The first snow came down like sifted sugar the night I decided that no one would cross my threshold without an invitation. Frank Sinatra hummed from the small kitchen radio I’d picked up in town, a chipped ceramic mug of peppermint tea steamed in my hand, and a tiny American flag magnet from a gas station in Yakima held my grocery list against the stainless steel refrigerator. The deck lights traced a warm golden square out into the darkness, and beyond that familiar boundary the entire Elk Crest valley slept beneath a cloud of white silence.
My phone lay facedown on the granite counter, deliberately silent for the first Christmas in a decade. It felt like closing a book I’d been reading for too long, one where I knew the ending would disappoint me but kept turning pages anyway out of some misguided sense of obligation. The promise I’d made to myself earlier that evening, standing on that deck watching the first flakes fall, was simple and clear: I would treat my life the way I treated my professional work.
Clear goals. Clear boundaries. Clear consequences when those boundaries were violated.
If anyone came to take what I’d built with my own hands and my own money, I would meet them with facts and documentation, not feelings and guilt. That was the vow. I had no idea how soon I’d need to keep it.
I’d bought the house for silence, for solitude, for the particular kind of peace that comes from knowing every object in your space is there because you chose it, not because someone else decided it should be. But the first photograph I posted of the deck—just a simple shot of morning light on new snow, barely visible in the background—went viral in my family group chat within ten minutes. Before I could even finish my coffee, my mother had texted: “This is wonderful news!
Julian and Belle can move in by Friday.”
They showed up in that thread with a plan as organized as a corporate takeover: suitcases already packed, a crib disassembled and ready for transport, even the name and phone number of a locksmith. I thought I was finally claiming my own Christmas, my own space, my own life. It turned out I was interrupting a plan that had my name forged all over it.
My name is Faith Stewart, and in my daily life I’m a brand strategist at Redwood Meridian, a boutique agency in Harborview that smells perpetually of cold brew coffee and quiet ambition. I build narratives for other people’s products and companies, finding the core truth of what they’re selling and transforming it into something authentic that people can believe in and love. I’m exceptionally good at my job.
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