Page 12 of This Christmas

She was selfishly thankful that her daughter took almost a hundred percent after her. As she ran her eyes over her, she couldn’t pick out one trait of Ted’s in her features.

How had something so perfect come out of something so… terrible?

The night that Charlotte was conceived had been filled with shouting. Ted had come home from work angry, angrier than she’d ever seen him. He’d been looking for any reason to blow up at her and he’d found plenty.

She hadn’t cooked the right meal that night and had cooked it too early, so that it was cold. Then, it had been too spicy and his drink had too many ice cubes in it. Yes, that really was one reason he’d yelled at her.

Looking back on her life, she wondered how she’d ever believed she’d eventually get good enough that one day he wouldn’t complain about her.

She would never forget the way Ted’s eyes had scanned the room before they had gone black with rage.

She’d said something, something small, something that shouldn’t have mattered, and he’d snapped. The slap had come first. Then the shove. Then… after he’d started using his fist and his hands had wrapped around her throat, everything else blurred.

She remembered the sting of the tile against her cheek, the taste of iron in her mouth, the helpless sound she’d made as he’d ripped her clothes from her body, and, when it was over... the shame that she’d felt.

He’d never once thought about it again. Never talked about it or apologized. He’d stopped buying her flowers after the first half a dozen times he’d touched her like that.

That was another thing that she blamed herself for. She’d known that if she pressed him about the abuse, he’d grow agitated.

“What do you want from me? I said I was sorry.”

That was his standard statement. It didn’t matter to him that it wasn’t true.

But no matter how she tried to broach the subject, that too always ended up in a fight. So she’d stopped trying and he’d stopped apologizing and giving her flowers afterwards.

When she’d learned that she was pregnant, she’d spent months wondering if she could ever love a child that came from that kind of violence. That came from him.

But then Charlotte had come into the world, tiny, pink, and furious, and somehow, at that moment, everything had turned into joy. Into light. Into the reason Ally had found the strength to walk away.

She was too restless to sleep, so she rolled out of bed without waking her daughter and headed downstairs. She opened up her secondhand laptop and continued applying for local jobs.

The thought of leaving Charlotte alone every day at a daycare scared her. She was scheduled to start school after the winter break. But if Ally got a job before then, she’d have to attend a local daycare Faye had told her about. She was supposed to meet the small group tomorrow at the Brew-Ha-Ha for story time.

Nate and Faye both convinced her that, even if she didn’t get a job right away, it would be good to have Charlotte start going to the group to make friends.

The only time she’d spent away from her daughter was when she’d worked in Portland and had left her in the very capable hands of her mother. Or when Charlotte had been on court-ordered visits with Ted.

By the time Charlotte came down the stairs an hour later, happy and wide awake, she had applied for three jobs in town. Two were at local restaurants. The other one, which she was really excited for, was at the coast guard training facility just outside of town.

They were looking for an office assistant. Someone who could file, type, print, and organize. She could do all those things. Had done them before in a couple of jobs that she’d had in school.

Sure, they were asking for a degree, but she only had a few more classes to finish before she got her associates. She wouldn’t let herself be discouraged. She filled out the application, figuring it couldn’t hurt.

Since it was gray outside, she made sandwiches for her and Charlotte for lunch, and they sat at the table playing a board game to pass the time.

When Charlotte asked for the tenth time if they could head to the top of the lighthouse, she gave in. It took her daughter five minutes to race her to the top. They stood up there for almost an hour while Charlotte snapped photos of the town, the ocean, and the light on her new camera.

Ally loved watching the world go by below them. She did note that the gray car that had followed her from Portland was no longer parked on the edge of the property.

At least there was that small benefit of inviting him to dinner.

She wasn’t worried about Joe. He had a job to do. She couldn’t blame him, not really. She knew that he’d been hired by Ted, probably to find dirt on her.

It was funny because there was none. She had never done anything bad her entire life, nothing that could be described as dirt. The worst thing she’d ever done in her twenty-eight years was marry Ted.

As five o’clock approached, she sat Charlotte in front of the television to watch cartoons while she made her way into the kitchen.

Cooking had always calmed her. Within minutes, the kitchen was filled with the familiar rhythm of chopping, searing, and sizzling. The sound of butter and garlic in the skillet almost drowned out the restless hum in her chest.