Marta thought I was the one eating the cookies every Christmas. I thought it was her. For five years, neither of us had ever asked the other. Until the day a question from our daughter, Emma, planted a seed of doubt in my mind.

"Why does Santa Claus never answer my letters?"

"What letters, sweetie?"

"The ones I leave next to the cookies."

I had never seen any letter. I asked my wife. Neither had she.

I didn't think much of it at the time. But as the holidays drew closer, I remembered the things that had gone missing every Christmas: Emma's pencil case, her teddy bear found in the garden in the morning, the drawings that vanished from the fridge.

"It's nothing," my wife reassured me. But I couldn't get it out of my head. What letters?

So, last Christmas, I set up a security camera in the living room.

"To catch the cookie thief?" Marta said, laughing.

I didn't answer. I set up the camera, then arranged Emma's presents and went to bed.

I woke up at five, screaming. Marta shoved me, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I went down to the living room.

The cookies were gone. Even the plate had vanished.

I ran to the laptop and opened it. My hands were sweaty and trembling. The footage started. There were hours of video of a dark, still living room. Then, at 3:47, something changed. A blurry figure slid into the frame like a camera glitch. Too tall to be human, too thin. It stopped in front of the coffee table.

The cookies disappeared in a single frame.

The figure stood motionless for almost a minute. In its hands, it held a small pink piece of paper.

It moved towards the stairs.

I slammed the laptop shut, pushed my chair back, and ran up the stairs, screaming Emma's name.

Her bedroom door was ajar. I went in.

The bed was empty, the covers thrown aside. The window was closed from the inside, the safety latch still on.

On the pillow, perfectly folded, was Emma's note: pink paper, childish handwriting, all decorated with gold glitter stars: Dear Santa. Next year can you take me with you?

Below her question, written in a thick black marker, was a single word:

Yes.

This story was originally written in Italian and published on my writing group Fanzine at https://sciameindolente.it. It probably maps too closely onto the Italian structure, but that's what I can do before Christmas. :D