“Thank you, Meemaw,” Jack finally says through a clenched jaw. “But I can do this on my own. I can open my own bakery without the family’s help.”

“Yes, but why would you?” Katherine’s little outburst is met with a glare from Jack.

“Maybe I don’t want to be dependent on the Prescott name to accomplish my dream,” she bites out.

Lovey reaches over to put a papery hand on Jack’s elbow. “Your mother is just concerned about you. She doesn’t want to see you fail.”

Jack shuts her eyes tight. I remember her sitting in the coffee shop at Powell’s, telling me, I’m the family fuck-up. “Well, you can all relax,” Jack says bitterly. “When I fail, I’ll have Grandpa’s trust to fall back on, okay?”

I flinch as Andrew’s fist collides with the ball of dough in front of him. He pulls his hand away, and there’s a little imprint of his knuckles.

“Andrew!” Lovey scolds in a low voice. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Sorry,” he grumbles, avoiding his grandmother’s gaze. “Sorry, I just need some air.”

He moves around the countertop, and I’m vaguely aware that, as his fiancée, I should probably follow him, but before my loose limbs can move, Dylan is abandoning the fudge. “I’ll go see what’s up with him.”

There’s a heavy tension in the air once Andrew and Dylan are gone. Michael Bublé is crooning “Holly Jolly Christmas,” but there doesn’t seem to be anything jolly about the cookie-baking process. Katherine presses her manicured fingers to her temples. “I have a headache.” She winces to sell it. “I—I need to go lie down.”

The stand mixer is still spinning away, and Jack reaches over to turn it off. “Thanks, Jacqueline, sugar.” Meemaw smiles. “You know, I’m really no good at all this domestic baking business….”

“Go.” Jack shrugs. “It’s fine. You, too, Lovey.”

And just like that, the cavernous kitchen is empty except for me and Jack and a whole lot of cookie ingredients.

Jack reaches for the bud of the joint Dylan left on the ceramic spoon holder by the stove. “This happens every year,” she says as she draws it to her lips.

“Your family calls you a failure and tries to get you to take money every time you bake Christmas cookies?” I ask skeptically.

The quarter-moon smile creeps onto her face, and Jack leans back against the countertop behind her. She would look so relaxed, so indifferent, if not for the way she jiggles her socked foot, one crossed over the other. “No. They ditch me in the kitchen every year and leave me to do all the baking. My family likes the idea of making Christmas cookies together, but they always forget it’s actual work, and they end up bailing in the first hour.”