A Magical Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page A

buttons on her phone were lighting up. She laid her head on her arms.
    Jack came back into the room.
    “Jon again, three this time.”
    “Tell him—”
    “Julie, I’m not a good liar,” Jack said apologetically. “Talk to him. You kids will work it out.”
    “That’s just it, Jack. We’re not kids.”
    But she picked up her receiver again.
    “Yes?”
    “Julie, I’m sorry.”
    “Are you? I think you meant what you said. You think I’m too permissive, and I’m going to kill one of our kids.”
    “I said I’m sorry.”
    She was silent.
    “I called to see what you’d decided about the Virginia vacation. It might be just what we need.”
    “Jon, we can’t fix things by running away from them.”
    “But it would be nice to clear our heads just a little bit, don’t you think?”
    “I don’t think that I can clear out what’s in my head.”
    She heard him groan. “Julie, I can’t pay for one mistake forever.”
    “One mistake. And years now in which we’ve been strangers.”
    “Look, when we get back, you can do what you want. Hell, I can’t stop you anyway. But this close to Christmas, for the love of God, let’s give it one shot—for the kids, even if that is a cliché. Let’s take Christmas away from both our jobs, from killer traffic, from school fund-raisers, boxed lunches, faulty plumbing, and everything else.”
    Julie hesitated. “It’s an historic mansion, right?”
    “Right.”
    “So how do you know the plumbing won’t be faulty?”
    He was silent a minute, then he laughed. A pleasant sound, a laugh with no anger, guilt, or bitterness. “Okay, so I can’t really guarantee the plumbing. We’ll get away from the traffic—it’s supposed to be really rural.”
    “What if it’s too rural?”
    “We won’t be that far from D.C. We can see what the Capitol is like for Christmas.”
    She hesitated. “No phone calls, Jon. No clients with the phone number.”
    His turn to hesitate. “All right, then, here’s the deal. I’m completely out of touch for the holiday, and the same with you. No Mr. Pearson in the middle of the night with something else to add to his list of requirements.”
    Julie hesitated. “I don’t know, Jon.”
    “You can’t give up Mr. Pearson?” he demanded.
    “No, no, it’s not that—–” She hesitated, shrugged, then said bluntly, “I just wonder if it’s going to be worth my giving up Mr. Pearson.”
    “I see.”
    Julie winced. Maybe she was wrong. Just a little bit wrong, but she was angry, deeply angry; she’d been betrayed. And she couldn’t give up the anger, even if he had said that he was sorry a million times, even if it had all happened in the past.
    “I have the advertisement right in front of me. I’ll think about it today, I promise. And if I think we can give it a shot, I’ll make reservations.”
    “All right, I guess that’s fair.”
    “Good.”
    “Julie?”
    “Yes?”
    “I—I—never mind. I’ll see you tonight at dinner.”
    “Right.”
    She hung up. She picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser against the advertisement. It would be nice. Once upon a time, it would have been a dream vacation. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire… for a kid born and bred in the deep, deep, dead end of the South, the very concept was wonderfully romantic. Sleigh rides. Blanketed against the cold with someone you loved, feeling the wind, feeling the warmth…The kids, of course, might be horrified. No video games, no long phone calls—for Christie, no Jamie Rodriguez. She’d want Jamie to come, of course. She’d try insisting they invite him—after all, they’d invited friends for her before, why not this friend? Hadn’t they always taught her not to be prejudiced?
    Why was it that everything good they tried to do backfired?
    Maybe it just seemed that way.…
    Jack was standing at her door again. She looked up at him.
    “Well?”
    “Well?” She stared at the coffee she hadn’t touched. “Oh!” She took a sip of it. “It’s