Page 64 of Thin Ice

"Thanks, Mom."

"The jerky was on sale," she said from the kitchen. "Don't read into it."

"I'm reading into it."

"Stop."

Then the stocking for Alex.

It was hanging from the knob of the closet door because we didn't have a mantle. It wasn't a stocking, really. It was a red Christmas sock from the dollar store, the kind that comes in a pack. And written on it in black Sharpie, in my mother's handwriting:

ALEX

"That's yours," my mom said from the kitchen doorway. She was leaning against the frame with her coffee, watching.

Alex got up. Walked over to it. Took it down. Held it in his hands like he wasn't sure it was real.

Inside: a toothbrush. A bag of peanut M&Ms. A pair of wool socks, the thick kind. A ChapStick. Small things she'd probably picked up at the pharmacy yesterday morning before we were up.

He pulled each one out and set it on the couch. The toothbrush. The M&Ms. The socks. The ChapStick. He looked at all of it laid out on the cushion, and his jaw was tight, and he said, "Thank you" in a voice that was rough at the edges.

"Everybody gets a stocking," my mom said. She said it like it was nothing. Like it was policy.

Alex sat back down on the couch with the stocking stuff spread beside him. He was looking at the M&Ms, turning the bag over in his hands, and I was watching him, and then I wasn't. My eyes had drifted up. Past Alex, past the couch, to the tree.

The heron. Near the top, just below the star, catching the light from the window.

I looked at it. I looked at Alex holding a bag of M&Ms from a dollar-store stocking with his name in Sharpie. And something turned over in my head, quiet, like a lock finding its key.

"Mom, can we have the gas-station pie?" I said.

Alex looked up. "What's that?"

"Gas-station pie," my mom said, already moving toward the kitchen. She pulled the fridge open and took out the dish she'd made last night after everyone left. "The recipe came off the back of a box I bought at a gas station outside of Utica in 2011. I was driving back from my sister's and I stopped for coffee. And there was a box of pudding mix with a recipe on it and I thought that's either going to be disgusting or perfect."

"It's perfect," I said.

"It's perfect," she confirmed, setting it on the counter. "I've made it every Christmas since."

"I'll help," I said, and followed her into the kitchen.

Alex stayed in the living room with his stocking.

My mom was cutting the pie. I pulled plates from the cabinet, the same mismatched ones from last night, and set them on the counter beside her.

"Mom," I whispered.

"Mm." She was focused on getting the slices even.

"The heron on the tree."

She stopped cutting. Looked at me.

"I want to give it to him."

She set the knife down and looked at the tree through the kitchen doorway. The small glass bird near the top, hanging from a thin gold hook near the star. She'd hung it there every year since my dad left. It was the one thing of his she'd kept.

"Alex's mom has a heron on the lake," I said, keeping my voice low. "She named it Frederick when Alex was a kid. It's a whole thing. And it will be meaningful."