“Sit down, Eleanor. Take your seat.”
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Arthur pulled a second chair out for Chloe, his eyes bright with a resolve that carried the permanence of bedrock.
“Because before this day is over… you and I have some business to settle.”
***
The grandfather clock in the corner of Arthur Vance’s private study ticked with a slow, solemn cadence that sounded like an antique metronome counting down the hours of a fading century.
It was 2:30 on Christmas afternoon.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling multi-paned windows, the snow had stopped falling, leaving Hawthorn Ridge bathed in an incandescent, sapphire-blue winter dusk.
In the great room, Chloe was sitting on the Persian rug in front of the fireplace, humming a Christmas carol while meticulously arranging miniature wooden chairs inside her new dollhouse, guarded by Arthur’s twelve-year-old golden retriever, Buster, who had spent the last three hours resting his massive gray muzzle against the little girl’s knees.
