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" PROLOGUE:
When Mandy Rose was eight years old, she saw Santa Claus.
She slipped out of her room on Christmas Eve after her mother went to bed. As Mandy tiptoed down the hall, trying to be silent, she thought of the poem: ‘Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…’
The Christmas tree was still lit up in the living room, as if it, too, were waiting. The nighttime cold of the house bit through her flannel nightgown, and Mandy wished she’d grabbed her robe and slippers. But she didn’t want to risk going back down the hall and waking her mother. So she pulled a heavy blanket down from the back of the sofa and curled up under it. She laid her head on the arm of the couch to get a good view of the tree at the end of the room near her head, and the fireplace at the other end, down by her feet.
Barely daring to breathe, she waited…
The lights from the tree… "
― Sierra Donovan , Do You Believe in Santa? (Evergreen Lane #1)
