Read A Shiloh Christmas for Free Online

don’t want to ruin my day.
    Mostly, I want to have more happy times with him to make up for lying last year when I was hiding Shiloh up in the woods. That was back when he belonged to Judd Travers, and I’d promised that dog he’d be safe. Wonder sometimes if it’s still on Dad’s mind.
    Wasn’t what I’d done , exactly—tried to protect Shiloh from Judd so he couldn’t be mistreated anymore—but that I’d kept it secret from him and Ma, and worse yet, lied about it. Lying is one of the worst things you can do in my family.
    The thing is, the first time I tried to keep Shiloh away from Judd, I was honest about it—told Dad how Judd treated his dogs back then, but he made me hand Shiloh over anyway, all trembling in my arms. Guess there’s a legal right thing to do, and a heart right, and anybody got a heart, I don’t know how he could give that shaking, whimpering dog back to a man who kicked him in the side with his boot the minute we let Shiloh out of the car.
    But that was last fall. Shiloh’s mine now, Judd’s changed—treats his dogs a whole lot better—I’m not lying about anything, everything out in the open. But sometimes, like, at dinner, if I don’t eat all my meat, Dad’ll say, “Not saving that for some other dog, areyou?” the way I used to do. Or if I spend some time up in the far meadow, he might say, “You haven’t got something else hid up there, do you?” It’s all said as a joke, but I just wonder sometimes if he totally trusts me.
    How do you ever explain loving a dog so much I done what I did? Shiloh came to me to help him when he first run away. Followed me home. Looked at me with those big trusting eyes, like Please help me! Guess you have to experience it yourself to feel it. But it made me sick in my stomach to give him back to Judd Travers. And I was the happiest person in the entire world when Judd finally said he’d let me keep Shiloh if I’d work for him for forty hours, and I did. He worked me harder than I’d ever worked in my life, but I got me a dog.
    Now there’s a blue sky up above, a breeze coming in the car window, and Dad’s got the radio on, listening to a ball game. I open Mrs. Ellison’s mailbox and there’s a paper plate with a half-dozen chocolate-chip cookies on it. And they’re still a little warm. She must have put them out in her mailbox only a minute before we pulled up.
    That makes Dad smile, and we both of us wolf those cookies down and wave at the window, can’t see whether she is there or not.
    â€œYou think you could help me on the house tomorrow?”Dad asks. “Be nice if I could get the siding on while the weather’s dry. There’ll be a lot of work to do on the inside, but I’ll save that for cold or rainy weather.”
    â€œSure, I’ll help!” I say, like he’s just offered me a malted milk to go with the cookies. But I mean it, too. All I want for Christmas is that room to be done so I can have the other bedroom. Already know what’s going up on my wall—a poster of the best basketball player for the West Virginia Mountaineers; a photo of David and me crashing bumper cars at the county fair last summer, and about a dozen pictures of Shiloh.

    If Dad and Ma’s concerned about lying, they ought to pay more attention to Dara Lynn. First off, she argues the point.
    â€œIt don’t say ‘don’t lie’ in the Bible,” she tells Dad at the dinner table that night. She’s talking about her new friend Ruthie, the preacher’s younger daughter, who rides the school bus with her every day. Dara Lynn’s in third grade, Ruthie’s in second. “I looked up the Ten Commandments, and it’s not there.”
    â€œâ€˜Bearing false witness’ is the same thing, so stop it,” says Dad.
    â€œDara Lynn, you’d argue the sun didn’t rise, just