Skipping Christmas by John Grisham Read Free Book Online

aggressively as her stomach tightened.
    “That’s a good way to save money,” said Lila, the biggest bitch of the bunch. Her emphasis on the word “money” implied that perhaps things were a bit tight around the Krank household. Nora’s cheeks began to burn. Lila’s husband was a pediatrician. Luther knew for a fact that they were heavily in debt—big house, big cars, country clubs. Earned a lot, spent even more.
    Thinking of Luther, where was he in these awful moments? Why was she taking the brunt of his harebrained scheme? Why was she on the front lines while he sat smugly in his quiet office dealing with people who either worked for himor were afraid of him? It was a good-old-boy club, Wiley & Beck, a bunch of stuffy tightfisted accountants who were probably toasting Luther for his bravery in avoiding Christmas and saving a few bucks. If his defiance could become a trend anywhere, it was certainly in the accounting profession.
    Here she was getting scorched again while Luther was safely at work, probably playing the hero.
    Women handled Christmas, not men. They shopped and decorated and cooked, planned parties and sent cards and fretted over things the men never thought about. Why, exactly, was Luther so keen on dodging Christmas when he put so little effort into it?
    Nora fumed but held her fire. No sense starting an all-girl rumble at the center for battered women.
    Someone mentioned adjournment and Nora was the first out of the room. She fumed even more as she drove home—unpleasant thoughts about Lila and her comment about money. Even uglier thoughts about her husband and his selfishness. She was sorely tempted to cave right then, go on a spree and have the house decorated by the time he got home. She could have a treeup in two hours. It wasn’t too late to plan her party. Frohmeyer would be happy to take care of their Frosty. Cut back on the gifts and a few other things, and they would still save enough to pay for the cruise.
    She turned onto Hemlock and of course the first thing she noticed was the fact that only one house had no snowman on the roof. Leave it to Luther. Their pretty two-story brick home standing alone, as if the Kranks were Hindus or Buddhists, some strain that didn’t believe in Christmas.
    She stood in her living room and looked out the front window, directly through the spot where their beautiful tree always stood, and for the first time Nora was struck with how cold and undecorated her house was. She bit her lip and went for the phone, but Luther had stepped out for a sandwich. In the stack of mail she’d retrieved from the box, between two envelopes containing holiday cards, she saw something that stopped her cold. Airmail, from Peru. Spanish words stamped on the front.
    Nora sat down and tore it open. It was two pages of Blair’s lovely handwriting, and the words were precious.
    She was having a great time in the wilds of Peru. Couldn’t be better, living with an Indian tribe that had been around for several thousand years. They were very poor, according to our standards, but healthy and happy. The children were at first very distant, but they had come around, wanting to learn. Blair rambled on a bit about the children.
    She was living in a grass hut with Stacy, her new friend from Utah. Two other Peace Corps volunteers lived nearby. The corps had started the small school four years earlier. Anyway, she was healthy and well fed, no dreaded diseases or deadly animals had been spotted, and the work was challenging.
    The last paragraph was the jolt of fortitude that Nora so desperately needed. It read:
I know it will be difficult not having me there for Christmas, but please don’t be sad. My children know nothing of Christmas. They have so little, and want so little, it makes me feel guilty for the mindless materialism of our culture. There are no calendars here, and no clocks, so I doubt if I’ll even know when it comes and goes.
(Besides, we can catch up next year, can’t