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    A Perfect Christmas
    A Perfect Christmas
    A Perfect Christmas
    Ebook36 pages29 minutes

    A Perfect Christmas

    By Carolyn Astfalk

    ()

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    About this ebook

    No tree, no cookies, no gifts. Not a single flake of snow. With sick siblings, Dad stranded, and Mom overwhelmed, will Christmas come at all to Marigold's topsy-turvy home?

     

    "A Perfect Christmas" first appeared in Gifts: Visible & Invisible, a collection of Christmas-themed short stories by eight CatholicTeenBooks authors.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMulta Verba
    Release dateSep 25, 2020
    ISBN9780997971866
    A Perfect Christmas
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      Book preview

      A Perfect Christmas - Carolyn Astfalk

      A Perfect Christmas

      A Perfect Christmas

      A Contemporary Christian Short Story

      Carolyn Astfalk

      This book is a work of fiction. Characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Real events and characters are used fictitiously.

      A Perfect Christmas

      copyright 2019 by Carolyn Astfalk

      Multa Verba Publishing

      ISBN: 978-0-9979718-6-6

      Cover design: Carolyn Astfalk

      Broken ornaments: freestocks on Unsplash

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise — without prior written permission from the author except for brief passages used in reviewing.

      Copyright 2019 by Carolyn Astfalk

      Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

      May your every Christmas be perfect.

      Contents

      A Perfect Christmas

      Afterword

      About the Author

      Also by Carolyn Astfalk

      Hands pressed to my ears, I tried to block the cacophony of Christmas chaos from the living room. I’m trying to balance this equation! I yelled, doubtful anyone heard me.

      From my vantage in the dining room-cum-homeschool classroom, I twisted strands of my tawny brown hair around a finger and narrowed my eyes at my little sister, three-year-old Lily, as she pounded the ivory piano keys with chubby hands. Probably sticky with traces of Nutella and peanut butter.

      I tightened my fist on a perfectly sharpened #2 pencil, tempted to snap it in two. "Stay off my piano," I shouted.

      Five-year-old Peter scream-sang Jolly Old Saint Nicholas out of sync with Lily’s pounding while twirling himself in several yards of shiny gold garland. Wearing discount store fingerless gloves—like he always did—he wiggled his bare fingers, arms outstretched. With his head tilted back, he sang in Yuletide oblivion induced by the contents of the now-empty candy package under the table no doubt. Those chocolate-covered cherries had more sugar than any item in the pantry. I’d bet on it.

      Mom squeezed by my chair with the toddler, Clementine, propped on her hip and tugging at her shoulder-length brown hair.

      Poor Clementine. The sweet little thing had spent the night barking like a seal with her second case of croup in two months. I knew because despite being fifteen, I bunked with Lily, and our room shared a wall with Mom and Dad’s bedroom, where Clementine and the new baby, Linus, slept.

      I’d begged my parents not to name the poor kid Linus, but did they

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