It’s not the same. But it’s close enough that I can’t ruin this by asking Mom about that tweet. So I grab a slab of gingerbread and join in.

Penn remembers how to make icicles hang from the edge of the roof by squirting a small glob of frosting, then pulling the tip straight down, to stretch the glob into the shape of a tiny little ice spear. He makes a million of them, all the way around the roof.

Mom squirts frosting on Landry’s nose and tries to make a piece of candy stick to it. She fails repeatedly, but she laughs over every effort. She’s relentlessly cheerful tonight. Maybe she’s making up for lost time, or for time she plans to lose in the near future. Maybe she has to go in early tomorrow, so she’s capitalizing on this night at home.

I wish I could trust her cheer.

At some point, Landry remembers her Santa hat, and while she’s in her room, digging around for it, a beep from her phone interrupts a beautiful rendition of “White Christmas” playing over the Bluetooth speaker.

I grab her phone in time to see an alert for the Crimson Cryer’s tweet, from the app I caught her scrolling through the other day.

“Delete that,” my mother whispers, staring over my shoulder, and I jump. I had no idea she was there.

I swipe left to delete the notification before it disappears from Landry’s lock screen, and the music starts playing again. Mom’s smile is gone, until the moment my sister walks back into the room in her Santa hat. Then her merriment blooms anew, brighter than ever. And finally I understand her tenacious cheer.

She’s already seen the tweet. Maybe Penn has too. They’re shielding Landry, as much as they can. Trying to give her a good holiday in the middle of the shit storm hounding our family like the cloud of dust that follows that kid from the Charlie Brown Christmas movie.

Maybe they’re onto something. Maybe my questions can wait.

An hour and a half later, we stand back to look at our creation. I have to admit that for a store-bought kit, it’s pretty cute. Landry tiled the roof with sections from a box of stale wafer cookies, and Mom sprinkled powdered sugar over the whole thing, to look like a light dusting of snow.

“I’ve had enough sugar for an entire lifetime,” Penn announces as he swipes empty candy wrappers from the island into the trash can.

“For a week at least,” Landry agrees. “I wish Dad could see this. I think he’d like it.”

Penn snorts. “He’d tell us that our joints aren’t at ninety-degree angles and our door is off-center.”

“And he’d be right,” Mom says. “But he’d still like it. Flaws and all.”