Virginia's Last Old Christmas Eve

By Kari Kilgore

Love Lives Forever in Our Memories

Virginia lived a long, joyful life. Full of family and friends, love and laughter.
She delights in keeping old tales and traditions alive for each new generation.
But her most cherished story remains untold, with time growing short.
Gather around the holiday fire for an unforgettable journey into the past.

 

Also available in the collection Uncommon Holidays: A Different Side of the Season

 

An excerpt from Virginia's Last Old Christmas Eve

A Long-Lost Love of a Wonderful Lifetime

A woman Victoria recognized more than the wrinkled, aged one she saw in the mirror every day gazed out from the largest picture. Dark hair in perfect waves not quite to her chin, with a straight-sided cap pulled down to just over her raised left eyebrow. The creased top of the cap followed that jaunty angle away from her face. Smooth, firm skin, clear eyes. And a subtle smirk that matched her eyebrow perfectly.

More times than not lately, Virginia felt more like that proud, vaguely terrified girl in her late twenties than an old woman who'd just turned a hundred and one.

Surrounding her Women's Army Corps graduation photo were a dozen smaller ones from the same era.

And in almost all of them, one woman drew Virginia's eye every bit as she had during that long-ago time. Neither her vibrant red hair or her sea green eyes showed in those old photos.

They'd never faded in Virginia's mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jan 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201489915

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Virginia’s Last Old Christmas Eve

For those who keep loved ones alive

by telling their stories

VIRGINIA’S LAST OLD CHRISTMAS EVE

KARI KILGORE

SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

VIRGINIA’S LAST OLD CHRISTMAS EVE

Virginia Buchanan’s living room hadn’t been so wonderfully decorated for years. Or so wonderfully full of her family.

Her great-grandchildren had been tickled to no end at the chance to harvest a second Christmas tree the day before. A beautiful cedar brought down from the mountain above the house stood imperfect and proud, taking the place of the usual tree-farmed pine. Those had always looked too perfect to be natural to Virginia’s eyes.

The calendar had cooperated with a weekend only a few days after the new year, and the weather by staying clear and fine. After spending the holidays at home, everyone had filled Virginia’s heart full near to bursting by gathering for a traditional mountain Old Christmas Eve.

The sharp, fresh aroma of the cedar tree on the fifth day of January alone took her almost all the way back to the Old Christmas of her Virginia childhood nearly a century ago.

As far back as she needed to go, anyway.

Her swarm of great-great grandbabies, joined by an ever-changing gang of grand-nieces and nephews, had spent the whole glorious day learning how to decorate the new tree in the old way. There were tricks