They sang “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “O Holy Night,” before Harper called it quits by muttering something like “That’s enough,” and stepped forward to hand him the gingerbread house.

“This is for me?” he said.

“Yeah. It’s just a little something I made.”

“That’s real candy. You can eat it.” The smallest and clearly the youngest of the girls piped up. She had to be Harper’s. With long blond hair and cornflower blue eyes, she was the spitting image of her mother. “But it probably won’t taste that good,” she confided, “’cause the frosting is sort of like glue.”

“It’s more for decoration,” Harper explained as Tobias chuckled.

“That’s why we brought you these, too.” Another little girl, this one with auburn hair and freckles sprinkled across her nose, stepped up to give him a plate of cookies. “They’re sugar cookies,” she announced. “My favorite. Only, we were running out of frosting so Aunt Karoline said I could only put on a little, and we were saving our sprinkles for the houses.”

“You must be Harper’s oldest,” he said.

Harper rested her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Yes. This is Everly.”

Tobias squatted down. He was holding the gingerbread house and the cookies, but he managed to hang on to both. “How old are you, Everly?”

“Eight.” She pulled the smaller child, who’d spoken before, closer to her. “This is my sister, Piper. She’s six.”

So he was getting to meet Harper’s daughters, after all. “Thanks for singing to me. And for the treats,” he said as he stood.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever met,” Karoline said. “I’m Harper’s sister, Karoline Mathewson.”

Tobias set what they’d given him on the kitchen table so he could shake hands. Harper’s worried expression told him that she’d hoped to swing by, give him the treats and move on. But Karoline was set on being properly introduced.

“Karoline, this is Tobias Richardson,” she said.

Karoline held out her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.” Her fingers clasped his tightly, confidently, before she released him so he could shake hands with her husband. “This is my husband, Terrance, and my twins, Amanda and Miranda, who are twelve,” she added.

“It’s a pleasure,” Terrance said as their hands came together.

Tobias nodded. “Likewise.”

“Harper tells me you’ve only been in the area for a short while,” Karoline said.

“That’s true.”

“Where were you before you came here?”

Tobias felt himself tensing. He didn’t want Karoline to pepper him with questions until he was forced to either reveal his past or lie about it. If he was ever going to tell Harper, this wasn’t how he wanted it to come out. “I was born and raised in LA,” he said, skipping the part in between.

“What brought you to Silver Springs?”