Chapter 1 - The Paperwork
I want to tell you about the worst Christmas Eve of my life, because if I don't say it out loud to somebody, I think I might actually lose my mind.
My name is Claire Bennett.
I'm forty-two years old, and until that night, the lodge on Pinecrest Mountain was the one place in the world where I felt safe.
It's been in my family for three generations.
The walls are that deep honey-colored timber you can't buy anymore, the beams are as thick as tree trunks, and the whole back of the great room is glass, floor to ceiling, looking out over the mountains.
Every December my mother, Ruth, decorates it like something out of a magazine.
That year the tree was thirty feet tall, glowing with hundreds of warm white lights, red ornaments, gold ribbons, and presents stacked underneath like it was a store window.
There was even a small choir standing near the back in red-and-black outfits, holding white songbooks, waiting to sing.
And then Arthur Vance walked in.
Arthur is our family attorney.
He's in his sixties, silver-gray hair combed back, always in a charcoal suit that costs more than my first car.
He had a younger man with him in a dark uniform with a badge on his chest.
I found out later the deputy's name was Cole.
Arthur was holding a white document with a formal heading printed across the top.
He walked straight up to me and held it against his chest like a shield.
"You can keep running your mouth, but this paperwork says otherwise," he said.
"Your bullshit ends right here."
I remember the room going quiet.
Not the kind of quiet where people stop talking because they're listening.
The kind where even the fire seems to hold its breath.
My mother was standing near the tree in her cream turtleneck, her silver-blonde hair pulled back the way she always wears it.
Her mouth fell open.
"What the hell is going on here?" she said.
"Are you seriously pulling this crap on Christmas?"
My son Danny was standing right beside her in his navy winter jacket.
He's twenty-three, and I have never seen his eyes go that wide in his whole life.
I had my suitcase with me because I'd just gotten back from a work trip and hadn't even unpacked yet.
I was still wearing the pink coat.
The fuchsia one, with the tied waist.
I grabbed the handle and walked toward Arthur because I wanted to see what he was holding.
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," I said.
"You think you can just show up here and throw me out like I'm some nobody?"
Arthur opened a dark-red folder and looked down at the paperwork inside.
Then he looked back up at me with this calm, patient expression that made me want to scream.
"Don't stand there acting all innocent," I said.
"Every last one of you is full of shit."
The choir hadn't moved.
Those poor people were standing there with their songbooks, watching a family tear itself apart in front of a Christmas tree.
I walked past the fireplace, the one with the stone mantel and the little television above it showing a snowy mountain scene, and I turned back toward the room.
"You think some fancy-ass document gives you the right to humiliate me in front of everybody?"
I said.
"Screw that."
I don't know what I was hoping for.
Maybe I was hoping somebody would stand up.
Maybe I was hoping my mother would say, Arthur, put that away, it's Christmas Eve.
Nobody said anything.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
I pulled my suitcase across that polished floor, past the tree, past the presents, past the choir, and I headed for the big wooden doors.
Somebody had left them open, and the cold came pouring in, and outside everything was white and bright and silent.
"You backstabbing assholes," I said, halfway out the door.
"You planned this whole damn thing behind my back, didn't you?"
I looked back one time.
Danny's mouth was hanging open.
My mother's face had gone hard and troubled, the way it does when she's decided something and doesn't want to hear another word about it.
Arthur was still standing there with his folder, next to the deputy, like the two of them belonged in that room more than I did.
"Fine," I said.
"Keep your fake-ass Christmas and your shady little secrets.
But don't think this shit is over."
I walked out into the snow and slammed the door behind me.
I got about twenty feet down the driveway before I stopped.
And that's when it hit me, standing there in the cold with my breath fogging up in front of my face.
The name on that document was wrong.
Not the address.
Not the property description.
The signature.
They were claiming I signed that thing.
I have never signed anything in my life in that handwriting.
