Newly baked Christmas cookies

I rushed through the front door, to the smell of fir and burning candles. I almost dropped the jar of cabbage, which of course was at the top of the oh-so-eco-friendly paper bag, whose handles immediately dissolved when they came into contact with the slightest bit of hand sweat. 

"NIEL, I NEED A HAND." I yelled at my husband as I slammed the door behind me, with a backwards kick.  Niel came out into the kitchen just in time to grab the bag before it slipped out of my arms.  

"I asked you if you needed my help before you left," he said, unpacking the groceries. 

"You did," I said, "and I said you would just get lost in the crowd. You know what it's like this time of year." 

"Was it bad?" He asked, "You were gone for a long time." 

It had only been a few hours, but it felt longer because the sun had set in the meantime.  

I looked around the kitchen. "Apparently long enough for the kitchen to need cleaning again." I said. Even though I cleaned just before I left, the sink was now, once again, filled with whisks, bowls, spatulas and spoons. 

"I'll take care of it." Niel said quickly. 

I rolled my eyes, "oh yeah, because you're the one who has been baking all day, right?." On the cooling rack next to the stove, were the most beautiful Christmas cookies decorated with icing. Little gingerbread people with presents and candy canes, as well as Christmas trees with stars and small ornaments made of edible beads. 

Niel laughed and threw the potatoes and the frozen ham into the fridge. "If I tried to cook, the result would be radioactive." He said and looked down the hall towards Alfred's room, "He´s probably gotten that Chef-gene from you."  

I rolled my eyes at him again. "You don't always have to clean up after him. He loves to bake, but he has to learn that cleaning up is part of it." 

"I don't always clean up after him." He said. 

"But you allow him to bake every time he asks."  

"But have you tasted his cookies?" 

I drilled an index finger into his chest and looked him in the eyes, "If he's used my vanilla extract, you’ll be the one going back into that horde of zombies for some more." 

"Okay, okay." He raised his hands, in surrender. "I'll check for vanilla extract and make him clean the kitchen as soon as he's done." He nodded towards the oven. 

Something was baking in there. There was four minutes left on the digital timer on the stove. 

"Fine." I said. "But you tell him, so that I'm not always the villain."  

"Deal." Niel said looking around the kitchen. "I think maybe he's already cleaned the piping bags." 

"Ha." I laughed, "all by himself? That would be a first." But it was true. There were no piping bags to be seen. We always had to remind him to clean those bags. I glanced back at the cookies on the rack. He couldn't possibly have made those details without piping bags. These cakes were both nicer and more elaborate than usual. But how did he have time to bake, cool and decorate the cakes during the time I was out shopping? 

 Maybe he had actually cleaned the bags himself. Whatever was in the oven must need decoration. I bent down to try to see what it was, but the only thing I could see through the yellow window was the edge of a baking dish. The smell gave no indication of what it could be either. 

"I also tried to figure out what it is," said Niel, "but he said it was very important that we dont let the steam out of the oven before it’s done baking." 

"Oh god. One of those complicated projects again." Alfred tended to expose himself to overly complicated baking projects, everything from cakes where the oven has to be opened at the right time to retain moisture, to Italian cakes that have to hang upside down from a string overnight. It wasn't that it was difficult for him, but the problem was that he didn't give up until he could make the dish perfectly. That damn Italian cake cost us half a sack of flour and a kilo of raisins before he got the right consistency. The kitchen looked like a war zone for a week. 

"So he didn't tell you what he's up to?" I asked. 

 "Nope," he said. "He didn't even ask for permission this time." 

"That’s odd." Alfred knew that we never stopped him from baking, but he was always polite enough to ask for permission. 

"Yes. He said it was a secret when I asked." I followed Niel' gaze down to the clock. three minutes and twelve seconds. "And then he told me not to touch the oven.” 

"But why is it a secret?" I asked. "He never keeps anything secret from us." 

"It's probably just a surprise." Niel said, casually. "And you don't seriously believe that a boy of twelve doesn't have any secrets from his parents, do you?" 

I sighed. "Of course he has, but for the time being, maybe the last few months, he's just been behaving... I don't know... Differently? I think he snuggles up in his room too often." 

"He's becoming a teenager. Besides, we also keep secrets from him, so we can't expect him not to do it for us." 

"I just can't help but be worried." I looked at Niel, but my gaze kept flickering to the stove and the warm light it threw on the kitchen floor. "Ever since we got him, I've been afraid of doing everything wrong." It was as if the natural maternal instinct had not come to me, in the same way as it did with other mothers. As if I hadn't earned it. 

Niel took my hand. His fingers were rough but warm. "He's fine." He said calmly. "We all get along and we love each other." 

"Was it a mistake that we didn't tell him the truth from the start? I'm afraid these feelings will never go away?" 

"Maybe they do, maybe they don't. In any case, there is no need to burden him with our own worries. He sees us as the family we are, and always have been. I think the feelings you have are what makes you a real mother, whether you believe in it or not." 

I kissed him, but when I pulled away again, he wrinkled his nose. 

"What's the matter?" 

"Doesn't it smell a little burnt?" He asked. 

He was right. The scent from the decorated Christmas tree had been replaced with a sweaty stench of soot, and melted plastic.  

"Is it the oven?" I asked. 

He sniffed the air a few times. "It doesn't smell like food that's been burned." 

I looked around the kitchen in panic, and for good measure, also poked my head into the living room before I stormed to the stove. "I don't know where else it would come from." I said, and grabbed the handle of the glass door. 

"Stop." Said Niel, and put his hand on mine. "Let's just ask him first." there was only a minute and a half left on the clock. 

I stuck my to the oven door. The smell definitely came from in there. "There is no recipe in the world where that smell is normal." I said. "If he's about to burn down the house, I don't care if his cake collapses." 

Niel removed his hand from mine. "ALFRED, PLEASE GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW." He shouted. 

We looked at each other while we waited for an answer. 

"ALFRED?" I shouted when we didn't get any. "He's in the room, isn't he?" 

"He went in there right after he put it in the oven." Said Niel. He moved down the hall towards Alfred's room. "You need to keep an eye on your cooking." He said and knocked on the door. 

Still with my hand on the stove door, I squatted down to look inside. A dense smoke had begun to fill the small chamber, but luckily there were no flames to be seen yet.  

"I'm opening it now." I said, but still waited for Niel to sign that he agreed. I opened the door only a little, and immediately a thick wall of black smoke rose out of the crack, which filled the house with a stench ten times stronger than before. 

What was wrong with him? Normally, when Alfred left the kitchen while baking, he always left the door to his room open so he could hear when the alarm went off.  

The smoke detector in the living room began howling, and I immediately let go of the door so that it slammed shut. I sprang to the window above the sink, and let the winter cold in, and the smoke out. 

"Alfred?" Niel said again, now with his head in the room. Then he looked back at me. "He's not there."  

"What? Didn't you see him go in?"  

"He must have run away." 

"He can't do that," I said. "Why would he do that? Where is he?" 

"I don't know." I could hear the panic in his voice now. "The window is wide open in there..." He paused and ran into the room. 

The mention of the window brought my thoughts back to the smoke. I ran into the living room, turned off the deafening fire alarm and opened the window to the road before I went back to the kitchen and opened the oven again.  The black wall now became a pillar that flowed out into the house, and put a veil so thick that I couldn't even see the door to Alfred's room. I held my breath as I ran through the smoke towards the room, where my husband was standing with his head out of the window. 

There was a metre and a half fall from the window ledge, and immediately I feared the worst. I could practically see my son lying out front, with broken legs, and open skull fractures, blood pouring out in the pure white snow. Niel pulled his head back in and looked at me with a reflection of my own expression.  

"There are footprints in the snow." He said. "He's run away." 

Half of me was relieved that he was okay, but the other half was screaming at myself at what I could have done that made him run away. but I knew the answer. 

"What do we do, should we call the police?" 

"Calm down now. How about we start by calling him." Niel said without sounding the slightest bit calm. 

"Wake up!" I said. My chest felt like it was filled with acid. "He is not lost, he ran away from us. If he wanted to talk to us, he would have used the front door." 

He ignored me and brought his phone up to his ear.  

While Niel trudged back and forth with the phone, I went out to the kitchen where most of the smoke had disappeared. 

"No answer." Niel said as he came out of the room. 

"That's what I said." 

The clock on the stove went off, sounding almost like a milder version of the smoke alarm. Niel went to the stove and turned off the clock. With a pair of potholders he carefully took the square porcelain dish out of the oven.  

I looked over at the table where the flour and sugar were still on display, but only now did I notice that the flour on the table was scattered in small heaps as if they were just placed there to make it look like someone had been baking. 

Niel put the dish down on the table next to the cooling rack with the decorated Christmas cookies. I looked over his shoulder to see its contents.  

Even in the burnt state of the binder, I recognized the photo album immediately. It was the album I had hidden in the back of my closet many years ago. An album of pictures of Alfred from when he was less than a year old. An album of pictures I hadn't taken myself, and which I had feared that he would one day find, but still couldn't bring myself to throw out. 

"You were right." I said. "He kept secrets from us because we kept them from him." 

Niel stared at the album. I was sure that it would all turn to ashes and fall apart if I touched it. 

Without knowing why, I took one of the gingerbreads and bit her head off. It didn't taste as good as it looked. It tasted store bought. 

"Why did he pretend they were homemade, when he knows perfectly well how to do it himself?" I asked swallowing the dry cookie. I threw the rest of it, back on to the rack. 

Niel sighed, but didn't take his eyes off the photo album. He didn't have to think about it before he answered.  

"Because he wanted to show us how it feels."