Depending on the quality of one's company (or the lack thereof), Christmas can be the most wonderful and heartwarming day — or the absolute worst.

And of course, a nice covering of snow never hurts.

Clothilde and Robert never experienced a white Christmas in their thirty years as ghosts. As long as they had each other, nobody complained.

When the latest ghost arrives, buried the day before Christmas, Robert and Clothilde's decades-old traditions for the holiday are interrupted. Their new guest, impeccably polite though he may be, appears to have no desire to address his unfinished business.

Why does he linger if none of it matters to him?

Severed Ties is also available in the collection Unfinished Business, Volume 2.