Louise tossed on her bed and turned onto her back. She twisted a blond curl splayed out on the pillow. The lights strung on the bushes outside her window took turns glowing red and green on her ceiling.

In the predawn hours, Louise rose and pulled on a flannel shirt and jeans. She slid on her chef clogs but walked past her white pastry uniform hanging on the back of her bedroom door. Down the hallway, Amandine’s room also glowed from red to green as well. The lavender walls bore a dirty hue in the light show, as did the pink and turquoise shag rug in the center of the floor. A single stuffed unicorn stood guard in front of her daughter’s pillow. On the wall was a collage of snapshots Amandine had taken with her friends for her 12th birthday. Louise continued walking; the kitchen called to her like a siren. 

The counter island was home to mail, receipts, and her sketchbook. Under the continual red and green glow, she flipped open her sketchbook in the otherwise dark space. It was then that she became the pâtissier at work. A glossy article ripped from a magazine held its place in the book. The headline read, “New pastry shop breathes new life into confectionery creations.” The article was a profile of Louise and her sugary delicacies when she opened years ago. In the story, she talked about the inspiration for her profession. As a girl, a neighborhood friend had told her a fable. Her wishes would come true if she left a part of herself behind somewhere. She placed a brass button in the upstairs crawl space and wished for a treasure trove of sweets, dolls, and stuffed animals. The image remained with her, and for decades, she had turned her ideas into reality.

Louise paged past her most recent baking creations in the sketchbook. There were pages of towering wedding cakes topped with cascading sugar flower bouquets. She had sketches of cupcake mosaics and intricate miniature dioramas that lived atop birthday sheet cakes. Louise turned to a clean page and tapped her pencil. The red and green lights glowed in succession, as if relaying a message. 

Within minutes, she sketched her ranch home. The left page displayed the front side of her house. The right showed the interior like a dollhouse. She transferred the exterior and roof onto parchment paper and cut them out. With an X-acto knife, she added windows and an entrance.

“You’re up early,” Louise said to the room. “Hope I didn’t wake you.” The counselor had advised her to talk through it, but she did not look up. 

She collected the basic cake ingredients like a wizard. Jars of molasses, ground ginger, cloves, and cinnamon stood ready when she opened the cupboards. The stainless steel stand mixer churned the wet ingredients. Louise sifted the flour like snow over the bowl until a thick brown dough manifested. The dough went into the refrigerator. In the meantime, she made the stark white royal icing that would sustain her creation.

While coffee brewed, she opened the Advent calendar doors until the 24th of December. Her phone glowed alive momentarily with notifications. Her last text was from Stephan. “They overlooked details with our daughter,” he sent hours earlier. He would sue the hospital. Louise drummed her fingers on the counter. 

Out of a tub of fondant, Louise kneaded various masses of white dough into spheres. Each candy was a color of the rainbow. Amandine’s canopy bed, desk, and bookcase by the window were recreated in sugar. By rolling the icing paper-thin, she cut out tiny rectangles and with a fine-tip edible pen, drew images of Amandine and her friends. One photograph was of her and Amandine. She even included a snapshot of Stephan and Amandine from a trip they took together.

“We won’t miss a thing. Don’t you worry,” Louise said and sniffed. A bulbous tear rolled down her cheek and into her work. She wiped the others racing to join it away with the back of her sleeve. As the early morning hours wore on, the pieces came together and her house emerged. Her bedroom was as simple as a robin’s nest with baby-blue walls and an amber bedspread. The living room came alive in vibrant green and yellow. There was her tiny kitchen with the chaos of baking on display. Amandine’s room was a unicorn’s dream. It was, as they say, the pièce de résistance.

The 3 A.M. work alarm buzzed on her phone, and Louise silenced it on the counter. The rolled dough morphed into the house’s structure. Louise sliced through it to prepare the pieces of her home but nicked herself on the last piece. Although she instinctively sucked on the wound, she left the cut unbandaged. In the oven, the pieces breathed in the heat and then exhaled into their final state hard like clay. Scents of ginger and molasses permeated the space. The royal icing glued the house together and the finer exterior details emerged.

Once the gingerbread home was built, Louise created Amandine. She sculpted her daughter’s young, healthy body and tinted the reddish-brown hair with a drop of blood from her cut finger. Once she put Amandine to bed in her gingerbread bedroom, sleep finally came to Louise like a heavy wave. Outside, the sun’s weak winter shine erased the glow of her Christmas lights. 

Hours later, she awoke with a smile. Amandine waited for her in the gingerbread house. There was only one problem. She was lonely. While coffee brewed for a second time that morning, Louise kneaded a likeness of herself in fondant. This sweet doppelgänger had no wrinkles or dark circles. It had a stylish pixie haircut in place of her messy ponytail. The two figures in the living room watched a holiday rom-com together and shared a bowl of caramel-covered popcorn. 

Louise spent her holidays silencing her phone, sleeping, and animating her miniature family in the gingerbread house. Her creation sat on the sill of her kitchen window. Some days, Amandine relaxed atop the fuzzy green sofa with her feet propped on a gumdrop. She had her fondant tablet, drawing her fairy monsters. In the bedroom at night, Amandine texted friends, listened to music, and read under the lacy canopy.

In the kitchen, gingerbread Louise made her a gum-stick sandwich from the graham cracker refrigerator. 

More texts from Stephan trickled like the melting snow dripping outside. 

“We need to talk.” He texted the week after Christmas.

Louise and Amandine played cards on the tiny kitchen island. 

An hour later: “She should be here.” 

Louise and Amandine took a selfie in front of their white-frosted tree in the living room.

That afternoon: “The holidays were my time with her,” he texted.

Amandine studied the art set she had received for Christmas.

“We need to get a lawyer. At least, I’m getting one,” another of his texts read.

Louise put her head down on the island. She was in the middle of molding a miniature holiday log for dessert in the gingerbread house that night.

She responded: “Whatever makes you feel better. I’ve got what I need.”

For days, Louise animated Amandine’s likeness and her own inside their candied shelter. Yet time brought decay and critters. Louise couldn’t bear to end their insignificant lives while they indulged. They munched discreetly at night. The mice showed no discrimination. They eviscerated the home and gnawed on every gingerbread corner and fondant piece of furniture. The vermin did not respect the pâtisserie representations of Amandine or Louise.

When the new year began, Louise resumed managing the pastry studio. News of the sweet bounty spread among the mice, and while Louise was gone, they feasted. Although they were absent in front of her, there was evidence in the kitchen drawers and cupboards. Some of the guilty were relocated in humane traps, but there were always more. Only a skeleton of the structure remained. Even then, Louise could not throw her creation away.

By now, the gingerbread house resembled the carcass of a burned home. Louise renovated some of the more damaged rooms, but not the finer details. In an act of preservation, she took a butcher knife and separated Amandine’s bedroom and the two figures. New gingerbread walls reinforced the original one. The room and the figures got a facelift with a bright layer of fondant. To protect from vermin, Louise wrapped the room in plastic. The drawback was that the figures were stuck with their arms wrapped around each other atop the bed’s patchwork quilt. She donated the remainder of the house to the backyard.

Stephan’s texts continued, punctuated by a few voicemails that remained unanswered. Later, his messages included an olive branch emoji and an extended hand. He wasn’t angry anymore, he said. He wanted to prevent the tragedy from repeating itself. Louise’s insomnia returned. She lived her days with her mind captive somewhere else. 

During another sleepless night, her mind replayed Stephan’s most recent voicemail: “We knew her best. Let’s work together on this. She was our sweet Amandine.” That one made her pause. Twice she began a response to him. Louise regarded Amandine’s gingerbread bedroom where the two of them sat. The thin plastic showed several small tears. The figures inside continued smiling despite the gnaw marks. Finally, she typed “Okay.” Her thumb hovered over the Send icon, seconds away from bringing something else into existence.