Mason Sterling Drove to His Dead Wife’s Mountain House to Say Goodbye

Claire Donnelly watched him from across a hallway and finally said, “Most people say they’ll follow through. They don’t.”

Mason turned to her. “I’m not most people.”

“No,” Claire said. “That much I believe.”

The next two months consumed him.

He returned to Charlotte only when necessary, conducting board meetings by video and handing operational authority to his COO with the kind of clarity he once reserved for hostile market conditions. The board, predictably, objected.

“You want leave because of two unidentified children found in another state?” one director demanded.

Mason, standing at the head of the conference table in the office he had barely entered for a year, looked at the man long enough to make him uncomfortable.

“Yes.”