Page 37 of The Christmas Door

Amayah wasn’t Celeste.

He knew that.

He did.

But his editor wanted a story. A big one.

And this might be his one chance to prove he wasn’t another forgettable byline.

He looked at Amayah again.

A knot tightened in his throat.

This story could make his career.

But in the process, it could break Amayah.

And he couldn’t yet tell which outcome he was walking toward.

He pressed his pen to the page, unable to write.

What am I doing?What am I supposed to find here?

He didn’t have an answer.

But for the first time . . . he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to find anything at all.

CHAPTER 18

“This door,”Amayah said to the camera, adjusting the frame, “once belonged to a man who had everything the world defines as success. Wealth. Influence. Recognition. He could have anything he wanted . . . except peace.”

The words echoed faintly in the frozen air.

She glanced briefly toward Luke as he stood a few paces away, hands tucked into his coat pockets, expression unreadable.

“The man who owned this home once told an interviewer, ‘I gained the world and lost my soul inside it.’ He spent a lifetime climbing toward more, only to discover that what matters most cannot be bought?—”

Her throat tightened unexpectedly.

The Crump kids drifted through her mind. Their hungry eyes. Their threadbare coats.

She hadn’t been able to get those kids out of her mind.

“Sometimes,” she continued, “a door doesn’t reveal what we want. It reveals what we lack.”

She stopped the recording.

Silence settled.

These videos never failed to teach her a lesson also. That was why she insisted on digging deeper.

This was never about simply finding a door and doing a fluff piece. She usually researched the doors, the buildings, the people who’d walked over the thresholds.

Whose lives had been changed by the decisions they made.

She wanted something that covered more than the surface.

It was who she was. It was who she’d always been.