He had everything. But more than everything, he had nothing. Nothing of any value. Kate didn’t have a lot—she worked for the festival because she loved it, not because the festival was paying her well—but even though she counted pennies and cut coupons so she could work in her dream job, richness filled her life. Emptiness filled Clark’s.
Her heart bled for him.
“No,” she muttered. “No more sitting around.”
Admittedly, she struggled to make her heavy limbs rip the covers away and expose her body to the cold air of the old house, but she couldn’t stay in bed any longer. Her eyes flickered to the clock above the mantel. 8 o’clock. 8 o’clock gave her… She counted on her fingers… Twenty-eight hours until the end of Christmas altogether. Twenty-eight hours to change a life, to fill it to the brim with magic.
Slipping out of bed, she marveled at the soft slouch of the pajama material against her skin. It served as a good distraction against the cold floor beneath her feet. It should figure Clark would have a massive, historical house with every modern luxury only to ignore the modern amenities like under-floor heating in favor of lighting a sooty fireplace.
As Kate crossed the room, she caught her own reflection in the mirror. Her makeup came off in the wash, her hair remained damp after her shower, and the pajamas Emily dug up from one of the wardrobes weren’t the traditional Christmas pajamas she always wore because those were tucked in her overnight bag, which was subsequently shoved into a random closet on the first floor as Emily was in a rush to get her into bed.
Emily. Kate paused at the door. Before slipping into the oblivion of a Seuss-themed dream, Emily gave her explicit instructions not to get out of bed until Christmas morning, citing Kate-cicle’s need to warm her bones and recover with some sleep. Kate cracked the oaken bedroom door slightly.
“Emily?” she called.
The house breathed in response, but no answer made its way through the halls. She cleared her throat, raising her voice lightly.
“Emily? Are you out there?”
Kate wanted to pretend her friend’s protective, fiery nature didn’t scare her, but that would have been a lie. This quiet, cautious check if the coast was clear was the only thing separating her from Emily’s anger at being disobeyed. Kate counted to five. Then, to ten. When no voice or heavy footsteps answered, she took her first brave steps into the belly of the darkened house.
The darkness chilled Kate at first; it chilled her almost as deep as the frozen water. It pierced her skin. It amplified every creaking floorboard beneath her feet. Like a heroine in a gothic romance, she pressed on. Clark Woodward was somewhere in this house. She only needed to find him.
But finding him meant first finding a light. Any light. Kate groped around the pitch-black hallway, searching for a cord. Just this morning she did all of the wiring for the strung lights down this hallway. If she could only find the plug…
“There!”
Kate pressed the metal tongs into the outlet and the hallway burst back to carnival-like life. A sigh of relief escaped her. Clark had been miserly enough to turn off all the lights before 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve, but at least he hadn’t taken them all down.
Guided by her new light, Kate pressed onward. Clark would be around here somewhere…she just had to find him.
The voices in Clark’s head—the normal angel and demon ones, not crazy person ones—wouldn’t stop yammering. For the past two hours, they argued and debated, sparred and grappled like two prize fighters trying to go the distance.
You should go check on her.
Emily said to leave her alone.
But it’s Christmas and she’s missing it.
You don’t care about Christmas.
No, but she does… Maybe she’ll be upset if you let her sleep through it.
If you wake her up, she’ll probably be sick and then you’ll have to put up with her making you do all of her tradition stuff all night.
…That might not be so bad.
Who are you and what have you done with Clark Woodward?
Christmas is pointless, sure. Wasteful and stupid, of course. But today’s been the best Christmas I’ve had in a long time.
A woman almost died on your watch.
My comment still stands. Best Christmas since I was a kid.
That’s an awfully low bar to clear.
I should go check on her.
She doesn’t want to see you.
For two hours, it went on like that, all while he attempted to get some semblance of work done. With the office in Dallas closed after 5 o’clock and everyone home for the holiday here in Miller’s Point, he had no one to do business with, but he still found paperwork to read and files to sort through. About an hour into his mental torture, he’d shifted from a secretarial office to his uncle’s actual office, hoping to find more busywork there. It was eerie, being in a dead man’s office, almost as strange as being in a dead family’s house. Except for a few distant cousins, only Clark remained of the Woodward clan. He was the last of his kind, in a way. It made the wall of family photos lining his uncle’s office all the more difficult to bear. Burying his head in the nearest drawer to avoid looking at them, Clark picked up stacks of paper at random and began sorting them. Busywork though it was, at least it was distracting busywork. His uncle had been many things, but a brilliant organizational mind, he most certainly was not.
Clark stacked papers into piles by subject matter, then date. When he’d accomplished that, he sorted by last name of the signatory partner, then date. He shuffled and
