I'm sorry

Ashveil Hollow wasn't like a lot of the small towns in the Midwest. Sure, it had the lighthouse; some of the streets were still cobbled because repaving them would cost a fortune. The fog would always set in before the crack of dawn and then leave from three until the same time tomorrow.

No one thought of the once-rung bell on Saint Mercy's Chapel on Halloween, now removed to keep chaos in order. Or the strangeness of their own Post Office. To them, the Hollow was as it always was.

Then again, no one ever really thought of anything until it pertained to them. Like typical cattle. Idling, walking by like the once-late Eve Parker (may she rest her soul). Though no one can be sure she did perish. The only thing left behind was scratch marks and a now empty house with no owner. So when Claire entered the town in the middle of November, most people turned their heads and went about their business.

Claire was tall— with brown eyes and hair to match her darker complexion. Rail-thin by the look of her, as she wore baggy men's clothes most days. Leggings and the hoodie of an ex, most people would think. Not like they cared. They just didn't like that the house that was let out after the fiasco on Halloween had a hopeful new prospect.

You see— Claire needed a change of pace now. City life in Chicago was hustle and bustle to the maximum, and she enjoyed the thrill of it with her husband. One of the best defense attorneys the Windy City could have ever produced.

Had enjoyed it, anyways.

Three years was a long time to be carrying around a dead man's watch, his clothes, even his toothbrush.

She had tried to throw that last item away. But for some reason it always just ended up right back on the dresser the next morning. The blue toothbrush with black bristles— the most expensive and outrageous one money could have bought.

Claire remembered chastising him for the ridiculous money spent on it.

"50 bucks for a damn toothbrush, Len? Really?" she called out as she looked at the packaging. "It better solve world hunger." A jest or a jeer. It wasn't always certain.

Leonard looked up and smiled his pearly whites at her. "Maybe it will?"

Claire had thrown the toothbrush away twice before this.

The first time, she cried so hard that she shoved more tissues over the damn thing to get it out of her sight. Sobbing into her sleeve while she crawled into her bed and binge-watched Gilmore Girls.

It appeared in the middle of the night. She stubbed her toe on the bed, stumbled into the dresser, and caught herself on the toothbrush.

She threw it out in the work garbage one night after she cleared out her locker. A change of scenery was what she ordered. Nothing in the city to tie her to Leonard. So she started with one simple and expensive toothbrush. Tossed it into the trash and drove home.

It was on the dresser when she walked into her bedroom later that night with a glass of wine. She didn't dare try a third time. Felt like it was him telling her something.

Instead, she slid the thing into a box and shoved it into her car and rented out a room at the Briar & Bell Inn. She contacted a moving company and got them to pack everything else in that tiny flat— she wanted to live within her means so as not to get a big head. Now she was basking in more money from his insurance payout, so she could afford to move anywhere.

Yet the town of Ashveil Hollow had a certain ring to it. Small, quiet, timely. She didn't have a place in mind. Just drove until she felt like something called to her— and here, it did.

Though maybe for other reasons.

Nobody needed to know the truth.

She was running out of places in Chicago where his ghost couldn't find her— not that she believed in ghosts.

That was what she told herself, anyways.

Ashveil Hollow seemed like the sort of place that would allow a person to disappear into themselves without asking too many questions. She'd never lived in a small town, so she didn't realize how much the residents here liked to gossip.

The realtor had called the town peaceful.

The cashier at the general store had called it quiet. But the note was off on that one.

Sheriff Crowe had called it a mistake, although Claire wasn't entirely sure he was speaking about the house in question. A Victorian-built, beautiful home filled with countless rooms (seven) and too many bathrooms for one person. Still— she liked it immediately.

From the floors creaking, the pipes groaning when the water was turned on, the musky scent of mothballs in the upstairs bedrooms. Though the kitchen window did happen to overlook the old cemetery, which Claire thought her realtor should have mentioned. Still, she signed and became the new proud owner of the house at the end of Bellmare Road, though not as far off the beaten path as Vane House Conservatory.

Bellmare Road didn't look long on paper, but on foot or by car, it felt like it took well over ten minutes to travel.

Claire signed the papers and was handed the keys, allowing her access to the home without transfer of funds.

So here she was in her new kitchen, overlooking a cemetery for the third day in a row, watching the stillness sweep across the morning as the fog enveloped her.

What could be considered looming was oddly comforting to Claire. Something about the honesty in the fog.

You couldn't see what was coming.

You couldn't see what was behind you.

You simply had to keep walking and trust that you would make it out.

It was something simple to hold onto.

By November seventeenth, most of the town had stopped watching her. Stopped waiting for something to happen and carried on with their own lives as normal. This was how Claire knew she was becoming one of them.

Not one questioned whether or not she understood the Hollow. Unlike the previous owner— Eve— Claire knew something was different. No one understood the Hollow.

But people stopped noticing you once you became ordinary— just like them. Claire was becoming ordinary remarkably quickly, by the looks of things. Bought coffee at the bakery at the same time every morning. She learned which aisles had the shortest lines at the specific time she would shop. She even waved at the same elderly woman every afternoon when they passed each other on Bellmare Road, both out for their daily meander through town.

She even learned not to ask about the clock in the town square and the fact that it was moving seven minutes slower than the rest of the town's clocks. Nobody liked questions about the clock.

Claire found that out by asking, and was promptly shushed for her meddling.

The Post Office was different, though; only once she stepped inside its walls did she feel off. A slight uneasy feeling and a bit of motion sickness she'd never felt before. The first time stepping up to the clerk behind the counter had her staring at them for several seconds before asking if she could apply for a change of address.

The clerk looked at her, handed her a form, and asked if she was expecting anything today.

Claire chuckled with slight embarrassment as she shook her head.

"No."

The clerk clicked their tongue before looking behind them.

"I think you are."

Claire shrugged and tried to laugh it off. "We all are, no? It's why I'm here. To forward my address and collect my mail."

She passed it off as a joke, but the clerk was quite serious-looking when they nodded and turned away, ripping the paper from her hands once Claire was done writing out her new address.

On the morning of November twenty-first, Claire went to collect her first pieces of mail. Five pieces waited for her.

A utility bill.

A grocery flyer.

Two advertisements.

A postcard from her sister that somehow had taken nine days to travel from Illinois to where she was.

And a small cream-colored envelope. She almost threw it away immediately. There was no stamp. No return address. Her name was written across the front in black ink. Not printed.

Written. Cursive. The handwriting was neat. Slightly slanted.

The C he drew was always too large when he wrote, and she knew right away who it was from. The same loop in the e at the end. She watched him sign all sorts of cards throughout their five years of marriage. Birthday cards. Christmas cards. Mortgage papers. Court documents.

The last note he ever wrote her was in her purse, on the kitchen counter. Claire stopped breathing for a moment. Her pulse rose and thrummed in her head as she looked back at the cream-colored envelope. Her name was on the front, but as she turned it over, there was only one line written across the back.

PLEASE DON'T GIVE THIS TO HER.

Her fingers began to shake as she held it in her hands because she knew exactly who the letter was from. Leonard. Her husband. Dead for the last three years.

Claire dropped down hard onto the front steps. Fingers in a death grip with the envelope as she just stared at it. The date was tomorrow. November twenty-second. Her brown eyes looked towards the road and the elderly woman on her daily walk across town, and instantly she sat up and fixed her face. Shifting from the stillness and almost ghostly white to a forced smile and a wave, she stood abruptly and walked back inside, letting the heavy door slam behind her.

Once inside, Claire scanned the emptiness of the house and called out, "Lenny?"

It sounded weak even for her. Clearing her throat and shifting her weight from foot to foot, Claire stared down at the envelope.

Does she open it?

A deep breath in, a single tear of the paper, and she looked down at the card below. A cute little heart on it for Valentine's Day in the middle of November? He died— two days before and never got her a card. Or did he? Somehow it found its way to her over three years in a new place.

Opening the card, Claire trailed her dark eyes over every inch of the paper at her fingertips. Dropping it, she shook her head as her legs gave out from under her. Sinking to the floor, she sobbed uncontrollably just like she did when she found out he was gone. But it wasn't tears of sadness anymore, perhaps relief?

"I'm sorry," it read. "But the baby is mine, and I have to do right for the baby."

He was going to break up with her on Valentine's Day. The day she got the call, he was dead— car crash. No survivors. It was him and his secretary. It's always the secretary. Crushed, with her hands down his pants. Maybe she should have cut the brake lines sooner than she did?

But the Hollow knew.

The Hollow always knows.

The Hollow always remembers, and the mail always gets delivered just when you need it.