Chapter 3 - The Helicopter in the Snow
The Ashworth estate looked exactly the way I remembered — stone walls, tall windows, dark timber beams, Christmas lights wound thick around the pines lining the driveway. Fresh snow blanketed the whole property, and thin curls of smoke rose lazily from the chimneys into the gray afternoon sky.
Inside, I already knew everything would be flawlessly staged. Grant's mother, Charlotte, believed Christmas should look magazine-ready at every conceivable angle. Silver candlesticks. Crystal glassware. A twelve-foot tree glittering in the front hall. One long dining table built to seat three generations of Ashworths comfortably, with room to spare for the family they'd been quietly hoping Danielle would help start.
At 4:15 that afternoon, Grant stepped outside with a few relatives to greet arriving guests. Danielle told me later they'd actually been talking about me at that exact moment — someone had asked whether I was really coming after all.
Grant had laughed it off easily. "She said she's coming, yeah."
"Alone?"
"Who else would she possibly bring?"
That's when they heard the helicopter.
At first nobody connected the sound to the dinner at all — Millbrook Hollow got enough military air traffic that aircraft overhead barely registered. But this one was clearly descending, snow lifting in wide spirals beneath it as it dropped toward the landing field just past the property line.
Charlotte stepped out onto the terrace, pulling her cardigan tight. "What on earth is that?"
The aircraft touched down. A crew member climbed out first.
Then me. Cream-colored coat, dark trousers, and the red scarf Dean had picked out for me that morning, insisting Christmas "needed at least one dramatic color" somewhere on my body.
Then Owen climbed down behind me. Then Miles. Then Colton. Then Dean.
Four boys. Four heads of the exact same dark hair. Four faces Grant could not, no matter how hard he tried in that moment, explain away.
For maybe the first time in his adult life, Major Grant Ashworth had absolutely nothing to say. He looked at the boys. Then at me. Then back at the boys. All the color went straight out of his face.
May you like
Charlotte's hand flew to her mouth. Grant's father, Harold, whispered one word. "No."
I took my sons' hands, one in each of mine, and we walked steadily up toward the house together.
