The Perfect Christmas

This ebook is an advent calendar.

Twenty-five doors, two full chapters behind each one, and Christmas Day behind the last. Tap a door and it takes you there. You can open one door a day, or more if you really can't wait.

Nobody has ever made Maren a stocking before.

Jonah's family did. It was hanging on the mantel when she walked in, her name stitched on the cuff in white thread, next to five others. Matching pajamas. A laminated schedule. A mother who hugs you a second too long and tells you nobody stops being family.

There's a seventh stocking at the end of the row. It says Sylvie. She came here last Christmas, engaged to Jonah's older brother, and on Christmas Eve she packed a bag and walked out. Nobody has heard from her since.

That's the story. Everyone in this house tells it the same way.

Then the gifts start. Every night, something on Maren's pillow, with no note and no name. An old paperback. Half a bottle of perfume. A red mitten, stiff with dirt, that has spent a long time outside.

Each one is something of Sylvie's. And each one is meant for Maren.

Somebody in this house knows what happened to Sylvie. Somebody in this house knows why Maren is really here.

And the roads are about to close.