We feel Rosie’s annoyance at having to repeat work, an annoyance escalated into anxiety as she contemplated all the chores she had yet to do and now the ones she would have to do again. Jeannie’s face is turned away and instead of watching Rosie she examines her engagement and wedding rings.

“I used to use that excuse in junior high. ‘The dog ate it,’” Taylor says in a singsong voice.

Rosie ignores our laughter. “But it all got done. I swear dogs are more trouble than children. When Kevin gets home he goes, ‘You still doin’ cookies.’ I must have glared at him because he slunk off to the family room to watch TV and didn’t come out until I called him for dinner. Well. Here they are.”

She pulls a foiled box out of one of the bags. The lid forms petals of a flower that open up. She reaches in and pulls out a tree about eight inches high formed of cookies shaped like stars. The icing is snow with soft red sprinkles.

“Ohmigod.”

“How’d you do that?”

Now Rosie is in her glory. “It’s twelve cookies—has to be twelve, right?” She glances at me. “Each one smaller, glued together with frosting. See how hard it was to figure out which ones were eaten?”

“It’s too beautiful to eat. I’ll use mine as a centerpiece at Christmas dinner,” Juliet says.

Rosie beams with pride.

“Well, the rest of us might as well not even show our cookies. This one has got to be the most beautiful,” Allie says.

“It’s a simple sugar cookie recipe and I just designed the stars with cardboard and used them as a cutout. There are actually several of each size stacked asymmetrically, so the stars end up looking like tree branches. I chose them because I needed something to be the centerpiece of my Christmas Eve dinner and thought this could be it.”

“This is so cool. And the boxes are beautiful, too,” I say.

She smiles at me. “Yeah, I had trouble trying to find those. So you can take out the cookies without ruining the design.”

“Rosie, you may be busy and view yourself as frantic, but you always deliver. These are gorgeous,” Charlene says. I’ve been watching her. She had seemed somber, sitting back in her chair and observing the party, so I’m relieved when she speaks.

Jeannie’s face remains turned away from Rosie.

“Okay, so let’s start passing them out.” Rosie hands the box to Juliet, who hands it all the way around until it reaches Charlene. And Rosie keeps handing boxes to Juliet and each of us pass a box to the woman sitting on our left until that person already has one.

“Hey. Where’s the bag for the hospice? Who’s doing that?” Allie asks.