Chapter 5 - THE LONG NIGHT OF RECOVERY
By two in the morning, the mansion was utterly still.
The roar of the blizzard outside beat against the heavy stone walls of the estate, but inside the master suite, the fire burned bright and warm. I had moved four plush armchairs around the hearth, but the girls refused to be separated. They had arranged themselves like a small pile of kittens on the oversized feather mattress, wrapped in Claire’s old hand-knit wool blankets that I had pulled from the cedar chests in the attic.
I sat in a leather armchair beside the bed, watching the rise and fall of their small chests. None of them were sleeping soundly.
Sophie would whimper every few minutes, her hands twitching against the sheets as if fending off an unseen blow. Lily slept with her hands tucked firmly beneath her chin, protecting her chest. Emma stayed half-awake, her gray eyes opening every time a log popped in the fireplace, checking to see if I was still sitting in the chair.
Around three, Grace sat bolt upright. Her breath came in short, panicked gasps, her tiny body slick with a cold sweat.
"Grace," I whispered immediately, rising from the chair and moving to the edge of the mattress. "I'm right here, baby. You're safe."
She looked through me for a terrifying second, her eyes dilated with panic. "I didn't steal the butter," she sobbed, burying her hands in her hair. "I didn't, Mama Vanessa! It was the mice! Please don't put me in the dark box!"
My stomach heaved with nausea. The dark box. I knew what that meant now—the unheated storage closet beneath the service stairs where Marcus had found a small child's slipper earlier that night.
"Look at me, Gracie," I said, my voice thick with emotion as I carefully took her small, cold wrists and pulled her hands away from her face. "Look at my eyes. Who am I?"
Grace blinked through her tears, shivering violently. "Daddy?"
"Yes, sweetheart. It’s Daddy. There is no dark box anymore. There is no Mama Vanessa. She is gone, and she is never coming back." I lifted her into my arms, wrapping her tightly in a warm fleece blanket, and walked over to the large bay window overlooking the snow-covered pines. "Look out there, Gracie. What do you see?"
She rested her chin on my shoulder, sniffling softly. "Snow."
"That’s right. Just snow and mountains. And inside this house, you have four bedrooms, a kitchen full of warm food, and a daddy who loves you more than life itself. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again. If you want butter, we will eat butter with a spoon. If you want pancakes, I will make forty pancakes."
A tiny, choked laugh escaped her lips—the first real sound of childhood I had heard from her in six months. "Forty pancakes is too many, Daddy."
"Then we will make thirty-nine," I said, kissing her temple. "And we will cover them in strawberries and whipped cream."
Behind us, three small voices chimed in.
"Can I have strawberries too?" Lily asked from beneath the blankets.
"I want chocolate chips," Emma murmured, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
Sophie crawled to the edge of the bed, her small face illuminated by the fire. "Daddy? Is it really Christmas morning?"
I checked the antique grandfather clock in the corner of the room. The brass hands pointed to 4:15 AM.
"It is, sweetheart," I said, walking back over and sitting on the edge of the bed with Grace still tucked safely in my arms. "It is officially Christmas morning."
Emma looked down at her bare feet, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper. "Santa didn't come, did he? Mama Vanessa said Santa doesn't visit bad girls who cost too much money."
The pure, unadulterated malice of that woman made me want to tear the world apart with my bare hands. But looking at my four daughters, I swallowed the rage and replaced it with pure love.
"Santa had a little trouble getting through the blizzard," I lied smoothly, pulling all four of them into a tight embrace. "So he called me directly on the satellite phone. He dropped everything off in the garage, and he asked me to be his special helper today."
"Really?" Sophie whispered, her eyes wide with tentative wonder.
"Really," I promised. "Now, I want all four of you to close your eyes and get two more hours of sleep. When you wake up, we are going to have the biggest, warmest Christmas breakfast this mountain has ever seen. Deal?"
"Deal," they chorused in tiny, exhausted voices.
May you like
They curled back into their nest of blankets. This time, Emma didn't keep watch. She took Lily’s hand, closed her eyes, and within five minutes, all four of them were breathing in deep, peaceful rhythms.
I sat back in my chair, watching the first light of dawn break over the snow-covered peaks of Aspen, knowing that while the immediate danger had passed, the war to rebuild their lives was just beginning.
