Page 53 of Ask Your Mom If I'm Real

Tears literally spilled over my cheeks when they hustled back into the room with the Angel Tree items for my little girl.

“What?” I gasped, startled to find all the toys, clothes, and gifts displayed so beautifully. “What is all of this?”

“Your Angel Tree items.” She beamed. “Don’t overthink it, darlin’.”

The woman was the same one that I’d turned the small paper in to a month and a half ago.

She’d told me that if someone picked my child, that they’d get me everything that was purchased for her as soon as it was brought back.

It was so close to Christmas now, though, that I truly hadn’t expected it to happen.

I fingered the cashmere sweater and felt my heart literally break. “This is expensive.”

I knew because I’d walked by that boutique a hundred times in the last month. Our candy store was just around the corner from it.

“Some athlete came in and dropped five thousand dollars on the kids that were left,” she said. “He did it last year, too.”

I could do nothing but shake my head in disbelief. “This is too much.”

“This is everything we could’ve ever asked for.” She shook her head. “Like I told him, this has been a very hard year for everyone. You have no idea how many parents came in here, feeling utterly defeated, because they couldn’t give their children Christmas gifts this year. They’ve struggled so hard because of the economy, and they were barely staying afloat. Don’t feel like this is too much. The man wanted to help.”

I took the gifts into my shaking hands and said, “Thank you.”

She patted my arm. “You’re welcome, sweetheart.”

On noodle legs, I walked out to my beat-up hatchback and muscled open the back end.

Placing the beautiful things inside and closing the hatch, I walked back to the driver’s seat and drove home.

I looked in the mirror at my daughter’s sleeping face and felt the tears start.

The lady with the Angel Trees was right, though.

This year had been harder than any other one I’d ever experienced.

At least last year, I’d made enough in tips to buy my girl something.

This year…this year had been god awful.

Thank God for the mystery athlete.

He’d definitely saved Christmas.

That night, in the privacy of my own bedroom, I gave my girl her presents.

I wouldn’t pretend that they were from me and put them under the tree.

For one, we didn’t even have a tree—Dad despised Christmas. Two, since we had no Christmas tree, I hadn’t really tried to get Anleigh hyped up about anything Christmas. Three, even if I had managed to get a Christmas tree up, Dad would’ve just torn it down.

So it was better this way, giving her these things in the privacy of our little room.

“Anleigh,” I said. “Come here.”

She tiptoed toward me, my little baby that should have no idea that she needed to be quiet but did. “What, Mommy?”

Her whispers broke my heart.

My father had been so awful that my baby didn’t know how to be loud.

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