My Darling Girl by Jennifer McMahon EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Jennifer McMahon
- Language: English
- Genre: Women’s Psychological Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
THE ANGEL WAS IN a thousand tiny shards.
It had slipped from my hand and shattered before I even realized what had
happened.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
I was precariously balanced at the very top of the stepladder in the corner of
the living room, where I’d been trying to hang it up. The clear glass angel
hovered there in the shadows every year at Christmastime, watching over us as
we trimmed the tree, sipped eggnog, sat through sappy Christmas movies, then
oohed and squealed as presents were opened on Christmas Day; a strange,
emotionless observer, a passive spy.
The truth was, I kind of hated the angel. I thought she was ugly (her eyes
were bulbous, insect-like) and more than a little bit creepy.
But I hadn’t meant to smash her.
“Ali? Hon? You okay?” Mark called from upstairs.
“Fine,” I chirped back, climbing down from the ladder and picking up the
largest surviving piece: the angel’s head. Her large pupilless eyes stared at me
accusingly: How could you do this to me?
Christmas music played from the holiday classics music channel on the
television—at the moment, it was a saccharine-sweet version of “Let It Snow!
Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Mark insisted on the music, saying it helped set the
mood.
He wanted everything to be perfect when the girls got home from school: the
boxes of ornaments out, the tree ready to decorate, the house smelling of
gingerbread cookies, Christmas music playing. He’d even put a festive red
Christmas ribbon on the poor dog.
This was the day Mark most looked forward to all year—Decorating Day. He
even took December rst o from work for it, as if it were an actual holiday. I
bucked up and tried not to spoil it for him. Really, I did.
“Tradition,” Mark said again and again, telling me how important it was for
the girls, that we were creating memories that would last their lifetimes,
traditions that would be passed down to their children and their children’s
children.
Moxie, our six-year-old black Lab, lay on her bed in the corner of the living
room looking somewhat dejected in her big red bow. She had lifted her head at
the sound of the angel crashing to the oor, then, seeing all was well, gave a sigh
and settled back down.
“Let It Snow!” turned into “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and I couldn’t help
myself—I snatched up the remote and turned o the TV.
It was only the rst of December. How was I possibly going to live through
twenty-four more days of enforced jolliness without cracking? Twenty-four days
of being called a grinch, of trying not to buckle under the spoken and unspoken
pressure to not ruin Christmas for the girls by letting the cheerful façade slip.
That pressure wasn’t just from my husband. My best friend, Penny, who lived
right next door, was almost as bad. Though she and her wife, Louise, called
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