She was by far the most beautiful doll I’d ever seen.
And she could talk. “I hope Santa will bring me one for Christmas,” my friend Maryanne whispered. The two of us had our faces pressed up to the toy store window that separated us from the Chatty Cathy doll inside. “She’s the only thing I wrote down on my list.”
Chatty Cathy was on every young girl’s Santa list that Christmas. But I didn’t tell Maryanne what I knew for a fact: Santa wasn’t real. I remembered how disappointed I’d felt when a babysitter spilled the beans, and I didn’t want Maryanne to feel that way too. Knowing the truth about Santa did have one advantage, however. It gave me the idea to search the house for presents that might be hidden away for me until Christmas morning. Between my parents and the relatives who lived with
