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"Don't worry about it--there is a Santa Claus if you want there to be a Santa Claus."

"There is?"

She nodded.  "That's how it works.  If you think hard about it and want it enough there will be a Santa."

I went back into Matthew's room and sat by his bed.  For a minute I thought he had gone to sleep and I looked at my coloring book and the picture of the pig and then Matthew moved.

"You're back."

"Mother says it's up to us if there's a Santa Claus or not."

"What do you mean?"

"She says if we want him, if we want him hard enough, there will be a Santa; and if we don't want him there won't be one."

He didn't say anything for a long time, and I thought he was thinking of something smart to say and that maybe he was going to swear.  I thought if he swore about Mother I would leave the room again and not come back, and I didn't care if he was sick and dying or not, but he didn't.

He didn't say anything about Mother, and he didn't swear.

He looked at me, right into my eyes, and he said, "I want him to be."

And I said, "I want him to be too."

And he said, "No.  I mean I want him to be, more than anything else in the whole world, more than all the things I've ever wanted, more than I want to live, I want him to be."