Regret13 min read
Snow, Small Town Secrets, and the Green Calendar Page
ButterPicks13 views
I woke up to kids laughing downstairs and thought I had overslept for work.
"Mom, it's snowing," I said into the phone two hours later, holding the screen to show the yard.
"Chloe, it's Saturday," my mother said, smiling into the little lit square.
"I know. But look—it's snow."
She laughed. "Don't stand out there barefoot. Come in. You'll catch a cold."
I opened the sliding door and stepped into the white. The snow lay like a blanket over the little yard—over the pots, the stone table. It made the world small and bright at once. I bent down, cupped a handful and let it fall through my fingers. A memory came up like the first breath of winter.
"Remember the calendar," my husband Jason used to say. "Green page tonight."
"You're ridiculous," I would answer, tearing off the day before bed like a ritual.
He picked the old-style Chinese almanac and told me it reminded him of home. After he died, I kept doing it. Tearing away the last page before I slept was a way to promise tomorrow. A childish promise, but mine.
On the kitchen table his photo waited in its frame. I had promised him, years ago, that I would come back, that I would not let time erase the shape of us. The snow tightened my chest with a loneliness I had learned to carry.
"Mom," I said into the phone that morning, "I'll come back to Shanghai."
"Again?" Martha's voice shook. "You sure? Your father would want you to be here. And—"
"And what?" I asked. My voice was small.
"And it's not only that. Your Aunt Johanna told me—"
"Tell me."
"Aunt Johanna said it's time," Martha said, the softness of a tired woman breaking. "Your cousin needs you. So do I. There are things you can't keep away from forever."
I booked the flight without much more argument. The weeks that followed were paperwork, packing, a month off from my small teaching job. Dalton Emerson, my psychiatrist, gave me half a month's prescription and shook his head once, then smiled at me as if to pass me a small coin of faith.
"Chloe," he said, "some nights you surrender to the dark. But somewhere in you is a part that keeps tearing the calendar page."
At the airport I watched the city shrink and felt like I traveled through a tunnel of frost. When I landed in Shanghai the sky was close and bright. Martha and Colby met me with arms and faces that had grown older while I had been away. Colby had bought a new SUV and bragged about how he had done it for my mother. He still smelled of engine oil and kindness.
"You're home," Colby said, lifting my single suitcase.
"Home." I repeated, but the word tasted strange, like a prop I had dusted off.
We returned to the small house I had left ten years before. The same wallpaper, the same frame with my father’s black-and-white photo on the cabinet. That night I placed Jason's photo on my bedside table where I could see it.
"You must rest," Martha said, pushing a cup of warm milk onto the tray.
"I will," I lied.
I slept with the window slightly ajar and dreamed of a child-size snowman with glass marbles for eyes and a red pepper for a mouth. I could still feel the way a small 9-year-old chest had felt the first time she saw snow. The next morning I took the train to the small town where I had grown up.
We called it a small city, but it felt like a village threaded with ancient alleys and memories. Colby had arranged a hotel for me. He insisted I take the nicest room he could find. The town had changed—new paint, new roads. But walking through the alleys, I kept finding the old lines.
The neighbor Aunt Johanna greeted me with a squeeze that almost cracked my ribs. "Come in come in," she said. Her face was thinner than I remembered but her eyes were the same kind eyes that had comforted me years ago when Jason and I were young and happy.
"You must be Chloe," she said, and then she said my childhood nickname in the way only older women did—like a key that opened a door I had kept locked.
Her hallway led to a small room with an old woman on the bed. "Wang Auntie," she said, turning to me. "Tell her who you are."
I sat beside the old woman's bed. "It's me," I said, the patient little voice found in your throat when you speak to elders. "Chloe."
Wang Auntie's eyes were bright, the way old eyes get when they have stored up stories. "Little Snow," she said. "You came back." She breathed slow.
A sound stopped us. The front door creaked. I looked up and almost gasped. He stood in the doorway like a figure from a borrowed photograph—Lucas Chevalier—older, grayer at the temples, but with the same tightly held smile I remembered.
"Lucas?" I whispered.
He looked like someone who had been tempered by wind. He said my name like it was time tested. "Chloe," he said.
Ten years dropped away like snow off a stone when he spoke. I remembered the days when he taught me to build a snowman on the low brick wall and how we had once tumbled laughing into the snow at the park. He had been my first friend outside the family when my father died. He was, in many small ways, my map.
"You're back for good?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe."
He smiled sadly. "If you stay, you'll have to come help pick grapes in August."
"That's a deal," I said, and the joke landed between us like a bridge.
The town brought back other memories too. The old shared well that had been a long-time meeting place. The lady who sold salted duck eggs and told us stories in the sun—Wang Auntie had been her friend. She said things about me that made me blush and laugh like a child in front of adults.
"Little Snow," she said once, "You're meant to meet a good man."
"Do I have to?" I asked.
"Not have to," she said. "But you will." Her eyes were sharp as a prayer.
My childhood was built of small rich things: comic books, the smell of porridge, the warm hand of my mother smoothing my hair. I remembered being ten: a party with a cake, gifts shoulder to shoulder with my friends. I had asked Lucas for the big book of stories. He had given it to me with such pride that I still feel the weight of that gesture. He grew into a steady person who read, who taught himself to move with music, who cared.
School had been rough sometimes. The cane and mean words started early. One boy in class, Fox Smirnov, had a way of being cruel. He had been nothing but a shadow then—a small mean-in-the-mouth boy who grew into a large angry man who looked for weakness. He found it once in Lucas and left a mark that took weeks to heal.
Later, when I was older, arguments and mistakes unwound their thread. I found myself blaming him, forgiving, resenting, calling him the excuse I used for my life elsewhere. But he died—Jason died—and the story never got sequels.
I spent days wandering the alleys, visiting Aunt Johanna, Wang Auntie, and walking past the place where the little snowman once stood. The wall had a carved name—someone's child's game, something a boy had done one winter—two characters that meant everything.
"Who carved it?" I asked.
Lucas touched the scarred bark of the tree. "You said you would marry me that day," he said, like a memory not certain of its own facts. His laugh was a small thing.
I started to think about old promises and new ones. I thought about my mother saying, "You must come back." I thought about Dalton Emerson's quiet, steady eyes telling me the medicine only buys time while I find the key.
The town had a theatre. The first time I saw live dance on stage I felt dizzy. The performance was loud and bright—colors and movement that made my chest hurt with longing. Years later a touring troupe came with their pop dances and a small new wave—kids called it "piliwu" the way other kids called it a small electric storm. Lucas and his friend Tate Morris—Tate's nickname was Big Head because of the size of his skull—learned the steps from a local dancer and practiced under the grape arbor. They were ridiculous early on, but they kept at it.
They wanted to perform at the school festival. The teacher said no. They went anyway and danced in the hallway between classrooms and in the courtyard, their moves messy and earnest. Once they did it in front of the jury of teachers. People started to clap. The music moved them. Teachers frowned, then paused, then clapped. The boys faded away with something like pride, but it was not enough. They lost the spot. The teacher said they were not serious. Life refused to bend.
The town gave me small, fierce joys. My tenth birthday with the paper cake and a group of noisy friends. Lucas gave me a whole set of The Four Great Classics he had saved money to buy. Tate gave me a doll that blinked. Evie gave me a necklace with a small glass heart that caught the sun.
"Keep it," Evie said. "If you lose things, you at least have this."
I grew with them. The seal of town life is everything repeated: the well, the old woman who sold pastries, the man who told the same stories every year, the fireflies that appeared in summer like a soft city's breath. The years braided. I learned songs and wrote them down in a little notebook. Everyone wanted to copy my handwriting. I felt my small name carried around the school like a kite.
The world was not without its dark edges. There were men who drank too much and push their women, and bullies in the school corridors who thought bravery was a muscle you beat into others. Fox Smirnov was the worst who grew worst. He had a way of making the small cruel.
One day the school yard turned into a theater of violence. Fox attacked Lucas and left him black and swollen. The marrow of my chest hurt watching it. Fox sneered when the teachers took his name. He smiled like a boy who believed he had bought life.
They called a meeting. The school corridor was filled with parents. Fox swaggered in with his normal posture—he was still cocky, smirking, the kind of man who expected the world to break its own rules for him. He laughed as if he had already won. "What will they do?" he said. "Suspend me?"
No one did much. The administrators sighed. Lucas sat with ice behind his eye and said, "It's okay."
I watched him like a mother watches her child cross a fog. I wanted to sprint and do something that would fix everything.
Years later, the chance to do more came in a way none of us expected.
Fox Smirnov's shadow grew. He kept pushing, getting bolder. He followed a new pattern: petty theft, threats, a hand too quick in an alley. Rumors rolled like thunder. We kept little lists and crossed out names with no authority to do anything.
The moment of reckoning came on the morning the school called a special assembly. There had been other things going on: a drive about safety, a guest lecture, some petty administrative talk. We crowded into the hall that morning, the whole school and many parents. The mayor's assistant, a brass figure who wanted everything neat, sat in the front row. Someone from the district police was there too.
"We will talk about respect," the principal said. "We will show a video to make a point about bullying."
The lights dimmed.
At first it was footage of the sports teams practicing—mundane, quiet, and then it shifted. Someone had recorded four events with phones over months: Fox's earlier shoves, his sneers, his gossiping in corners. Then came a clip of the actual fight where he had thrown the first punch at Lucas. The hall inhaled as the images flickered bigger.
"Here's the problem," the principal said, turning to the microphone. "We have evidence. We have witnesses. We have parents."
Fox's face pried into the light like a map folded suddenly wrong. He laughed at first. "What is this?" he said, voice sharp. "Who put this up?"
"Someone who knew enough," the principal replied. "Someone who recorded it."
The hall phone cameras were already up. A river of small screens flowed in hands like fireflies. Fox's smirk hardened into a mask. He stood up, insistent. "This is taken out of context," he said. "I was defending myself. I am not the only one—"
"Out of context?" said one of the parents near us. "He hit a child."
A mother took out her phone. "This will be online in five minutes," she whispered. People next to her clicked and recorded.
Fox's voice went higher. "You can't do this to me!" He strode toward the stage as if to take the microphone by force. Half the parents stood and started to record. Someone in the crowd murmured, "Look at him, he looks scared." The murmur spread like a lit match.
"Stop," the police officer said, standing up. He held out a hand like a gate. "Sit down. You will have your chance to speak after we examine evidence."
Fox's face shifted. For an instant something like fear trembled there. He looked at the ring of phones aimed at his face—dozens of small lenses, strangers' eyes. He could no longer command the room.
"No, I didn't—" His voice cracked. The denial came fast. He waved his hands like he could wave away the video. He stepped forward and then back. The first crumple—the face that had been so sure was suddenly old, pale, and very small.
You could hear the reporters whispering, the clicks of phones started to intensify. A woman near me hissed, "He's out of luck now."
Fox tried to run from the center of attention but someone in the crowd blocked his path. "You need to answer," the principal said. "Do you deny this?"
He shook his head and opened his mouth, "I—" Then his eyes fell and he stepped back. The posture of triumph collapsed into the posture of someone caught at the edge of a stage.
"Please," he begged, suddenly small and raw. "Please, don't make me—"
The room hummed, a machine woken. People gasped. A father's voice somewhere said, "He must be held responsible." Another parent whispered, "This is what happens when we let things slide."
Fox dropped to his knees right there, on the polished floor before the stage. The screech of phone video filled the air. The world narrowed to that one man on his knees, the flash of cameras, and the slow, patient watching of everyone else.
"Please," he said again, voice thin as glass. "Please, I'm sorry."
The pattern followed: first there was his smugness—then shock—then a frantic denial—then a collapse. The room watched the sequence like a lesson. Children around me watched faces they had feared stand suddenly unarmored, and they learned something hard.
Lucas stepped forward. He stood tall and quiet. "You hurt people," he said. His voice was a low bell. "You hurt them and picked on them. You turned mean into a habit. If you can't stop, the world will stop you."
"Don't—" Fox began, then sobbed. A few people in the hall recorded his face, his pleaded apology, his shame. Some whispered that it felt like justice. Others said it was only the beginning.
The principal explained the consequences: the record would go to the district; there would be counseling; if needed, legal steps. The police officer said he would follow up. Fox tried to extricate himself from the cameras, but that was impossible. There were photographs and clips then shared in seconds—neighbors filmed and uploaded. The faces of some children in the hall were indignant and relieved. Others laughed, some clapped. A father near me started to cry and then nodded.
Fox's pleading grew louder. "I didn't mean—"
"Save your voice," the officer said. "You will have to face your actions, with people watching. Not in secret."
The crowd reacted. There were mixed sounds—shock, whispers, clicks. A woman near the aisle said, "He has to learn."
"Look at him," another parent said. "He thought he was untouchable. Public eyes do what home eyes didn't."
Fox's collapse was not pretty. The room watched him being led away by an officer who kept his hand on his shoulder. Phones continued to record. Voices rang, some hissing, some clapping softly when the police car drove off.
The punishment did not end there. The story unfurled over the next week. There were hearings. Fox was suspended. The district arranged for counseling and for community service in the town center. The local news ran the footage. People debated on the street. Some said it was too much to make a public spectacle; others said only public shame had a chance of breaking a private pattern. That day, at least, the town had seen a bully transformed into a man with no place to hide. It was a necessary cleaving.
I walked home with Lucas after the assembly. We didn't speak for a while. He touched his face lightly where bruises had been and said, "It had to stop."
"It did, for now," I answered. "For now."
Over the days that followed, life in the town breathed differently. There were small, practical acts of repair—someone brought soup to Lucas's house, neighbors repaired a broken shutter, school counsellors set up an open group. The public punishment had a ripple that warmed slowly, like sunlight making a path through thin clouds.
Time, for me, is a patchwork. I kept tearing pages off calendars every night, clumsy and ritualistic. I went back to the old alleyways, walked under the grape arbor, watched boys practice their moves in the dusk and feel my chest loosen.
One evening I sat by the window and opened the little book I had carried since I was ten. The page with the poem that Jason loved had yellowed at the corners. I remembered how he would smooth the almanac with his hand each night and say, "Come on. Tear it. Tomorrow comes."
"Do you think he would be angry?" I asked Lucas quietly one night as we walked.
He looked at the sky. "Jason?" he asked.
"Yes."
"He liked to pick green pages," Lucas said with a small smile. "He would not want rage. He wanted you to keep going."
I laughed, short, and then the laugh moved into a sob. For a while I couldn't tell which I preferred, laughter or sobbing.
Days moved through me. I visited Aunt Johanna and Wang Auntie. I sat at the well where sound came back thin and true. I helped pick grapes in August like I had promised. Lucas and I argued sometimes like siblings and sometimes like lovers who don't say they are lovers. I taught at a small school for a month, but mostly I wandered the old town and learned to breathe again.
On the last day before I left, we walked to the cedar tree where someone had carved a name long ago. I touched the carved letters—old and softened by years of weather.
"Why did they carve this?" I asked.
Lucas smiled and said, "Children choose things to mark forever. Names, promises, snowmen. They pick what feels unbreakable."
"I used to think promises were like that," I said.
"Maybe they are," he said. "Maybe they are only a way to try."
We stood there in silence. Snow drifted faintly, a rare visit, a small closing.
"Will you come back?" Lucas asked suddenly.
"I don't know," I said honestly.
"Then come when you can," he said. "That's all."
I laid my palm on the tree. My fingers warmed the carved letters and I noticed the green square in my pocket, one page of the small calendar I had kept from Jason. I had saved it. I had not torn it. The page fluttered in the wind and then I put it back and knew I would carry that small green page with me for as long as I had breath.
The plane rose the next day. From the window the shorelines looked like small stitches. Snow had dusted the roofs one last time. I felt like a child tucking away a toy. In my bag, the book Lucas had given me lay heavy and comfortable.
I promised, silently, to tear the calendar in small, careful motions every night when I slept. I promised to return the next season, and if I could not, to send someone who would pick grapes in my place. I promised to learn how to stand when other people were mean.
On the final page that I tore away, the green page surfed the bed like a small sail. I tucked it into the frame behind Jason's photo. It was a ritual that meant: tomorrow will come, and I will be here to meet it.
That night, I wound up a tiny watch I found in a drawer—an old piece Jason once gave me—and I listened to the tick. The tiny sound sat beside the snowman's glass eyes in my memory and the carved letters on the cedar. When the watch ticked, the calendar had been torn, and the green page showed up like a promise made at the foot of a small tree: simple, stubborn, and true.
The End
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