Page 9 of The Scrooge Effect

“Then a dog will eat it.”

“Those bones would choke a dog.”

“Geez, what crawled up your butt?”

“Again, do you know how to talk like a man?”

“Well, excuse me, Mr. Grumpy, but some of us respect our families and do everything possible to adapt. I’m sorry you’re not able to.”

He was right about that. I couldn’t adapt at all. I was supposed to be having a great time with my family, but instead, I was the grumpiest bastard on the face of the earth. I couldn’t even bring myself to pretend to enjoy the season with them.

Hell, I’d made my daughter cry.

“Man, whatever it is, you’ve gotta get it off your chest.”

I wasn’t ready to do that. I didn’t want anyone else to know about what my father had left for me. They’d all say it was some kind of payment for a shitty childhood, or something else philosophical.

“I told Gracie that Santa wasn’t real.”

He abruptly stopped, and I could feel his eyes on me even as I slowed to a jog and turned around.

“You did what?”

“I tried to fix it, but then I ended up telling her Santa was in her heart, and she assumed that meant someone had killed Santa.”

He snorted out a laugh. “Dude, you are the worst father ever.”

Pain sliced through my chest at his words. It was what I had worried about from the day I watched my father kill my mother. And when Harper told me she was pregnant, I freaked out, thinking about what a shitty father I would be.

And now I’d proven it.

“Why would you do something like that?”

I ran my hand along my jaw, trying to figure that out. I didn’t want her to be unhappy, and I didn’t even think it was wrong for her to believe in Santa. I just…couldn’t help myself.

“It just came out, and the more I tried to fix it, the worse it got.”

“You have to fix this. The last thing we need is Gracie walking around, telling all the other kids that someone murdered Santa.”

“I know, it was horrible,” I sighed.

“I don’t think you realize the implications,” he said, stalking forward and slapping my cheek. “You told her someone murdered Santa.”

“I know.”

“And what do we do?”

“Go after the bad guys,” I frowned.

“Right, so now we’re all going to be expected to find Santa’s killer and hunt him down. They’ll probably want to see him tortured. Do you really want to do that? Do you want to find some baddie and take him to the torture room and ask him why he killed Santa?” he shouted.

“Oh shit.”

“No kidding! You’re like the biggest idiot I’ve ever met! And I put myself in the friend zone when I met Laura!”

“Alright, I get it!”

“Do you? Because if I have to drag some asshole into the basement and interrogate him about an imaginary man, I will shove my boot so far up your ass, you’ll be singing Christmas songs until the day you die.”