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“Three cups of all-purpose flour. Three cups, got it? Hold on, is that flour ‘all-purpose?’” Adrian stops and pushes Natalie aside to check the label on the package of flour. She groans in annoyance.
“Mr. Monk, why don’t you just let me read the recipe? I’ve baked cookies plenty of times before, I promise you I won’t mess it up.”
“No, no, it’s fine, Natalie. I’m happy to help.” Satisfied that the flour isn’t purposeless, Monk steps back so his irritated assistant can have access to the kitchen counter, which is covered in a perfectly straight line of ingredients for gingerbread cookies.
Natalie handles measuring the ingredients, both because it can be a bit messy, and because she knows Mr. Monk would spend an hour trying to get each measurement exactly perfect. She carefully drops three near-perfect cups of flour into the mixing bowl, then turns to look at Adrian expectantly.
“What’s next, Boss?”
He pulls the recipe from his jacket pocket, delicately, as if it were a precious historical document. It’s handwritten on Christmas-themed note paper, and lovingly laminated to preserve every last pen stroke. Monk lists every ingredient slowly, stopping and repeating as he deems necessary to ensure Natalie gets the right amount of all of them. A teaspoon and a half of baking powder, three quarters of a teaspoon of baking soda. Salt, ginger, cinnamon, cloves. And then, the last of the dry ingredients, the one that has always, always confounded Adrian.
“A pinch of nutmeg,” he says, with a quiver in his voice. Natalie looks at him with a mixture of confusion and concern, an expression that certainly isn’t uncommon around Adrian Monk. He holds up the laminated paper, pointing at the listed ingredient like a witness doing a line-up. “How much is a pinch? Every other ingredient has an exact measurement: teaspoons and tablespoons and cups, but a ‘pinch’ is not a unit of measurement! It’s an action! What’s next, a punch of flour? A kick of cinnamon?”
“Well, a ‘kick of cinnamon’ actually is a thing that people already say. Y’know, like, when something has a strong cinnamon flavor you say ‘Whoa! That’s got a kick of cinnamon in it.’ So, it is kind of an unofficial measurement… Of sorts.” Natalie trails off when she sees the frustration on her boss’s face.
“I’ve never said that.”
“People do. People say that.”
An awkward silence floats in the air for a moment, only broken by a big sigh that Mr. Monk lets out. He looks down at the recipe, admiring the handwritten letters. He smiles, a little bit, looking at the way the y’s and g’s curl at the bottom.
“I asked her that same question every time. We made these cookies together every year around Christmas time. Well, she made them, and I cleaned up afterward.” He chuckles to himself, and Natalie smiles warmly at him. “Every year I would look at the recipe Trudy wrote and ask her, ‘how much is a pinch?’ You know what she would say?”
“It’s the perfect amount. Not too much, not too little. The perfect amount,” Trudy answers, a fond smile on her face. Adrian laughs at that, just as he has every year before. He has no response, no argument to be made. So he kisses her cheek, and she grabs the perfect amount of nutmeg and adds it to the dry mix.
She beats the eggs, butter, and brown sugar together in a mixer. Then she mixes in vanilla and molasses, then the dry mix. She divides the finished dough into two halves, wraps them snugly in plastic wrap, and lays them to rest at room temperature for at least two hours.
While the dough rests, the Monks take the opportunity to spend two hours together. They talk and talk, about work and their plans for the holidays. They’ll visit Ambrose, of course, and bring him some of the cookies. Leland will also get some, enough for him and Karen and their two sons. It’s one of Trudy’s favorite parts of Christmas, the satisfied look on a person’s face when they bite into one of her gingerbread cookies. It’s a simple pleasure, but one that she looks forward to every year.
Two hours later, the dough is rolled and cut into stars and trees, and spaced two inches apart on two parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Adrian, who doesn’t want his wife to even take the risk of burning herself, places the cookies in the preheated-to- 375° oven, and sets a timer for exactly ten minutes.
Ten minutes later, “The cookies are done!” Natalie announces. She pulls the cookie sheets out of the hot oven and sets them on the counter to cool. She closes the oven door and makes sure the oven is off.
Adrian enters his apartment’s kitchen, tailed closely by Natalie’s daughter. They had spent the time while the cookie dough rested and the cookies baked watching some of the Cooper Clan Christmas specials. Despite having seen them dozens of times already, Monk was clearly more interested in the episodes than she was.
“They smell amazing!” Julie exclaims, taking in a big breath of cinnamon-and-ginger-scented air. Her mother does the same, and they share a laugh. And, although he doesn’t understand why they’re laughing, Adrian can’t help but smile. He’s missed this smell. His favorite smell, second only to Trudy’s shampoo, and her perfume, and her… Well, second only to Trudy herself.
“They have to cool down, so we can’t eat them yet,” Natalie says to Julie, “You can go back to the living room. I’ll bring you some cookies when they aren’t so hot they’ll burn your mouth out. Go, go, watch some more Cooper Clan.” She shoos her out, and Julie rolls her eyes playfully.
Adrian stutters, “Don’t actually. Don’t watch any without me.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Julie assures him, and leaves the two alone again, in the sweet-scented kitchen.
Natalie doesn’t mean to stare. Truly, she just can’t help herself. She watches Adrian as he examines the cookies. He looks almost like he does at a crime scene, but with one major difference. Their eyes meet, and she cocks her head with a cheeky grin.
“What?” he questions.
“Nothing,” she lies.
“No, really, what is it? You’re staring at me like I have a second head.” He looks around, almost as if he’s actually checking for a second head. “Do I have something on my shirt?”
“No, I just rarely get to see you like this.”
“Like what?”
She pauses, considering for a second if she might come off as rude. “Happy. You’ve been smiling this whole time. And you haven’t asked me once if I remembered to turn the oven off.”
“Did you?”
“Of course I did!”
“You’re sure?”
“Mr. Monk,” she pleas, half-jokingly, “don’t ruin this.”
He stops himself. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
Natalie realizes, after a moment, that she’s made things awkward. She regrets mentioning anything, she should’ve just let him be happy without pointing it out, she thinks.
He interrupts her thoughts, “Let’s have some cookies now.”
“Right! That’s a great idea, Mr. Monk. Now, they’re still hot so be careful-” As she talks and begins separating some of the cookies from the parchment paper, Monk pushes past her, ignoring the fresh warm gingerbread cookies in favor of something from his freezer.
He sets the plastic storage bag on the counter, and Natalie examines it with confusion. It’s a large bag, far too large for its meager contents. The amount of crumbs at the bottom of the bag indicate it had once been much fuller. Adrian opens it, and pulls out something which had once been shaped like a star, but has since become more of an amorphous blob.
“Are you… gonna eat that?” Natalie asks. It doesn’t exactly look appetizing.
“It’s the last one,” he says softly, his voice so gentle that Natalie is somewhat taken aback. “This is the last gingerbread cookie that Trudy ever made.” His eyes start to shimmer, and Natalie’s breath hitches in her throat.
“Oh, Mr. Monk, I’m so sorry.” She wraps her arm around him, and he leans into the embrace, if only a little bit.
He sniffles, and wipes his eyes. “It’s okay. We still have her recipe. They won’t be exactly the same. They won’t have the perfect amount of nutmeg, but that doesn’t matter. This is what she would want,” he motions to the fresh cookies. “She would want someone to continue her tradition. Trudy loved sharing her baking more than eating it. She always said the gingerbread cookies were the physical embodiment of warmth and love, and love is meant to be shared.”
Natalie has to wipe her own eyes after that. “That’s beautiful, Mr. Monk. Trudy was an amazing woman.”
“She was,” he agrees with a tearful smile, “and an amazing baker.” He breaks the frozen cookie, and hands half to Natalie. She looks surprised, but accepts it. “Every year I’ve eaten one of the cookies from Trudy’s last batch. This is the first time I’ve ever shared one. I wasn’t sure I would, at first, but… Love is meant to be shared.”
Natalie has to catch herself to stop a sob from escaping her throat. As warm tears stream down her cheeks, she raises her half of the frozen gingerbread cookie in a toast. To Trudy.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Monk.”
“Merry Christmas, Natalie.”
They bite into the cookie at the same time, and it’s simultaneously rock hard and falling apart. It disintegrates into sandy dust in their mouths, and it tastes bitter and bland and like it’s been freezer-burnt for over 10 years. Natalie has to cover her mouth to prevent any crumbs from flying out.
“Oh my god,” she says, muffled by the vaguely-cinnamon-flavored dust, “that is disgusting!”
“I know!” Monk cries, literally. But still, somehow, he can’t stop smiling. “It gets worse every year! I swear they used to taste amazing.”
“I’m sure they did,” Natalie stands up to get them both glasses of water, “a decade ago. This did not taste like warmth and love, Mr. Monk. I appreciate the sentiment, but I cannot believe you would feed this to another person! I cannot believe you fed it to me.”
“I did not feed it to you! I gave it to you, and you ate. You fed it to yourself.”
They both take big drinks of water, and once the freezer-burnt cookie is washed down, the detective looks at his assistant and she looks back at him.
“Thank you for sharing a piece of Trudy with me, Mr. Monk. It means a lot.”
He doesn’t have to say anything. His smile is answer enough.
“Now,” Natalie grabs a plate and piles some of the fresh cookies onto it, “let’s go watch some more Cooper Clan Christmas specials,” she says.
“Oh, right!” Monk stands and rushes ahead, “Julie, you didn’t start without me, did you? Julie? I asked you not to-”