Ghosts of Christmas Past

by Laura Briggs

  This was her opportunity to seize her dreams. And maybe undo the decisions from the past that still haunted her.

  Tucking the card in her pocket, she rose and made her way through the crowds to the door, the bus parked in the cold rear parking lot, its silent metal form waiting for her, a home that she could gladly part with now. Behind it, the lights twinkled around Jake’s homey trailer windows, like multicolored stars dazzling her eyes.

  ****

  A short twenty-four hours later, Libby packed her things, stuffing her clothes in a duffel bag, her papers and photos in an old cardboard box where she stored odds and ends from her years on the road.

  She had no desire to come back to this cramped room on the bus for anything. If there was a chance, she wanted it; she was taking it now. Once she was on the road in her rental car, she would be free of all those unhappy nights of performing for discontented crowds and drowning her sorrows afterwards with pints of scotch and bourbon.

  She shoved a pair of high-heeled shoes and a silk scarf into the bag and zipped it shut. On the floor beside the bed was the Christmas present for Nathaniel. She pictured him opening it as she watched, his dark eyes lighting up at the sight of the ornate harmonica within.

  He would have freckles like her brother, she decided. The lanky form of future tallness she had seen in her father’s pre-teen photographs.

  What would they say? Mark and Marcia Hammond had never heard from her. Their letter had gone unanswered, no birthday or Christmas cards mailed by her for Nathaniel’s future. For all she knew, they had decided not to tell him he was adopted, figuring his birth mother had no interest in ever making contact with her son.

  She drew their letter from its place under her pillow, turning the envelope to the open seal. She had read it far too many times while imagining what her answer might have been. What kind of letter could she have written to them about the child they shared?

  Libby’s fingers folded the letter, sticking it into the topmost pocket of the bag for easy reach, as if it were proof positive that she was Nathaniel’s mother. Shouldering her bag, she lifted the box and Christmas present and carried them towards the bus door.

  The rental car was parked just outside in a vacant spot for employees. She heard Bob whistle as he stared at it through the bus window from his seat at the narrow little table.

  “Whose car?” he asked.

  “I thought it was yours,” said Ted. “Sneaking away to see your wife and kid without giving the rest of us a ride.”

  “Libby, that yours?” asked Bob. “You said you were renting one, right?”

  “Yup,” she answered, brushing past them.

  “Where’re you headed for the holidays?” asked Ted. “You going home?” This was said in a cautious tone, given Libby’s silence on her parents for the last few years.

  “Nope,” she answered. That was the end of the information she shared with them as she exited the bus.

  Shoving the luggage into the back seat, she slammed the passenger door. Taking one last glance at the bus, she imagined the reaction of the band members when they received word after the holidays that she was in Nashville, awaiting an audition.

  They would expect to be invited, of course. They would be disappointed when they realized the producers had no interest in the band.

  A surge of guilt passed through her as she climbed in the driver’s seat, prepared to put all of this out of her mind. The important destination was south of here. The first glimpse of her son and the possibility of a future for them greater than anything she had hoped for in the past.

  “Hey, Libby.” Jake trotted from the direction of the camper. “Are you leaving already?”

  “I am,” she answered, staring at him as he stood with his thumbs tucked in his jeans pocket, an old flannel shirt thrown on above the denim.

  The way he was dressed told her he had hurried out to catch her before she left. Her fingers trembled at this thought as she grasped the car door more firmly.

  “Are you sure you...” he hesitated. “Why don’t you spend Christmas with us, Libby? Stay here with me and Will. I don’t want you spending the holidays alone.”

  “I won’t be spending them alone, Jake. I’m just...taking some time for me. We’ll talk after Christmas.” She didn’t want to prolong this conversation, the sense of pain growing as she stared at his furrowed brow, the dark eyes etched with concern.

  He shifted his heavy boots out of the slush puddle of the parking lot. “Will we, Libby?” He raised his gaze to meet hers. “I saw the guy with you in the club the other night. Since then, you haven’t been the same. Something’s different.”

  His probing gaze annoyed her as she imagined what he was suggesting. Did he think she was planning a weekend rendezvous? Or did he suspect that this was something other than the sleazy offers made by talent agents in the past?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answered, averting her eyes. “I’m fine. I just have some things that I need to work through.” Her voice trembled with this lie, the sense that God was disappointed in her failure at this moment. She was further away from Him than she’d ever been, standing before an honorable man and telling him that nothing had changed in her life.

  Jake stepped closer. “I wish you would talk to me,” he said. “Whatever it is that’s holding onto you is only holding you back. Just tell me what it is, and I’ll help you.” His hand touched her shoulder, traveling close to her face. As he brushed against her hair, she felt a warmth growing in her face, the tremor in her hands impossible to hide any longer.

  This had to stop. She was moving on with her life, wasn’t she? And Jake—he and Will would be fine on their own again. Maybe he would even begin that music ministry idea he told her about in the past.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t need your help.” Gently, she moved his hand aside. “Have a good Christmas, Jake. You and Will.” She pulled the car door to close it.

  His hand caught it. “Tell me the truth, Libby,” he said. “Please.”

  She shook her head. “Everything is always about those moments, isn’t it? Look, just because I talked to your son, because I liked your song, it doesn’t mean anything more. Understand?” She peered into his eyes. “Is this what you want to bring into your son’s life, Jake? Someone who—” She cut off, unwilling to define herself in those terms. To put her sins and failures into concrete words.

  Jake’s shoulders slumped, as if in defeat. “Is that all you think I care about?” he asked. “You never gave me that kind of encouragement. So why don’t you think it’s possible I care about your soul?”

  Letting go of the door, he turned towards the camping trailer again. In his heavy stride and muscular shoulders, she detected signs of anger. Through the trailer window, she caught a glimpse of Will’s pale face watching as he crouched on the sofa.

  Her hand slammed the door of the car. Turning the keys in the ignition, she turned her face forward as she drew a deep breath, expanding her lungs deeper with each motion as she emptied her mind of every thought about Jake, her band, and her life with them on the road.

  Nothing mattered now but making her dreams come true.

  Shifting the car into gear, she avoided looking in the mirrors, afraid to catch a glimpse of Will’s hopeful face watching her from the other side of the glass. The little boy who collected mementos of her career and displayed them alongside his mother’s forgotten glories. Even without the courage to look, she knew he would be watching her until Jake pulled him away from the window. He would probably think about her the rest of the day as he helped decorate their camping trailer for Christmas morning.

  Will would forget about her soon. All those clippings would get pulled down from the walls and her photo would just be a random autograph to show off to his friends. In a matter of months, the rest of the band would forget about her, too. Even Jake. He only imagined he cared about her. To him, she was just one of the many lonely souls on the road in need of someone to counsel
them.

  Just as she wouldn’t matter to her old band mates, they would cease to be a subject of guilty thoughts in her mind once she had the future she always wanted. Her fingers switched on the radio, drowning out the unhappiness in her mind with the strains of a lonely country ballad as she drove away.

  16

  “I didn’t want to hurt Jake.” Libby buried her face in her hands. “It isn’t about him. It isn’t about anyone else. It’s just—”

  “About you.” Patty Craye was beside her again. The car and the sound of the country ballad had vanished, and Libby’s shivering form again stood in the emptiness of the auditorium.

  “All I wanted was a chance.” Despite the tears on her face, Libby raised it in appeal to the imaginary figure in the darkness. “Everything I worked for was for the sake of having something of my own. Something for us...” She choked back these words, unwilling to admit to even her hallucination what was in the back of her mind.

  “You think I don’t know what’s in your thoughts?” the woman asked, with a laugh as she added, “Where do you think we are, Libby? We’re here surrounded by your memories. Your hopes, your dreams, your past—even your son.”

  “You think it was a mistake to give him up,” said Libby, bitterly. “You think I didn’t care about him, that it was all about my career—”

  “That’s you talking, not me,” said Patty. “Why do you assume I’m judging you for making that decision? Unless…”—she leaned closer—”you’re judging yourself. Because in your heart, you know you can’t go back to that moment.”

  Was that true? Why should she believe a hallucination that came to her in one of her weakest moments, taunting her with the past? She should be forcing herself to wake up at this moment, to struggle through the cold and hold on until help came.

  If help was ever coming.

  If there was a hope for her future in this ironic jeopardy between her old life and her new one.

  Libby sank onto one of the auditorium seats, unwilling to speak as thoughts of the past darted through her mind like rats disappearing into holes. The memory of her last moment with her son, the Christmas carols drifting from the hospital hallway.

  “But maybe I can go back,” she said, hardly trusting her voice above its low tones. “Now that I have the capability to make his life better. To offer him something more.”

  “You think that’s all that matters?” asked Patty. “No one says your decision was a mistake, Libby. But you can’t undo it the way you think you can. The choice is made, and you have to accept it.”

  “But he’s my son,” Libby repeated.

  Patty shook her head.”He’s more than that. He’s part of someone else’s life now. And the part you play will be different.”

  Without listening, Libby rose and moved away, aware that the figure was following her in the darkness as she swept past the front row of seats.

  “So what good does it do me to be sorry for the past?” Libby shot back. “About Jake, the band, anything, since it’s all set in stone?” She glanced over her shoulder with a look of contempt, directed at her heroine in the pink and silver gown.

  “The choices are set in stone, Libby, but the outcome is where you can make a difference. And I mean that about all of them. Not just the choices about Jake and your band.”

  Libby pressed her hand to her forehead, feeling a pounding sensation there. Was the throbbing in her temples a sign that this vision was slipping away? In a moment, she would be in the wrecked car again, feeling the cold bite through the wound in her forehead.

  “What’s so wrong in wanting Nathaniel back?” she asked. “Isn’t that the best way to make up for all those decisions behind his birth?”

  Patty stared at her with an inscrutable expression. “Is this really about your son?”

  For a moment, Libby didn’t answer. Her arms slipped to her sides, her body frozen as she stood there in silence. Wishing that Patty Craye would vanish for good and leave her alone.

  The question Patty asked was painful, but she was wrong. Libby only wanted the best for Nathaniel. After what she had been through for the opportunity—giving up so much and cutting painful ties—she deserved this moment. She deserved a chance to make up for all the mistakes behind her.

  “Your faith has been gone a long time. What compass are you using to make your decisions?” Patty’s voice was gentle. “You have nothing left but ambition. That’s not going to get you everywhere you want in life, Libby. But it will get you a lot of loneliness and bitter nights when you try for something and fail.”

  As if Libby didn’t know about bitter nights already. The nights of crying alone in her bed, the empty bottle on the floor below. The cards and letters she tossed rather than making contact with her family and letting them see what she had become—the pain-filled, unhappy life they feared would follow when she ran away to prove them wrong.

  Patty moved to the edge of the stage, theatrical lights flickering above like pale white stars. The metallic threads in her dress shimmered in response, recalling the image of her album cover to Libby’s mind.

  “It’s hard not to be seduced by them,” said the singer. “I wanted it when I was a little girl, just like you. Dreaming of being a singer when I was in a pinafore and boots, with nothing more than a song sung in a parlor for entertaining folks.” Her fingers touched the stage edge, running along the shielded bulbs aglow for performance.

  “Even if you get your wish, it’s not the magic people think it is,” said Patty. “It’s the same hours on the road, the same little hint of dissatisfaction in the crowd that bothered you before. It’s the knowledge that you’re choosing to miss another part of your life to be here.”

  “Then why do it? If fame isn’t worth all this, then why is anyone here?” There was a touch of mockery in her voice as she spread her hands, a broad gesture that encompassed the grand stage and the rows of seats below.

  “Worth it?” Patty repeated. “Do you not understand what I’m saying? That the sacrifice doesn’t just create the life. Sometimes the life is the sacrifice. If you choose it, you have to choose how much of it you want to live and how much of it you only want to dream.”

  “You make it sound like God never wants anyone to achieve great success. He must be disappointed how hard I tried.” Libby braced her hands against the side of the stage, her downward gaze an excuse to hide the changing tide of emotion in her features. “He must think I’ve wasted everything in my life.”

  To her surprise, she felt the touch of Patty’s hand, taking her fingers and drawing it away from the stage into her grip. “He’s only sorry you wasted some of the good things He gave you. God wasn’t the obstacle in your path, Libby. You were. When you chased your dream, you chased a future on a path so narrow there was no room for anybody to come with you, even Him.”

  “Then if I take this contract in Nashville, He’ll be happy for me? I’ll have His blessing and all that?” She tried to suppress the bitterness in her voice, but it was there all the same. Imagining God pulling away her last opportunity as punishment for all her mistakes. Maybe through the accident of a fir tree and a highway roadside in the snow.

  “That depends on what you do with it,” Patty said. “Whether you waste that opportunity or use it to do something good. Something worthwhile besides sell your talent to sing songs you don’t care about.”

  In the darkness, Libby met Patty’s gaze again, clinging to the hand holding her own as if it would stop the trembling in her legs, the fear in her mind. Her imagination molded Patty as a veil between herself and God, the last thread holding her back from facing Him with all her pain.

  “Right now, what do you think you would do with it?” whispered Patty.

  Libby didn’t answer, unable to find the words at this moment.

  From the auditorium, the roar of voices interrupted her thoughts. The rush of an audience cheering wildly, a crowd of strangers filling the seats with applauding hands and eager faces.

  Libby’s gaz
e swerved from them to Patty again, where her eyes met a serene smile, a glint of something secretive beneath it.

  “Let’s find out.” Patty answered the question for her, glancing up to the stage above them. The microphone was front and center again, a figure standing before it, onstage in the glow of the magnificent lights.

  There, before the adoring audience, stood Libby Taylor. Onstage at the Ryman Auditorium, the way she had dreamed of standing since she was a little girl listening to the Saturday night performances on the radio. Now she was watching herself, a glamorous appearance in a dress that rivaled the style of Patty Craye in her own career, creating a slender, tall figure before the audience’s gaze.

  She was in a floor-length gown of velvet fitted and falling to the floor in an elegant train, the glitter of rhinestones like diamonds around her hem and neckline. Her hair flowed in a long mane, the dark sheen of ebony in the stage’s glow. A smile of pleasure graced her mouth as she faced the crowd cheering enthusiastically below. From somewhere behind her, the opening strains of a song, the sound of a piano and electric guitar striking up a familiar tune.

  Onstage, the dream-Libby’s smile grew sultry, her fingers touching the mic as she drew closer. A pair of brilliant red lips parted to release a voice aching with sadness, the longing tones channeling the legendary singer whose music she admired so deeply.

  “Sweet dreams, keep haunting me,” she sang. “Let me be free of all these cares...”

  17

  “If someday, I’m finally free... there won’t be no more dreams for me.” The dream-Libby crooned this final chorus tenderly, the words dying away in a soft ache. Once again, her eyes drifted closed as they did before listeners in countless bars and clubs.

  Only this time, the response was the appreciation of true fans. A few members of the audience rose in a standing ovation, while others whistled. There was no trace of heckles or obscenities amidst the sounds.