chapter twenty-eight
December 24, 2075—fifty years to the day since Ethan knocked on Emily’s door. The snow fell exactly as it had that first Christmas Eve: thick, silent, deliberate, as if the sky itself remembered and wanted to mark the moment one final time. The house with the blue door—now gently weathered, paint touched up countless times—glowed with the same lights that had welcomed a lonely man home half a century ago. The orchard, fifty trees strong, stood silver under frost. The creek sang its quiet song beneath a thin skin of ice. Inside, the family gathered as they always did on this night: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren—five generations filling every room with laughter, stories, and the eternal scent of gingerbread. Ethan and Emily, ninety and eighty-nin
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