You're Still the One by Janet Dailey, Elizabeth Bass, Cathy Lamb, Mary Carter

Allie,” Jace said softly. “I don’t want that at all.”
    When I hung up the phone I realized that Jace was still pursuing me, even though I told him I didn’t want kids. I assumed he assumed I would change my mind. The tears kept falling.
     
     
    I left my dad’s dark, decrepit trailer when I was sixteen. Almost panting with fear, I hastily packed a bag of clothes and everything I had brought with me from Montana that had been my mother’s.
    I recognized, somewhere in that firestorm of turmoil, in the hail of verbal attacks and neglect from my dad, that if I didn’t leave, I would permanently succumb to my pervasive depression and probably self-destruct.
    I had almost no will to live. I missed my loving, kind mother, and my grief had only deepened for her until it was a rock in my soul. I missed the mountains of Montana, and Flathead Lake, and our blue house. I missed feeling safe, feeling loved. My dad told me I was no one—a poor and ugly kid with odd gold eyes—and I believed it.
    There was one tiny and shiny spark, however, down deep in my heart, that hoped things would be better, that believed things could be better, and it pushed me out the door. I am sure that spark was my mother’s love. I remembered how often she had told me that she loved me, that I was a lovely person and showed my “Montana style” with flair and fashion.
    My dad worked factory-type jobs until he was fired. Most nights he came home drunk, or he would come home and start slugging it down. Until I was old enough to get a job, I did anything I could to avoid going home after school. I joined sports and arts programs and helped teachers. One of my teachers actually had a sewing machine in her room, and I spent a lot of time making my used clothing look individualistic and modern, with lace, silk, beads, even leather, like my mother taught me. I was desperate for cool clothes so people wouldn’t know the truth. Kids actually called me “Model Allie,” and thought I was a trendsetter because of my outfits. They had no idea the dire straits I lived in—my clothes kept that hidden from them.
    I would leave if he was home, pretending I was going to do homework at someone’s house. In reality, I would go hide outside somewhere, usually in the orchard, but I would also sometimes bike to a forest near our home and hike around, sit on a rock and fall apart, watch the leaves change color, or follow a squirrel. It’s where my love of nature started.
    Nature didn’t judge, it didn’t hit, it didn’t scream and intimidate, it didn’t make me feel bad about myself. Nature was always changing, comforting, soothing. There was originality and beauty in every leaf, flower, and tree. Nature was a friend who gave back without words. I lived half of my childhood in nature.
    But I couldn’t avoid my dad all the time.
    “Don’t wear that T-shirt. You look like a whore . . . You better be home when I get home, Allie . . . If I find you with a boy, I’m coming after you and I’m bringing my gun. I’m not raising no slut . . . You got all A’s on your report card? Must be an easy school . . . What’s wrong with that mud-brown hair of yours? Don’t you brush it? . . . Where did you get those clothes? Think you’re a model or something? Your mom was like that, too, always trying to dress higher than she was, always looking for better. She wanted a rich man. She never thought I was good enough. I know she cheated on me . . . then she took off, damn her . . .”
    He was constantly angry, and his scars made him look even more threatening and dangerous. He threw my mother’s purple-flowered china plates and broke them one night, though he knew I used them to cut up apples. When he wasn’t looking, I picked up the pieces and put them in a bag, hating him. I still have them. He stomped through the trailer. He swore. I don’t remember him ever hugging me or telling me he loved me.
    One night his rage, blowing at full volume, was too much. “You