New Year’s Eve carries a lot of promises for a single night. Some of them don’t survive the walk there. This puzzle isn’t about resolutions or fresh starts. It’s about what happens in between—while the clock keeps moving and the city makes up its own mind. Nothing dramatic. Nothing fatal. Just the kind of night you remember for all the wrong reasons.

PARIS, Dec 24 — You find them sometimes on Christmas Eve—the ones who've learned that home is the place you can't go back to. I found her staring into the mirror behind the bar at Le Sept d’Or, a little place that stayed open when a lot of others went dark. She wasn't drinking, just sitting there studying her reflection like she was trying to recognize someone she used to know.

A bit of holiday calm for you — just a simple jigsaw, something to ease you into the season. Enjoy the colors, the rhythm, the quiet.

Sometimes a man comes into the newsroom with a look that tells you he’s seen something he can’t explain. Not the shock of a fresh murder scene or the grief that comes after—no, this is different. It’s the quiet kind of fear, the kind that eats at reason. That’s how Hank Judd looked when he came by my desk that Halloween night—that night in late October of ‘26. Rain on the windows. The streets, cold and empty.