The snow in Edinburgh fell like a hush, softening the city’s edges. In a penthouse of glass and steel, Matthias Kerr surveyed a Christmas tree of such precise beauty it seemed artificial. The silence was its own presence. The click of the door announced his housekeeper, Ana, and her daughter, Lucia, departing. The child paused, her eyes wide. “Mister, why are you spending Christmas all by yourself?” The question, pure and sharp as an icicle, hung in the heated air.
Ana, flustered, offered a hasty, heartfelt invitation to their family dinner—the house with the crooked angel, number twelve Glenwood. He refused with practiced politeness. But after they left, the silence expanded, filled now with the echo of that question. The perfect tree, the expensive scotch—it all felt like a museum exhibit of a life. At a quarter past nine, driven by a hunger no five-star meal could satisfy, he stood on a snowy street before a brick house from which golden light and the faint, tangled strands of music spilled.
Ana opened the door, surprise melting into a gentle smile. Inside was a glorious cacophony: the scent of herbs and roasting meat, garlands of wrinkled ribbon, paper stars, and a warmth that seeped into his bones. He was absorbed into the noise, given a plate, pulled into a joke. Lucia crowned him with paper. Later, Ana pressed a small, rough-shaped ornament into his hand—a carved wooden house bearing the word Welcome. It felt heavier than any gold.
The call from his father was a cold splash of the old world: a demand to end this “nonsense.” Standing in the frozen garden, Matthias looked back at the glowing windows, then at the wooden token in his palm. The next day, in the stark boardroom, he chose the crooked angel over the family empire. That evening, he returned to Glenwood Street, the ornament held like a key. Ana opened the door. “If the offer still stands,” he said, his voice softer than the snow, “I’d like to come home.”
And so he did. For in that house, under the gaze of a lopsided angel, he learned that home isn’t an address you own, but a place where you are, simply and forever, welcomed.
