PART 1 – THE CHECK
I remember that afternoon of December 23rd as clearly as if it were yesterday. The sky over Aurora, Colorado, was a dull gray, snow falling lightly like scattered fragments of broken memories. I, Adrien Westfall, thirty-two years old, a literature teacher living in Aurora in the United States, was behind the wheel of my beat‑up old Subaru, driving nearly six hours north toward Lander, Wyoming.
That day, I drove the long distance to the little log cabin where my grandmother, Sylvia Westfall, had lived alone for the past eight years, ever since my grandfather Dennis passed away.
Highway 287 stretched out white and endless in front of me, flanked by snow‑covered pine forests. Every now and then, a herd of deer would suddenly dart across my headlights, making my heart skip a beat.
I hadn’t visited Grandma in almost four months. Four months filled with lesson plans, students, grading papers, faculty meetings, and then those late nights alone in my tiny apartment in Aurora, staring out the window at the falling snow, feeling utterly empty inside.
Until the phone call five days earlier.
“Adrien, my dear grandson, you have to come home for Christmas. You hear me?”
Her voice over the phone was still warm, but there was a slight tremble at the end of the sentence. “This Christmas, I have a special gift I want to give the whole family.
Everyone has to be here.
No one can be missing. Do you understand?”
My heart pounded as I listened.
It wasn’t because of the gift. I just wanted to hug her, to smell the burning pine in the fireplace, the scent of baked apple pie, the smell of childhood.
Grandma Sylvia was the only person left in the world who made me feel like I still had a real home.
The car climbed higher into the mountains. The icy air seeped through the cracks around the windows. I played Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” at low volume so it wouldn’t drown out the frantic beating of my heart.
The closer I got to Lander, the more I felt like the excited ten‑year‑old I once was.
And then the cabin appeared. It was exactly as I remembered: a tiny two‑story log house with a red‑shingled roof covered in a thin sparkling layer of frost, the chimney releasing delicate wisps of white smoke against the gray sky.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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