Snow arrived like forgiveness: soft, late, and not asking for permission. Harold Mason clipped his torch to his coat and set out for one last Christmas Eve round, the kind he took even after retirement because the town trusted him more than the weather. He knew every gate hinge, every dog that only barked at shadows, every handwriting that trembled on bills and brightened on postcards.

At the sorting table, an envelope waited that wasn’t there at dusk. No stamp. No postmark. Thick, cream paper with a single sentence in blue fountain ink: Deliver before midnight. The address was the Birkett Farm, a hillside ruin since the fire five winters ago—the winter he stopped setting two extra places at the table.

Duty has a way of sounding like love when it’s quiet enough. He trudged uphill into a wind that stitched his eyes. The farmhouse leaned into the storm, windows blank as sleep. The door gave, reluctant. Inside, the ash-smell that lives forever in old walls breathed around him. He set the envelope on the mantle and turned to go.

A sound rose from upstairs. Not a creak. A lullaby. Laura’s. He climbed as if the steps were years. The nursery door he had painted yellow was ajar. Rocking chair. Burned photograph. A girl’s scarf—his Grace’s—folded on the sill as if air had learned to hold.

The envelope slid from his pocket and opened in the draft. One line, written in Laura’s careful hand: You’ve carried everyone home but us. Let us carry you. The clock downstairs began to count the last minute before midnight. He sat in the chair. The lullaby grew like warmth until the room flickered with the old night-light glow.

They found him the next morning, face soft, hands unclenched, snow feathering his cap. The oddest thing: the sorting room’s backlog was gone. Every last parcel reached porches no truck had reached. People swore they heard footsteps on the path around eleven-fifty, the jingle of something that wasn’t bells.

In the ledger, the dispatcher wrote what no report could prove: Route complete. Special delivery.

Thrillers end with revelation; sometimes it isn’t who did it, but what. Harold hadn’t been haunted by the house. He had been guided to it. At midnight, message finally became destination. The last letter delivered was himself.