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glass. Vin looked up from the project he was working on and smiled at Piper.
    “Good to have you home, lovey,” he said.
    “Thanks,” she answered, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Mom at the bakery?”
    “Yup.”
    “What’s on the agenda this time, Dad?” asked Piper, leaning down and putting her arm around his shoulders.
    “Putting fresh batteries in the emergency kits.”
    Vin Donovan regarded life as a series of challenges and possibilities for which he and his family needed to be prepared. What if the car broke down? What if there was an ice storm and the power went out? What if his daughter was stranded in the subway?
    He couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t think that way. He knew that people rolled their eyes and poked fun at his hypervigilance, but he didn’t give a damn. Those same people showed up at his door when the power went out and they needed candles and batteries.
    Everyone seemed to attribute Vin’s actions to his years as a cop, but the fact was Vin had made his first kit when he was five years old—filled with a few Band-Aids, iodine, gauze, rolled cotton, a pair of tweezers, and a kid’s small, blunt-nosed scissors.
    For as long as he could remember, Vin had felt the need to be ready for any emergency. Even before Homeland Security devised its color-coded security advisory system soon after 9/11, he had lived his whole life at “Threat Level Orange.”

Chapter 10
    Friday, December 3 . . . Twenty-one days until the wedding
    P iper and Terri worked efficiently at the back of the bakery, packing Linzer tortes, ginger snaps, and sugar cookies in the shapes of bells, stars, and snowflakes, into pink boxes and tying them with green twine.
    “Please, Mom,” said Piper. “Say you’ll do it. Glenna’s been a good friend to me.”
    “I just can’t take it on, Piper. I’m sorry.”
    “But I already told her you would.”
    “I told you, we’re just too busy at Christmastime to make a Christmas Eve wedding cake.”
    “Mom. Think about it. It’s Glenna Brooks. It’s her wedding cake! For all we know, InStyle Weddings or People magazine will be covering it. Come on, think about the caption: ‘Terri Donovan of The Icing on the Cupcake captured Brooks’s desire for both warmth and elegance with her three-tiered wedding cake.’ You’ll be the talk of Curves.”
    “I said no, Piper, and that’s it.”
    Piper was stunned. She had been home for a few days now, and she had been coming into The Icing on the Cupcake to help in the kitchen and at the counter. While the store was definitely busy, it didn’t seem any different from the usual holiday rush.
    Terri reached for another box but knocked it onto the floor. Piper reached over to pick it up, noting to herself that her mother had missed the cup when pouring coffee earlier. She couldn’t figure out why her mother wasn’t looking her straight in the eyes.
    “Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Mom?” asked Piper.
    “No. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just a little tired, I guess.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, I’m sure,” said Terri. “You know, Piper, if you really want this wedding cake done for your friend, why don’t you make it?”
    “Hilarious, Mom.”
    “Why not? You know how to decorate. You’ve been doing it since you were a little girl. And you’ve watched and helped me so many times.”
    It was true. Piper did know how to make pretty much everything her mother did. When Piper was growing up, Terri used to bake cakes for all the neighborhood kids. Each child would count the days until it was their turn to place an order from the photographs in the Wilton cake decorating books. Then Mrs. Donovan would work her magic to create the flavorful cake that looked almost identical to the enchanting images in the pictures. Honestly, Piper thought, they turned out even better.
    Piper had stood at her mother’s elbow, helping to mix buttercream and meringue, working with fondant and chocolate, practicing making shells and