like Edwin!”

      She could tell he didn’t like that one little bit.

      “Look,” he said, his tone cool. “We are not husband and wife. We are not even a couple. So we don’t have to discuss decisions.”

      Regardless of the truth in that, Amy was not going to be the woman she had been with Edwin. Never again. Just deferring to him, trying to make him happy, avoiding confrontation, even when the price of that avoidance had been the loss of her own identity and her own soul.

      “You’re absolutely right. We don’t have to discuss decisions. I’ll go without you,” she decided.

      His mouth formed a grim line. “And how are you going to do that?”

      “I’ll take the little sled we used to toboggan with today. And I’ll follow the track we made with the horses.”

      “With one hand?” he said with satisfied skepticism.

      “That’s all I need to pull Jamey on the sleigh,” she said stubbornly.

      His