He Came Home for Christmas—and His Four Daughters Were Afraid to Ask for Dinner

“Where did you send the money?” Nathan asked.

Peter gave a tired sigh. “You need to come to the office before you make this worse.”

“My daughters are in a clinic.”

“I know. Vanessa told me.”

“Then you know why I’m asking.”

A pause. “I know you’re upset.”

Nathan looked through the window at Emma asleep beside her sisters. “Tell me where the money went.”

Peter ended the call.

Nathan gave the officer the transfer details. Then he called Caldwell Systems’ outside attorney, Diane Mercer, and asked her to secure the company records. She had worked with him for eleven years. She listened without interrupting.

“I’ll get our finance director and preserve everything,” she said. “Nathan, don’t sign another document from Peter.”

By morning, the girls were warmer and had eaten breakfast. Their doctor explained that they would need follow-up care and regular meals, but they could leave with Nathan and Rachel that afternoon.

Grace asked whether they were going back to the mansion.

“No,” Nathan said. “We’re going to Aunt Rachel’s house.”

“Can we stay together?”

“As long as you want.”

The girls settled against one another on the clinic bed. Nathan stepped into the hall to meet Diane.

She carried a laptop and looked as though she hadn’t slept.

“The transfer went to a company Peter set up,” she said. “It bought a property last month.”

“Where?”

“Outside Denver. There’s more. Peter submitted a proposal to move control of the girls’ trust investments to that company.”

“He needs my approval.”

“He has it.”

Diane turned the laptop around. Nathan’s electronic signature sat at the bottom of a document dated two weeks earlier.

Nathan remembered the day. He had signed contracts on his phone at an airport gate while Peter talked him through them.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“We challenge it and alert the bank. We can trace the transfers.”

A new email appeared on Diane’s screen. Its subject line was CHRISTMAS EVE.

The attachment was a security video from the mansion. It showed Nathan entering the dining room and finding his daughters. The camera had caught the plate, the cold room, and his stunned face.

Then the image changed to footage from three months earlier.