A novelette ...

After a horrible tragedy years earlier, a Christmas miracle will bring love to a hurting family and a better future for a little girl!

Copyright © 2018 by AuP reviner

Our house wasn’t there. Mr. Starrett’s house was on the left, with his red F-150 in the driveway, and the Petrovs' house was on the right, with no cars in the driveway but all their super-early Christmas decorations on the porch and lawn (it wasn’t even Halloween yet) — and there was nothing between them.

---------------This is an almost true story, in that the names have been changed and a few of the locations. Other than that, this is basically what happened.-----------

Adam was tired all of the time. Everyday, nonstop. No matter when he went to sleep, he always felt like he had gotten none. The only thing that even remotely helped him was coffee.

One day, he woke up to find that he had forgotten to set the coffee maker to brew last night. Disgruntled, he headed over to to the cupboard to get the bag of beans. He grabbed it, and opened the bag. He groaned as he saw it was empty.

During lunch break high school freshman Tom was sitting on a bench outside, reading a sports magazine (but with the edge of a Penthouse sticking up), alone as usual. Well, as usual as it could be the fifth day of term. Tom was not a popular boy. Small, ”dainty” and with golden locks that was rather longish. There really was nothing wrong with Tom except that he was terribly shy and new in town. He had lost his parents and the only relative was a cousin of his mother's. Matthew and Martha were considerably older than Tom’s parents but they considered taking care of Tom as their duty. Tom had all the material support he could wish for. However, they didn’t really care for him and since they never had had any children of their own they didn’t understand him at all. So the less he bothered them the happier they were.

Anyway Tom was sitting there ostentatiously reading a sports magazine featuring baseball. Tom was quite a good baseball player and had great hopes to get onto one of the junior teams. However, if you looked closer you could see the edge of a Penthouse sticking up behind the magazine. Not that Tom was interested in the pictures. Actually he found the sports magazine much more interesting and if he wanted to look at naked girls internet had an abundant supply and Matthew and Martha had no clue how to restrict his access. No, Tom had arranged the Penthouse very carefully to throw off any suspicions about what he had hidden behind the Penthouse. His real secret was much worse, something that absolutely NO ONE must know. Tom was totally absorbed by the latest “Thumping ❤❤, Broken ❤❤, ❤❤United” book, according to some the soppiest, most braindead romantic drivel ever written. Tom just couldn’t get enough of it.

“You did what?!” Leah said.

“It just happened, it was something silly”.

“It isn’t something silly anymore Dani”.

Leah came to sit next to me in bed.

“Have you thought about it? About how you feel? What this actions may reflect about you?”.

I didn’t want to answer, mostly because I really didn’t have an answer. It all just happened, and I enjoyed it, it was something I had just discovered and didn’t put much thought to it, when I did my mind got foggy and I got anxious.

“I… no… I haven’t” I said turning my head to the floor.