LITMIR.BIZ

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winter, a balmy spring, a sweltering summer and, here now, full circle, to another winter. She’d muscled through, pushing the seasons behind her, moving forward step by step. She hadn’t lived in the moment because she hadn’t liked the moment she was living in.

      She’d done her best to be strong and keep smiling, but it had been the toughest year of her life.

      Grief, she thought, was a horrible companion.

      “Ev?” Paige’s voice echoed down the phone. “Are you still there? I’m worried about you.”

      Eva closed her eyes and pulled herself together. She didn’t want her friends to worry about her. What had her grandmother taught her?

       Be the sunshine, Eva, not the rain.

      She never, ever, wanted to be the black cloud in anyone’s day.

      Opening her eyes, she smiled. “Why are you worried about me? It’s snowing. If this blizzard eases I’ll go across to the park and build a snowman. If I can’t find a guy in real life, at least I can build a decent one out of snow.”

      “You are going to build yourself a sexy guy?”

      “I am. With broad shoulders and great abs.”

      “And no doubt you won’t be using the carrot for his nose.”

      Eva grinned. “I was thinking maybe a cucumber for that part of his anatomy.”

      Paige was laughing, too. “You’re so demanding it’s no wonder you’re single. And, by the way, you have the sense of humor of a five-year-old.”

      “It’s the reason we’ve been friends forever.”

      “It’s good to hear you laugh. Christmas used to be your favorite time of year.”

      It was true. She’d always loved it. Every smiling Santa, every happy note of music that played in the stores and every sparkly snowflake. She especially loved the snowflakes. They made her think of sleigh rides and snowmen.

      To Eva, snow had always seemed magical.

      Enough, she thought. Enough.

      “It still is my favorite time of year.” She didn’t need to wait until New Year’s Eve to make a resolution.

      She was going to get out there and live every day the way her grandmother would have wanted her to live it. Starting right now.

      * * *

      Christmas.

      He hated it. Every smiling Santa, every discordant note of music that blared in the stores and every freezing snowflake. He especially hated the snowflakes. They swirled with deceptive innocence, coating trees and cars and landing on the palms of enchanted children who saw falling snow and thought of sleigh rides and snowmen.

      Lucas thought of something different.

      He sat in darkness in his Fifth Avenue apartment, staring out across the wintry expanse of Central Park. It had been snowing steadily for days, and more was on the way. It was predicted to be the worst blizzard in New York’s recent history. As a result, the streets far below him were unusually empty. Everyone who wasn’t already home was hurrying there as fast as possible, taking advantage of public transportation while it was still running. No one looked up. No one knew he was there. Not even his well-meaning but interfering family, who thought he was on a writing retreat in Vermont.

      If they’d known he was home they would have been fussing over him, checking on him, forcing him to participate in plans for Christmas celebrations.

      It was time, they said. It had been long enough.

      How long was long enough? The answer to that eluded him. All he knew was that he hadn’t reached that point.

      He had no intention of celebrating the festive season. The best he could hope for was to get through it, as he did every year, and he saw no point in inflicting his misery on others. He hurt. Outside and inside, he hurt. He’d been crushed and mangled in the wreckage of his loss, and crawled away with his life but very little else.

      He could have traveled to Vermont, buried himself in a cabin in a snowy forest like he’d told his family, or he could have gone somewhere hot, somewhere untouched by a single flake of snow, but he knew there was no point because he would still be hurting. It didn’t matter what he did, the pain traveled with him. It infected him like a virus that nothing could cure.

      And so he stayed home while the temperature swooped low and the world around him turned white, transforming his building into a frozen fortress.

      It suited him perfectly.

      The only sound that intruded was his phone. It had rung fourteen times in the past few days and he’d ignored each and every one of the calls. Some of those calls had been his grandmother, some had been his brother, most his agent.

      Reflecting on what his life would look like if he didn’t have his career, Lucas reached for the phone and finally returned the call to his agent.

      “Lucas!” Jason’s voice came down the phone, jovial and energetic. There were sounds of revelry in the background, laughter and Christmas music. “I was starting to think you were buried under a snowdrift. How are the snowy wastelands of Vermont?”

      Lucas stared out across the Manhattan skyline, the sharp edges of the city muted by falling snow. “Vermont is beautiful.”

      It was the truth. Assuming it hadn’t altered since his last visit, which had been a year ago.

      “TIME magazine has just named you the most exciting crime writer of the decade. Did you see the piece?”

      Lucas glanced at the towering pile of unopened mail. “Haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.”

      “That’s why you’re at the top of your game. No distractions. With you, it’s all about the book. Your fans are excited about this one, Lucas.”

       The book.

      Dread stirred inside him. Dark thoughts were eclipsed by sweaty panic. He hadn’t written a word. His mind was empty, but that was something he hadn’t confessed to his agent or his publisher. He was still hoping for a miracle, some spark of inspiration that would allow him to wriggle free from the poisonous tentacles of Christmas and lose himself in a fictional world. It was ironic that the twisted, sick minds of his complex characters provided a preferable alternative to the dark reality of his own.

      He eyed the knife that lay on the table close by. The blade glinted, taunting him.

      He’d been staring at it for the best part of a week, even though he knew it wasn’t the answer. He was better than that.

      “That’s why you’ve been calling? To ask about the book?”

      “I know you hate to be disturbed when you’re writing, but production is hounding me. Sales of your last book exceeded even our expectations,” Jason said gleefully. “Your publisher is tripling the print run for the next. Are you going to give me any clues about the story?”

      “I can’t.” If he knew what the book was about, he’d be writing it.

      Instead, his mind was terrifyingly blank.

      He didn’t have a crime. Worse, he didn’t have a murderer.

      For him, every book started with the character. He was known for his unpredictable twists, for being able to deliver a shock that even the most perceptive reader failed to anticipate.

      Right now the shock would be the blank page.

      It was worse this year than it had been the year before. Then, the process had been long and painful, but he’d managed to somehow drag each word from inside him by November, before memories had paralyzed him. It was like trying to get to the top of Everest before the winds hit. Timing was everything. This year he hadn’t managed it and he was beginning to think he’d left it too late. He was going to

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