Lucky

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

My five-year-old granddaughter, Trudy, held out an ornament of a puppy wearing a Santa hat. “Grandma, why do you have a Christmas ornament out? It isn’t Christmas.” She giggled as it swayed on its golden hanging thread.

I lifted her into my lap. She smelled of the outdoors and fruit punch. “Oh, you found Lucky,” I said. Trudy deposited the ornament into my hand. “Lucky and I go way back.” I rubbed the side of his face with my thumb. My mind wandered back to forty years earlier. That ornament and I had survived a horrible night a week before Christmas at the hands of my ex-husband, Carl.