Christmas Letters Read Online Free PDF Page A

Café?” Wynn asked. He scooped up a handful of mixed nuts.
    As far as K.O. was concerned, nuts was an appropriate response to her neighbor’s fortune-telling.
    LaVonne dropped her hand. “No.” She turned to K.O. with a reproachful frown. “Katherine, what did you do?”
    “I…” Flustered she looked away. “Did…did you know Dr. Jeffries doesn’t believe in Santa Claus?” There, it was in the open now.
    “My dear girl,” LaVonne said with a light laugh. “I hate to be the one to disillusion you, but there actually isn’t a Santa.”
    “There is if you’re five years old,” she countered, glaring at the man on the other end of the sofa. “Dr. Jeffries is ruining Christmas for children everywhere.” The man deserved to be publicly ridiculed. Reconsidering, she revised the thought. “He should be censured by his peers for even suggesting that Santa be buried under the sleigh.”
    “It appears you two have a minor difference of opinion,” LaVonne said, understating the obvious.
    “I sincerely doubt Katherine has read my entire book.”
    “I don’t need to,” she said. “My sister quotes you chapter and verse in nearly every conversation we have.”
    “This is the sister who asked for my autograph?”
    “Yes,” K.O. admitted. Like most men, she concluded, Dr. Jeffries wasn’t immune to flattery.
    “She’s the one with the children?”
    K.O. nodded.
    “Do you have children?”
    LaVonne answered for her. “Katherine is single, the same as you, Wynn.”
    “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he returned.
    K.O. thought she might have detected a smirk in his reply. “It doesn’t surprise me that you’re single, either,” she said, elevating her chin. “No woman in her right mind—”
    “My dears,” LaVonne murmured. “You’re being silly.”
    K.O. didn’t respond, and neither did Wynn. “Don’t you want to hear what I saw in my cereal?”
    Phillip purred contentedly as LaVonne continued to stroke his fluffy white fur.
    “The future came to me and I saw—” she paused for effect “—I saw the two of you. Together.”
    “Arguing?” Wynn asked.
    “No, no, you were in love. Deeply, deeply in love.”
    K.O. placed her hand over her heart and gasped, and then almost immediately that remark struck her as the most comical thing she’d ever heard. The fact that LaVonne was reading her future, first in cat litter and now Raisin Bran, was ridiculous enough, but to match K.O. up with Wynn—It was too much. She broke into peals of laughter. Pressing her hand over her mouth, she made an effort to restrain her giggles.
    Wynn looked at her curiously.
    LaVonne frowned. “I’m serious, Katherine.”
    “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. LaVonne, you’re my friend and my neighbor, but I’m sorry, it’ll never happen. Never in a million years.”
    Wynn straightened. “While Katherine and I clearly don’t see eye to eye on any number of issues, I tend to agree with her on this.”
    LaVonne sighed expressively. “Our instructor, Madam Ozma, warned us this would happen,” she said with an air of sadness. “Unbelievers.”
    “It isn’t that I don’t believe you,” K.O. rushed to add. She didn’t want to offend LaVonne, whose friendship she treasured, but at the same time she found it difficult to play along with this latest idea of hers. Still, the possibility of a romance with just about anyone else would have suited her nicely.
    “Wynn?” LaVonne said. “May I ask how you feel about Katherine?”
    “Well, I didn’t officially meet her until this morning.”
    “I might’ve given him the wrong impression,” K.O. began. “But—”
    “No,” he said swiftly. “I think I got the right impression. You don’t agree with me and I had the feeling that for some reason you don’t like me.”
    “True…well, not exactly. I don’t know you well enough to like or dislike you.”
    LaVonne clapped her hands. “Perfect! This is just perfect.”
    Both K.O. and Wynn turned to