The Drive
The highway stretched out ahead of me like an unending escalator, fading into the low winter haze that swallowed the Allegheny hills. I was unsure if I as on the stairway to heaven or the highway back to hell. Three hours of asphalt, of snow-flecked trees, of towns I’d once memorized and now barely recognized, each returning memories long since buried by choice, now refusing to stay dead. I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter than necessary, my knuckles white around the worn leather. Mom had called me last week, her voice trembling through the phone, telling me she’d fallen again, this time in the kitchen, landing hard on the tile. The thought of her lying there alone made my chest tighten, made my eyes do that pre-crying thing. I hadn’t been home in what? Six years? Six years of construction jobs, city apartments, and a constant hum of distance between me and the people I once loved. It was amazing. And now, driving back to Ashford Hollow, I felt like I was heading straight into every memory I’d tried to bury.
That first hour was easy enough. The highway ribboned past strip malls and tired chain stores, most empty. Signs of the current state of the country, their fluorescent lights flickering against a late December grey sky. The radio was a jumble of Christmas music, too sweet, too saccharine, grinding my gears rather than soothing them. I turned it down. It wasn’t nostalgia I wanted. For me to even imagine that statement to be true was a shock, it had been my lifeblood since my teens but it was true…I didn’t want nostalgia. I wanted a plan, a straight line from Pittsburgh to Mom’s house without any interruptions, without reminders, and more important than anything else, without Regan.
Regan. The thought came unbidden, and my stomach twisted. She wasn’t supposed to be a thought anymore. She was a wound I’d stitched over and over, but it never quite healed. She was the battle scar that had defined the war. We…we had been engaged, I still remembered the weight of that damn ring, that damn lying ring on my finger, the way it had felt like a promise I could hold in my palm. How it had felt like something real, the first time I had ever felt that from another person And then, I was lying in that hospital bed, recovering from major back surgery, waiting for the next one that might actually fix me, let me be the man I was expected to be…and she was…elsewhere. I hadn’t even known the extent of it at first. Or maybe I was being willfully ignorant, does it even matter at this point? Well I guess if it didn’t I wouldn’t be wasting the drive thinking about it would I?
It was a missed call here, a text there. A friend “checking in” with me, trying to be casual, to play it cool, saying, “Hey, Dave…you might want to know what Regan’s been up to.” And then the full picture unfolded like one of those old horror stories you can’t look away from. A car crash that unfolds in slow-mo right in front of you. She had been seeing someone else, not once, not occasionally, but a constant thread of betrayal while I was at my lowest, literally pinned to a hospital bed, unable to move without excruciating pain. I was in a fight I didn’t even know I was in while basically paralyzed.
At first, I tried to convince myself it could be repaired. I did. I told myself that things were hard, that recovery was a rough stretch, that we could work through it. The surgeon had warned me about months of immobilization, and I had leaned on her, on us. I had given myself over thinking my partner was watching out for me. And then, reality struck. She hadn’t just been unfaithful in a physical sense, that would have been shite, but I could get pat that, it would not be easy given the context, but I could have gotten past that, but she had erased months of shared intimacy, replaced my presence with someone else, someone who could walk beside her while I couldn’t. I couldn’t even get out of bed without pain. I remember the night I finally realized it: the truth hitting me not like a clap of thunder, not loud and announcing itself but like water slowly rising in a room, a tension building as the inevitable unfolds around you. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even cry properly. And after that, every thought of her carried an edge of cold steel.
But now, driving through the snow-speckled hills, the memory was raw again. The stitches had yet again been ripped open, as it had so many times before over the years. The anger had dulled, the betrayal had softened into memory, but the fear lingered. Not for me. I could handle myself. But Mom, she was fragile now, more fragile than I or she cared to admit. And as much as I wanted to avoid the tangled web of gossip that awaited me in Ashford Hollow, I couldn’t. Small towns don’t forget. They never forget. Small towns don’t let you arrive quietly. I could hear the whispers already, like distant echoes bouncing between snow-laden rooftops: Now entering the city..David Jones is back…after all these years…with Regan still here…
I exhaled sharply and shook my head, trying to push it away. No. Not Regan. Not yet. I wasn’t there to deal with that entire….thing. I just needed a route in, a route through, a route to Mom’s house where I could make sure she was okay and then I will leave again. Maybe even sneak a slice of Miss Mary’s Shoefly pie while I was at it, do something for myself this trip, if the diner was still open before the holiday closures, and if I could find it without running into the local busybodies. Miss Mary’s pie was a constant I could rely on: the warm, sweet molasses filling, the streusel topping that crumbled just enough to leave a trail of crumbs on the plate, the cinnamon-spiked whipped cream that softened the edges of winter. If anything could be a balm for the anxiety clenching my stomach, it was that pie.
The second hour brought more hills, the roads narrowing as the highway gave way to state routes, and then county roads that twisted and turned like the veins of the land itself. Closing in like my anxiety was around my thoughts. Snow clung to the trees, to the branches, to the telephone wires stretching across frozen fields. Pretty much everything was under a cozy blanket of snow. I slowed, squinting against the reflective glare. Fear had begun to creep in again, not the fear of traffic or ice, but the fear of walking into old patterns, seeing the old faces, visiting the old places, having the same old conversations that hadn’t changed in years, in particular the ones that might still hurt me. Her face flickered in my mind, snapshot of an unfinished film. The way her smile had twisted so sharply when I first confronted her, the way she tried to explain things away, as if apologies could erase months of deceit. I hated her for it. I hated what she had done. And yet, I hated myself for still thinking, even for a second, that maybe I could navigate her presence without falling into old traps. I was dumb and realizing it in real time.
Every mile closer brought me both dread and anticipation. The familiar landmarks returned: the bend in the road where the old mining truck had tipped when I was fifteen, the one where Harry got the picture with the cute female cop, the faded brick church steeple, where we used to go trunk or treating every year, the gas station where I’d spent my first paycheck on a pack of smokes and an adult beverages. The town was waiting, quiet and watchful, ready to remind me that time had passed but memory had not. I adjusted the rear view mirror, catching my own face in the reflection. Pale, tired, a little too tight with tension. I didn’t recognize myself at first…this man who could handle the chaos of a construction site, the exhaustion of long shifts, managing a team of twenty on two job sites and yet still felt like a child walking back into the scene of betrayal.
And then I thought, maybe…just maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Mom would be okay. Maybe I could make it through the weekend without becoming the topic of conversation. Maybe, if the diner was open, Miss Mary would smile and slide me that warm slice of pie without any comment, without the judgment. Maybe, just maybe, I could arrive without running into Regan. Maybe it would be okay after all.
But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t likely. Small towns don’t let ghosts pass quietly into the night. And they definitely do not when that ghost has a great bit of gossip to go with it. And Regan, the one and only woman who had broken my heart at its weakest point, she would be there…somewhere. Waiting. Or watching. Or simply existing in the same space I had to inhabit. No matter which she was doing, I would be sure to find out about it and her about me. I gripped the wheel again, knuckles whitening even more than before, and I pressed on. Snow swirled against the windshield, wind whispered against the doors. Three hours. Three hours until I reached Ashford Hollow. Three hours until I had to face every memory I’d tried to leave behind and the town that never lets you forget.
You can read chapter 1 right here: https://outsiderpublishingcompany.com/coal-drop-christmas-chapter-1/
