Chloe pressed the coat against her cheek, inhaling the clean, sweet scent of new fabric, before dropping to her knees and throwing both of her small arms around Arthur Vance’s neck.
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Arthur’s breath caught in his throat.
His large, scarred hands—hands that had poured fifty thousand yards of concrete and framed hundred-foot industrial roofs—came up to wrap gently around the child’s back. He held her against his chest, his eyes closing, a single, silent tear escaping his lashes and tracing a path down through the deep lines of his cheek, splashing onto the blue parka.
For three years, that house had been an empty mausoleum of ghosts.
Now, holding a fatherless child in front of a roaring hearth, Arthur felt the frozen foundations of his soul shift, crack, and break open to the light.
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Eleanor walked forward, her slippers making no sound, and stopped beside the kneeling man.
