Three months after my divorce, I promised my five-year-old daughter that Christmas would still feel magical. I said it with a confidence I didn’t completely have, hoping the words alone would make it true. But one evening, pulling into the driveway, the world around me fell unnervingly still. The lights I’d hung with aching fingers and stubborn determination were gone—ripped from the roof, torn from the porch, snapped from the yard. Even Ella’s tiny salt-dough ornament lay shattered in the cold. All that remained was a severed extension cord and a hollow thud in my chest.
As I stared at the wreckage, angry heat rose through me. We were new here—new town, new routines, new life built out of the leftover pieces of the old one. I needed Christmas to shine, not for me but for Ella, who believed sparkle was a requirement, not decoration. Now that promise lay scattered across the yard like debris. Then I saw something strange: a wooden angel placed neatly on the top step, and muddy bootprints leading straight into my neighbor Marlene’s driveway.
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