NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

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We had decided on a Christmas at home long before the economic crisis began.

Usually we drive to the in-laws. They are fine people. But they’re not us. So this year, Jenni decided, we would celebrate at home, and be thankful for what we have.

We have our health, we have our home, we have a few presents under the tree, bought before the dollar plopped. We are thankful.

We were surprised to wake up Christmas Day and find new neighbors had arrived in the night. The house next door had been empty for months, with just a few workmen – a gardener, a cleaning crew – coming by to keep it tidy. Nikki Paris, the realtor who owns the house, keeps things up.

We were more surprised to see who our new neighbors were. For the last few years we’d had a succession of upwardly-mobile couples, gay and straight, staying next door. Now there was a whole family, and a good-sized one at that. They didn’t have much stuff with them, but we figured it would be coming.

I decided, it’s Christmas, they’re new, let’s make a loaf of bread and take it over there. They fell on it like they hadn’t eaten in days, the whole crowd of them. I counted four kids, two grandparents, 10 people in all.

“It’s like the good old days,” I said after we left. “Remember the Maddoxes? The Knowltons? Huge families raised in small houses. Nice.”

“I don’t know,” my beloved said. “Did you see the look in their eyes? Like frightened deer. And they’re white. I haven’t seen a white family that big in ages. I haven’t seen anyone with that look in their eyes before, ever.” She shuddered in her coat.

John’s house faces the neighbors. He was surprised when the lights didn’t come on as the sun set. I told him, no big deal, it’s Christmas and they may have forgotten to turn on the electricity. I’m certain they’re prepared.

“I don’t know,” John said. I thought nothing of it.

It snowed overnight, a light dusting of white on the street that always brings me great joy, because it’s so rare. Atlanta closes in a snowstorm, absolutely closes. We all huddle around our hot chocolate. The kids go out and throw snowballs.

The house next door was quiet.

Our kids are teens, and don’t go out much. I’ve compared it to being in a chrysalis, and prayed they will come out one day as beautiful, fully-formed adults, educated by their computers and ready to see the world.

Sunday dawned hard and cold, the snow melting off the street and the sidewalks, the black ice making everything feel dangerous. I settled in for a day of sport on the television, a few beers, a roast chicken, some potatoes and stir-fried veggies.

It was mid-afternoon when all hell broke loose.

I heard the sirens but thought nothing of them until the police cars came down our street, from both sides. I was shocked to see the cops armed to the teeth, and even more shocked when they ran to both the back-and-front doors of the house next door. Our dogs barked madly, we could hardly hear ourselves over them.

Like an idiot I ran to the closet, shucked on my winter coat, and went out the front door. “Cops with guns a few feet away and you’re going toward it?” Jenni said later. Well, I replied, I’m a reporter. I’m curious. You're an idiot, she said.

And here they came out of the house, all 10 of our new neighbors, even the grandparents, their arms up on their heads, the littlest ones crying in the arms of the police. Bags of clothes came flying out, too, along with a few sticks of what I took to be furniture, all strewn around the trees at the curb.

The cops were midway into their destruction when Nikki Paris’s Jaguar came up. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her hair was a mess, her clothes were disheveled. She had a wild look in her eyes. “What have they done? What have they done?” she demanded. I figured, good, these poor people have an advocate.

I was wrong.

Nikki walked up to the father and spat in his face, while the cops held him. A policeman took her arm gently, and pulled her away from him. The victim of the spitting didn’t move to clean it, since his arms were pinned back, and he kept his mouth shut, too. But in his eyes was a very fierce hate.

And what was most frightening, as I stood there on my porch, was that the hate seemed to be directed as much toward me as toward Nikki.

I stayed on the porch, and listened to the cop talk Nikki down. These people were squatters, she said, squatters, in my house! How could they? How dare they? How am I going to be protected, she demanded.

The cop let her talk. And after a few minutes, things calmed down. The squatters were driven away, Nikki Paris went off in her Jaguar. There was nothing but silence and the sight of plastic bags in the garden, and a few sticks of furniture by the street.

As I was preparing to serve dinner I was shocked for the second time that day by the appearance of our church pastor, Lanny Peters, at our door. Jenni raced to answer it. (I don’t believe in miracles, Christmas or otherwise, and had long decided this kept me from joining her church, although it saddens me, because the people of Oakhurst are nice people.)

I expected Lanny to come in, maybe ask for a beer, but his face was hard, set, his eyes sadder than I had ever seen them. “Can I get you something, Reverend?” I asked, trying to be polite, as he continued to stand on my porch.

“This is an evil, evil Christmas,” he said. “Evil, evil days have come.”

“Please, come in. I can make some tea if you’d prefer.” I was holding a beer bottle in my hand, and thought maybe he was offended by it.

As though suddenly remembering where he was, Rev. Peters came in. “Tea would be nice,” he said, as my wife came up to him, this time wearing her coat, a wool cap, and gloves against the cold.

“No need to go anywhere,” I told Jenni. “I’m just going to make some tea for the Reverend. Green all right?” He nodded, but Jenni already had him by the arm, and the two went outside.

When I returned to the porch five minutes later, tea in hand, I found my wife crying on the porch swing, alone.

“It’s all my fault,” she said at last, drying her eyes with the back of her hand. “I told the church the house was empty. The Brockmans were foreclosed on, in Alpharetta, and their own church had refused all help. We had no place for them either, but I told Lanny the house next door had been empty for weeks, and it was Christmas.

“They would have been gone by New Year’s!” I put the tea on the deck, got into the porch swing with her, and let her cry in my arms. There was nothing else I could do.