The Polaris Clause

By Dpk Jsh

Elara Vance measures her life in billable hours and closed deals. Until a dead woman's whim sends her to the one place she can't negotiate: the past.

As a ruthless Manhattan merger attorney, Elara's world is one of steel, glass, and shattered competitors. Her only inheritance from a reclusive great-aunt is a dilapidated Vermont cabin—with a catch. To claim it, she must live there for one entire month under the "Polaris Clause."

Her plan is simple: endure the freezing solitude, sell the asset, and get back to her life. But the cabin is not empty. It's haunted by the ghost of a life she could have lived and the presence of Leo Callisto, a quietly intense astronomer whose backyard observatory is an encroachment on her property and a challenge to her entire worldview.

Leo doesn't see a liability; he sees a sanctuary. He shows schoolkids Saturn's rings and finds solace in the light of ancient stars. As a battle over property lines erupts, Elara is forced to confront the most hostile takeover of all: the one her heart is planning.

Under a sky ablaze with stars, where meteor showers paint the night, Elara must choose between the cutthroat world she built and the quiet, awe-inspiring one she's found. The Polaris Clause isn't just about inheriting a piece of land—it's about rediscovering a life worth living.

Perfect for fans of the emotional depth of Taylor Jenkins Reid and the small-town charm of Fredrik Backman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dpk Jsh
• Release date: Nov 26, 2025
• ISBN: 9798232210595

Book preview

Chapter 1: The Unforeseen Codicil

The conference room of Sterling Cromwell & Swain felt like a glass cage twenty-eight floors above the city, and Elara Vance was the apex predator within it. Across the ridiculously oversized mahogany table, Jonathan Cartwright, CEO of a meticulously branded but ethically dubious coffee empire, was a study in unraveling. His silk tie, a bruised plum against his pale throat, seemed to actively constrict him. Elara watched, unblinking, as a bead of sweat made a slow, glistening escape from his temple, mapping a tiny, trembling tributary of his impending financial ruin.

The updated terms are non-negotiable, Jonathan. Elara’s voice was a weapon, cool and precise, honed over years in these gilded battlefields. It never strayed above a controlled murmur, never betrayed an ounce of emotion. It merely laid out facts, and her facts were the unyielding architecture of inevitability. Our client has secured the majority share. The offer for the remaining equity is, frankly, generous, considering the Q3 performance reports.

She didn’t need to elaborate on the reports. She had leaked them herself, a meticulously timed drip-feed of data that had sent Cartwright’s stock into a freefall, turning her client’s hostile takeover from a speculative gamble into a shrewd acquisition. It was a brutal, elegant move, a corporate checkmate engineered over three sleepless months, and the clean, sharp taste of victory filled her. This was her arena. The crisp scent of expensive paper, the low hum of the city’s pulse below, the palpable tension of capitulation – this was the air she breathed, a testament to her self-worth, a currency she valued more than the NASDAQ itself.

Cartwright’s lawyer, a man whose ambition had always outpaced his acumen, shuffled a stack of papers with the anxious sound of dry leaves skittering across pavement. He was out of his depth, and the realization hung heavy in the air. Elara had anticipated his every clumsy parry, countered his every flimsy defense. She didn't just practice law; she waged it.

This is... this is predatory, Cartwright finally sputtered, his voice thick with impotent rage, a man stripped bare.

Elara offered a smile that was all teeth, no warmth – a predator’s acknowledgment. It’s business, Jonathan. And given the opportunity, you would have done the same. It was, in her world, the highest compliment she could pay him.

The signing was a mere formality, the scratching of Cartwright’s pen a pathetic whimper of surrender. Elara felt the familiar, clean thrill of victory, more potent than any champagne, more satisfying than any accolade. It was the feeling of absolute control, of having bent the world to her will. She packed her leather briefcase with swift, almost surgical movements, her mind already pivoting to the celebratory dinner with her fiancé, Geoffrey, at a restaurant where the waitlist was a status symbol in itself.

Her phone buzzed, a persistent, insistent vibration against the smooth leather of her briefcase. She glanced at the screen: an unknown number, a Vermont area code. An annoyance. She silenced it without a second thought, her focus entirely on the satisfying click of her briefcase clasps. Another deal closed. Another mountain conquered.

The call, it turned out, was not so easily dismissed. The same number appeared again as Elara navigated the chaotic ballet of a New York City sidewalk, the biting November wind whipping at her cashmere coat. This time, a prickle of irritation overriding her usual discipline, she answered, her tone clipped and impatient.

Vance.

Is this... is this Elara Vance? The voice on the other end was hesitant, a man’s voice, raspy and unfamiliar. It held a static-filled distance, as if broadcast from another, slower world.

It is. To whom am I speaking?

My name is Walter Abernathy. I’m the attorney for the estate of your great-aunt, Genevieve Vance.

Elara stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, a statue in a bespoke suit amidst the rushing river of humanity. A taxi blared its horn, and she barely registered it. Genevieve. The name was a ghost, a whisper from a childhood she had long since walled off. Her great-aunt was a woman she remembered in fleeting, dreamlike images: the scent of woodsmoke and old books, a wild mane of silver hair, and eyes that seemed to hold the secrets of the night sky. They hadn’t spoken in fifteen years, not since Elara had left for college and pointedly never looked back.

I see, she said, her voice a flat, polished surface. I wasn’t aware she had passed. The admission felt cold, even to her. A statement of fact, devoid of anything resembling grief.

I’m very sorry for your loss. It was peaceful. In her sleep. Walter Abernathy paused, a kindness she neither needed nor wanted. Genevieve left you everything, Ms. Vance. The cabin, the land... all of it.

Everything. The word hung in the air, oddly meaningless. Everything, in this context, was likely a rustic, dilapidated cabin on a few acres of frozen rock in the middle of nowhere, Vermont. An asset, perhaps, but more likely a liability. She could already feel the paperwork, the property taxes, the logistical nightmare of offloading a piece of real estate a five-hour drive away.

There is, however, a rather unique condition in the will, Abernathy continued, his voice taking on a professionally cautious tone. A codicil. Your great-aunt was a woman of... particular convictions.

Elara’s legal mind, ever the dominant faculty, immediately sharpened. A codicil. A complication. Go on, she said, her voice stripped of its last trace of anything but professional curiosity.

She called it ‘The Polaris Clause’. Abernathy cleared his throat, and she could hear the faint rustle of paper over the line. It stipulates that before you can sell the property, you must personally inhabit the cabin for a period of one month. Specifically, from the winter solstice until the third week of January.

Elara’s mind reeled. The absurdity of it was staggering. Inhabit it? Through December and January? It was the most critical time of her fiscal year, the period when bonuses were finalized, and the groundwork for the next year’s biggest deals was laid. It was professional suicide.

That’s... unenforceable, she snapped, the lawyer in her overriding any other instinct. A restriction on alienation of property with such an arbitrary and burdensome condition? It would never hold up in court.

Perhaps, Abernathy conceded gently. But Genevieve was clever. The clause is structured not as a restriction on sale, but as a condition of inheritance. If the condition is not met, the entire property and its contents are to be donated to the ‘Maple Ridge Astronomy Association’. As you are the sole heir, the choice, of course, is yours. Fulfill the condition and the property is yours to do with as you please. Refuse, and you inherit nothing.

The Maple Ridge Astronomy Association. It sounded like a club for three old men in parkas. The property was likely worthless, but the principle of it, the sheer, obstinate eccentricity of the demand, infuriated her. It was a posthumous power play from a woman she barely knew, a ghost reaching out from the grave to derail her carefully constructed life.

The property, Abernathy added, almost as an afterthought, also includes the observatory.

The what?

The observatory. The one she built on the ridge behind the cabin. That’s the headquarters of the Association. It seems a young man up there, an astronomer named Leo Callisto, helped her run it. It’s quite the local fixture, I’m told.

An observatory. It was a detail so bizarre, so utterly out of place in her world of balance sheets and hostile takeovers, that she couldn't immediately process it. She pictured a rickety shed with a rusty telescope, which only added to the property’s profile as a financial black hole.

Send me the documents, Elara said, her voice flat and final. I’ll have my office review them.

She hung up, the Vermont attorney’s gentle voice replaced by the familiar, aggressive symphony of the city. She stood for a moment longer, the wind feeling sharper, colder than before. The image of a star-filled sky, a sky she hadn't truly looked at in years, flashed unwanted in her mind. It was a distraction. A legal problem. An unforeseen codicil in the meticulously drafted contract of her life. And Elara Vance always, always dealt with her problems.

So, she wants you to freeze your ass off in some shack in the woods for a month? In the dead of winter? Geoffrey swirled a ridiculously expensive Bordeaux in his glass, the deep red liquid catching the candlelight flickering between them. They were at Aperture, a place where the food was deconstructed and the bill was reconstructed into a number resembling a small car payment.

That’s the gist of it, Elara said, pushing a perfectly spherical quail egg around her plate with a fork. She had explained the Polaris Clause with a detached, clinical precision, stripping it of its folksy absurdity and presenting it as a purely logistical hurdle.

Geoffrey, a senior VP in private equity, was a man who saw the world in terms of assets and liabilities, a worldview that mirrored her own so perfectly it was almost a comfort. His face, handsome and sharp, was currently a mask of amused disbelief.

And what’s the play here? What’s this dump even worth?

I ran the preliminary numbers. Of course, she had. Within an hour of Abernathy’s call, she’d had a satellite survey, the last five years of property tax assessments, and a market analysis of comparable—if you could call them that—properties in the area. The land itself, given its location, is negligible. A few thousand, maybe. But the timber rights, if undeveloped, could be worth a modest sum. The real value, if any, is in the potential for a luxury development. It’s remote, private. A boutique ski lodge, perhaps. Something exclusive. But that would require zoning changes, investors... it’s a long-term, high-risk project.

So, we’re talking about a significant initial investment of your time for a speculative, long-shot payoff, he summarized, his mind working through the variables just as hers had. All for a property you’d have to sit on for a month in the middle of Q1 planning.

Exactly.

He took a sip of his wine, his eyes appraising her over the rim of the glass. Let the weirdo astronomy club have it. Your time is worth more than that, Elara. That one month, your billable hours alone are worth more than the whole damn mountain. It’s a bad deal. Cut your losses.

His logic was flawless. It was the same conclusion she had reached herself. Cold, clean, financially sound. And yet... something chafed. It was the sheer audacity of the clause, the implication that her great-aunt knew her so well that she could predict her refusal. It felt like a test, a final, unspoken judgment from a woman who had chosen a life of quiet observation over one of active conquest. To decline was to prove her right. It was to admit that she, Elara Vance, could be so easily quantified, her choices so predictably governed by financial pragmatism.

It’s the principle of the thing, Geoff, she heard herself say, the words sounding foreign even to her own ears.

He raised an eyebrow. Principle? Elara, we don’t deal in principle. We deal in profit margins and leverage. Principle is what people use to justify losing money.

He was right. He was articulating the very creed they lived by. But the image of that sweating CEO, his empire crumbling under the weight of her strategy, rose in her mind. She had won. She always won. Was she really going to be defeated by a dead woman’s sentimental whim? By a document?

I’m not going to be strong-armed by a ghost, she said, more to herself than to him. I’ll go. I’ll check the box. I’ll spend the thirty days. I’ll probably be able to work remotely most of the time anyway. Then, I’ll liquidate the asset. It’s my inheritance, and I’ll be the one to decide its value.

Geoffrey leaned back, a slow smile spreading across his face. He recognized this tone. It was the one she used just before a hostile takeover. It was the Elara he knew, the one he was going to marry.

Alright, he said, raising his glass. Go claim your frozen kingdom. Just make sure the Wi-Fi is strong enough for our video calls. I’d hate for you to miss the look on my face when my year-end bonus comes through.

She clinked her glass against his, the crystal ringing a sharp, clear note in the hushed restaurant. The decision was made. It was no longer about a cabin or a quirky clause. It was about winning. She would go to Maple Ridge, Vermont. She would fulfill the ridiculous condition. And she would strip that property for every last cent of value it contained, even if she had to do it one frozen, miserable day at a time. The cosmos, she decided, was about to have a collision with contract law.

The drive north was a gradual shedding of layers, like peeling off an expensive, well-tailored skin. First went the city, its towering steel and glass skyline shrinking in her rearview mirror until it was just a jagged line of ambition against a pale winter sky. Then went the sprawling, anonymous suburbs of Connecticut and Massachusetts, a blur of shopping malls and manicured lawns. Finally, as she crossed the border into Vermont, the very texture of the world seemed to change. The highways narrowed, the trees grew thicker, and the landscape began to rise and fall in gentle, snow-dusted swells.

Elara drove her German sedan with the same focused aggression she applied to her legal work. The car was a hermetically sealed capsule of her world: the scent of expensive leather, the muted tones of a financial news podcast, the climate control set to a precise seventy-one degrees. It was a bulwark against the encroaching wilderness outside. With every mile, however, the cell signal grew weaker, the podcast cutting out into bursts of static until she finally shut it off, plunging the car into an unwelcome silence.

The silence was the first thing she truly registered about Maple Ridge. It wasn’t just quiet; it was a profound absence of sound that felt heavy, physical. It pressed in on the car, a stark contrast to the constant, unnoticed symphony of noise that was her life in New York. The town itself was little more than a crossroads: a general store with a sagging porch, a church with a stark white steeple, a smattering of houses from which lazy plumes of woodsmoke curled into the frigid air. It was a Christmas card cliché, and she hated it instantly.

Following Walter Abernathy’s hand-drawn map—a quaint, infuriating document that had arrived by courier—she turned onto a narrow, unpaved road that wound its way up into the hills. The pristine black paint of her car was soon covered in a layer of grime and salt. The tires, designed for city pavement, struggled for purchase on the icy, rutted lane. This was no longer a drive; it was a hostile negotiation with the environment.

Finally, she saw it. Set back from the road, nestled in a grove of skeletal birch trees, was the cabin. It was smaller and more primitive than she had imagined. The logs were dark with age, the roofline steep and covered in a thick blanket of snow. A thin tendril of smoke rose