Chapter 9 - The Long Winter
The winter in coastal Maine was brutal, unforgiving, and white.
By January, the Atlantic winds brought blizzards that buried the pine forests outside Bar Harbor in five feet of snow. The town grew quiet, the summer tourists long gone, leaving only the hardy locals and the roar of the freezing sea.
Alexander kept his word.
On November 1st, Moretti Enterprises shocked the global financial markets by announcing the immediate resignation of Alexander Moretti as CEO. The board of directors confirmed that sixty percent of the company’s voting equity had been transferred into an independent family trust managed by Claire Bennett Moretti, with Gabriel Vance appointed as lead fiduciary overseer.
The corporate world buzzed with rumors, scandals, and speculative headlines, but Alexander never gave a single interview. He vanished from Chicago society as if he had never existed.
He purchased a modest, two-story weathered cedar cottage on a windswept hill three miles south of Blackwood Point. He dismissed his security teams, his drivers, and his private chefs. He drove an old four-wheel-drive pickup truck, chopped his own firewood, bought his groceries at the local mercantile, and spent his days reading books on pediatric development and early childhood trauma.
He never went to Blackwood Point.
He never called Claire’s number.
Every Sunday afternoon at exactly 2:00 PM, regardless of the freezing sleet or biting wind, Alexander walked down the hill to the village green in Bar Harbor. He wore a heavy wool pea coat, work boots, and a knit cap. He sat on the green wooden bench beneath the snow-covered elm tree outside the public library.
He sat there for two hours.
In November, nobody came.
In December, through three separate blizzards, nobody came. Alexander sat on the bench with the snow gathering on his shoulders, his breath freezing in white clouds, his eyes watching the empty road until the streetlights flickered on at 4:00 PM, before walking back up the hill to his cold, quiet cottage.
Then came the second Sunday of February.
The sky was a pale, crisp blue, the winter sun reflecting off the pristine blanket of snow covering the village green. The temperature was twenty-two degrees, but the wind had died down.
Alexander sat on his usual bench, his hands wrapped around a paper cup of black coffee from the local bakery, staring down at his worn leather boots.
The sound of footsteps crunching in the dry snow broke the silence.
Alexander didn't look up immediately. Locals walked past the green every day, nodding politely to the quiet stranger who lived on the hill.
"He likes the sound of the ocean," a soft, familiar voice said.
Alexander’s head snapped up.
Claire was standing three feet from the bench.
She wore a long down coat trimmed with gray faux fur, a knitted scarf wrapped around her neck, her cheeks rosy from the crisp winter air.
Beside her, strapped into an all-terrain baby stroller equipped with thick snow tires, sat Leo.
He was four months old now, bundled into a puffy navy-blue snowsuit that made him look like a little bear, a knit cap covering his dark hair. His large, bright hazel eyes—a perfect blend of his mother’s warmth and his father’s intensity—looked up at Alexander with wide, curious wonder.
Alexander froze. The paper coffee cup slipped from his fingers, spilling dark liquid into the white snow at his feet.
May you like
"Claire..." he breathed, his voice cracking, terrified that if he moved, the vision would evaporate into the winter mist.
"It’s cold today, Alexander," Claire said softly, her lips curving into the faintest, tentative smile. "Are you going to sit on that bench forever, or are you going to help me push this stroller through the snow?"
