He wasn’t supposed to answer the door for anyone. Why hadn’t she made that more clear? Why hadn’t Keith made that more clear? Wasn’t it the very thing their own parents taught them when they were younger?
Meredith stared with disgust at the brightly lit Christmas tree standing in the corner of her living room. Last year, presents for her little boy took up all the space beneath the tree. This year, it was bare. She’d begged Keith not to put it up this year, but he insisted it’s what people do during the holidays. It was a way to show people they could move on and be normal, or maybe he was just trying to convince himself that Christmas could still be joyful. She was surprised he wasn’t as put off by everyone’s holiday cheer as she was.
As she looked around the living room, there was, at least, one element of the Christmas season that neither she nor Keith would put up in their house. Santa Claus. For many, he represented the joy and hope of the season. But for the Campbells, Santa Claus represented their worst nightmares come true.
And Christmas? It was all a joke. Plenty of people had reasons to be depressed around the holidays, but Meredith wondered how many of them had discovered their four-year-old son had been murdered on Christmas Day.
