Ghosts of the Past
The Christmas craft fair in Ashford Hollow has always smelled like pine needles, glue guns, apple cider and nostalgia. The high school gym is packed wall to wall with booths: hand-knit scarves, hand-made candles, homemade fudge, wood carvings of coal miners, eagles and angels. It’s the kind of event my mom used to drag me to when I was a kid, promising we’d “just look.” We always left with two bags of things we didn’t need and three slices of Miss Mary’s pie, something we always needed.
Now, walking through it again as an adult, it feels smaller somehow; like the ceiling’s a bit lower, the lights ever slightly dimmer. The same faces, just older. The same voices, softened by all the years.
Mom’s the reason I came. She insisted she needed “fresh air and a bit of holiday flair.” So here we were, moving slowly past the tables while half the town stopped to say hello and ask how she was healing. I smiled, nodded, carried her bag, played the dutiful son.
And then I saw Regan.
She was behind one of the booths near the back, arranging jars of jam and honey. For a moment, I didn’t recognize her. She looked… older. Still beautiful, but in that tired way that comes from learning things the hard way. When she turned and our eyes met, my stomach tightened the way it does when a wound you thought had healed decides to ache again.
“David,” she said, her voice soft, cautious. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said back, forcing a small smile.
“You look good. Ashford Hollow always did suite you.”
I shrugged. “Trying my best.”
There was that awkward pause, the one that isn’t exactly silence, but that charged kinda quiet that sits between people who used to know everything about each other. Used to. She gestured toward the table. “You should try the blackberry jam. My mom still uses the same recipe.”
“The pucker tart one? I remember,” I said. “She used to make it for Christmas baskets.”
Regan nodded, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “How is your mom doing? I mean how’s she healing?”
“Better every day,” I said. “Hard to keep her still.”
A small smile flickered across her lips, her familiar, dangerous, lying lips. “That sounds like her.”
We both looked down at the jars, pretending to study them. People moved past us, laughing, calling greetings, but it all felt muffled, distant. A surreal out of time experience.
She finally said, “I know this is… awkward. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For…fuck it…well for everything. I think about it sometimes, how I could’ve handled things differently.”
Her voice cracked just a little, and that was worse than if she’d cried. Because it wasn’t manipulation it was regret. Honest, maybe even earned.
I took a slow breath. “We were different people back then.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I guess we were.”
Another pause. Then: “You staying through the holidays?”
“Yeah. Helping Mom for a while.”
“Well,” she said, straightening a jar, “if you need a good meal, the diner’s still open late. We do a Christmas Eve special now. I’ll make sure Miss Mary keeps a slice of Shoefly ready.”
I nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She smiled faintly, eyes searching mine for something I wasn’t willing to give back. “Good to see you, David.”
“You too,” I said, and walked away before the air got any heavier.
I found Mom sitting on a folding chair near the bake sale table, happily chatting with one of her church friends. She looked up as I approached. “You ran into Regan again, didn’t you?”
I blinked. “You saw that?”
She gave me that mother look, you know the one, it’s half smug, half sympathetic. “Small town, honey. Everyone sees everything.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
She patted my arm. “Let it go, David. People change. Sometimes they grow up.”
“Maybe,” I said, but it didn’t sit right. Not yet.That night, I stopped by the clinic to drop off some paperwork for Mom’s prescriptions. Carol was on call but waved me into the small staff room. The place smelled like coffee and sanitizer, the two constants of any small-town medical office.
“You look like a man who’s seen a ghost,” she said, handing me a mug.
“Close enough,” I said. “Ran into Regan again, at the fair.”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “How’d that go?”
“Fine,I guess.” I said. “Polite. Civil. Strange.”
Carol leaned against the counter, studying me. “She reached out to me a while back. After everything. I didn’t answer.”
I looked at her. “Why not?”
She sighed, wrapping her hands around her mug. “Because I didn’t know what to say. I was angry with her for what she did to you, pissed at you for your stupid shit, and…disappointed in myself. I saw her slipping, you know? The flirting, the lies. I told myself it wasn’t my place to say anything. Then when it all blew up, it was too late.”
Her honesty surprised me, not because I didn’t expect it, but because of how quietly it came out. Like she’d been holding that guilt for years without anyone to confess it to.
“You don’t owe me an apology,” I said. “None of that was on you.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but silence has a way of feeling heavy, even years later.”
For a while, neither of us spoke, as if to make her point for her. The only sound was the hum of the heater and the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights.
Finally, I said, “It’s strange being back. Everything looks the same, but it doesn’t feel the same.”
“That’s because you’re not the same,” she said simply. “Somewhere along the way, you started to grow up David Jones.”
She smiled then, small, knowing…and for a moment, something in my chest eased.
A few days later, Carol called to invite Mom and me to the Girl Scout baking night at the community center. “It’s for a good cause,” she’d said. “Cookies for the senior home. Plus, Jade’s been asking if you’d come.”
I didn’t stand a chance after that.
When we arrived, the place was already abuzz. Dozens of kids in green sashes crowded around folding tables covered in flour and frosting. Christmas music played faintly over the speakers, mixing with laughter and the occasional shout of “Don’t eat that yet!” Carol was everywhere at once: supervising, helping, smiling through the chaos, being the glue to hold the entire town together.
Jade spotted me from across the room and waved, her face lighting up. “David! We saved you a spot!”
“Uh-oh,” I said, hanging my coat. “What did I just walk into?”
“Controlled chaos,” Carol said, handing me an apron. “Or just chaos out of control, depending on how you look at it.”
Mom settled at a nearby table, chatting happily with another parent, while I joined Jade’s group. She was elbow-deep in sugar cookies, guiding around two other girls with the authority of a tiny general. Like mother, like daughter.
“Okay,” she said, handing me a rolling pin, “you flatten. I’ll cut.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carol moved between tables, offering encouragement and wiping spills. Every so often, she’d glance over at Jade, not anxious, but attentive, the way only a mother who’s fought for her child’s peace of mind can be. When one of the girls got frosting in her hair, Carol just laughed and grabbed a napkin.
Watching her like that: calm, steady, lighthearted, I realized how different she was from the girl I used to know. Back in high school, Carol had been the quiet one next to Regan’s firecracker energy, always laughing, always trying to keep the peace. Now she was the anchor,the one who kept the room from tilting.
“Hey,” Jade said, tugging my sleeve. “You’re supposed to be baking, not staring at momma.”
I nearly dropped the rolling pin. “I wasn’t…I mean, I was just…”
Jade grinned. “It’s okay. Everybody stares at her. She’s the boss.”
Carol caught my eye from across the room, as if she’d heard, and shook her head with an amused smile. My ears burned, but I couldn’t help laughing.By the end of the night, the tables were covered in crumbs and streaks of frosting, the air thick with sugar and laughter. Carol and I stayed behind to help clean up after Mom and Jade left with the other parents. The lights dimmed, leaving only the glow from the tree in the corner.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, rinsing a mixing bowl. “The kids loved having you there. Especially Jade.”
“I had fun,” I said. “Didn’t even burn anything…Well not everything.”
She smiled, handing me a towel. “Small victories. Wise man once said Try. Fail. Try Better. Fail Better.”
“Well I’ve been following that advice my entire life, just forget the better part sometimes.”
We cleaned in companionable silence for a while. Sharing the embrace of the silence together. The hum of the old heater filled the room. I glanced toward the door where Jade had disappeared earlier and said, “You’re good with them. The kids, I mean.”
“I’ve had practice,” she said softly. “Jade’s… she’s been through a lot. I try to make sure she never doubts she’s loved, no matter what else is going on.”
There was something in her tone, not self-pity, not pride, just quiet truth. It hit me harder than I expected. “She knows,” I said. “You can see it.”
Carol looked down, smiling faintly. “I hope so.”
When we stepped outside, the night was cold and still. Snow had started falling again, as seemed to always be the case in Ashford Hollow, the flakes catching in her hair. She pulled her coat tighter and looked up at the streetlights, her breath visible in the air.
“Hard to believe it’s almost Christmas,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Time gets slippery this time of year.”
She turned toward me then, eyes reflecting the soft orange light. For a moment, everything else: the past, the noise, the ache of old scars, it all faded away. There was just her and the falling snow and the quiet pulse of something new. Something real.
“Drive safe,” she said finally, breaking the spell. “And tell your mom Jade says hi.”
“I will,” I said, my voice low. “Goodnight, Carol.”
“Goodnight, David.”
I stood there for a moment after she left, watching her taillights fade down the empty road. The snow fell heavier now, covering everything: the streets, footprints, the places we’d just stood. The moment we had just had. It was beautiful, and a little cruel, the way winter can hide the mess beneath it so easily.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and started walking, trying not to think about how much warmth one evening had managed to stir up in a heart that had spent years trying to find a way, anyway out of the cold.
