Snowbound Punishment: A Six‑Year‑Old's New Year's Eve

Elijah Heath lies dead in the rented apartment Wendy Lloyd gave him out of contemptuous pity, and only his six-year-old son, Terry Heath, is left to notice. For three days the boy feeds him cookies, calls his name and gets no answer, while Wendy, busy with her first love Hudson Clark, dismisses his calls and tells him his father is merely asleep.

Determined to wake him, Terry walks alone through the Christmas Eve streets to the grand Lloyd residence, where Wendy plays in the snow with Hudson and a little girl named Gracie. Hudson meets him at the gate with insults and a cruel bargain, and Wendy, seeing the wound on her son's face, believes only that Elijah is using the boy to win her sympathy.

Elijah's soul watches, unable to touch his son or stop what is done to him, as Terry clings to the hope that his mother's feather pen can wake a father who will never wake again.