The Wolf Came on Christmas

Chapter 1

December had always been Paul’s month.

The month of road trips with hot coffee between our hands, of lights hung clumsily because he liked to do it “by eye,” of carols I pretended to hate and ended up humming without realizing it. The month when we had learned that we were going to be three.

I didn’t want to go back to Minnesota. I didn’t want to see decorated trees, or hear other people’s laughter, or answer well-intentioned questions heavy with pity. I didn’t want to spend Christmas remembering what was no longer there. I preferred to run from it. Freeze it. Bury it under the snow.

Paul had died at the end of November, in a car accident. And he wasn’t the only one I lost that night. I was four months pregnant. Our child didn’t survive the impact.

The car skidded off the road in a construction zone. We crashed into the guardrail of a half-finished concrete pillar. I didn’t lose consciousness during the few seconds the collision lasted, but I knew everything was over when I came out of my stupor and felt the pain. A construction rod—thin and lethal—pierced through the car door and my abdomen, from right to left. It was fast. Brutal. Final.

I spent weeks in the hospital. The car was completely destroyed. The doctors kept saying it was a miracle that I was still alive. No one seemed to realize that, to me, that wasn’t any comfort.

There are nights—especially in December—when I still ask God, or whoever is supposed to rule this world, why He didn’t decide to end everything right then and there. Why He left me alive after taking my husband and my child on the same night. It would have been easier not to wake up.

When Paul died, our house stopped being ours. The walls closed in on me. The objects, the bed, even our pet… none of it belonged to me anymore. It was as if the lights had gone out for me and I was moving blindly through the world, a prisoner between four walls that insisted on growing narrower and narrower, sealing that invisible prison around my body.

I broke.

And I decided to run.

Wyoming, in December, was perfect for that.

The forest was covered in a thick blanket of white, and the pines, weighed down by frost, looked like ancient guardians—still, silent. There were no Christmas lights. No neighbors. No family dinners. Only the distant crack of ice, the wind slipping between the trees, and the certainty that no one would knock on my door to wish me happy holidays.

With the little money I managed to gather, I bought a cabin somewhat removed from town and a couple of acres of untouched, forested land. The trees kept me from seeing other people. Sometimes I reflect on the real reason behind that decision, and I always reach the same conclusion: that was the greatest appeal. The dense woodland rising between my window and the road formed a living, impenetrable green wall. No one could see me. I didn’t have to see anyone.

I didn’t want to see anyone.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I didn’t want to remember.

His parents tried to help me. Mine did too. We were both only children. But I didn’t need comfort or company. I didn’t want to spend Christmas surrounded by sympathetic looks, forced dinners, awkward silences around a table decorated with lights.

I sold our house in Minneapolis and left.

I promised I would come back when I felt better. That’s what I told my parents. The truth was, I never knew what “feeling better” meant after burying a husband and a child I never got to hold in my arms.

I spent the next two years isolated in my cabin in Wyoming. I grew far too accustomed to my solitude. My name is Johanna Grant. I was twenty-six years old, already a widow, and I had lost a baby. That escape was supposed to be temporary.

But the cold Wyoming air, especially in December, did me good. There were no carols. No celebrations. Christmas passed beneath the snow, in silence, as if the world were finally respecting my grief.

There is nothing like silence. Being alone was the safest thing.

Obviously, I was alone in the cabin when it happened.

It had snowed heavily, and I was very happy about it. Snow inspired me to create, and I could invent the wildest things just by staring fixedly at an indistinct animal track in the white blanket. I could spend hours looking at that track. And then—bam—I would lock myself in to write. That night, I stayed in front of the computer until three in the morning. I didn’t want to let go of the keyboard. I stopped the scene when the female protagonist closed her eyes to rest, and I, just like her, felt the urge to lie down and disappear from the world for a few hours.

I didn’t like turning off the lights, but otherwise I couldn’t sleep.

A large, round moon hung outside my window, keeping me company.

I think it was nearly four when I suddenly opened my eyes in the darkness and saw the same white moon through the window, now veiled by torn strips of cloud carried off by the wind. I lifted myself on the mattress, trying to listen more closely.

It sounded like…

Someone was scratching at my door. A pitiful whine as well. Was it a dog? Only a dog made sounds like that, I knew it. Toby, Paul’s Labrador, used to do that when he urgently wanted to come inside and curl up at my husband’s feet. For some reason, the sound chilled my blood. Still, I got up and went downstairs. I wrapped myself in a thick blue bathrobe and grabbed a broom from the closet, just in case. I felt ridiculous. It was just a dog. Maybe the poor animal was freezing, separated from its family and looking for a place to spend the night. How embarrassing.

The little animal kept scratching at the door with its claws, whimpering, pounding.

It was pounding hard, actually. As if it were throwing its shoulder against the door—but I didn’t connect that to anything at the time. I turned on the lights on the ground floor and left the broom by the coat rack.

When I opened the door, however, I saw a child.

Or a cub.

At that moment, I couldn’t define what it was.

I can’t even describe the scream I let out when I recognized its shape in the shadow of the porch. I stumbled backward, forgetting about the door and the fact that it could come inside, and I screamed again when the creature’s whimpering grew louder. It was curled up on the wooden floor and crawled in until it reached the rug, its snout pressed close to the level of the boards and its eyes fixed on me, its pupils extremely dilated by the light of the energy-saving lamps. Its eyes were large, glassy, and blue. A deep blue. Human. Too human…

I climbed onto the couch and screamed again, trembling all over.