She’s cooking. She isn’t supposed to be cooking. Not since she nearly sliced her finger off last June. The doctor strictly forbade it. Yet there she is…cooking away as if nothing had happened. As if this were a normal Monday morning. I shake my head. There’s nothing normal about our lives anymore, Abigail. When will you realize that?

I really should stop her. That knife is coming far to close to her fingers. She may cut herself again. It’s really painful for me to watch her do this. She used to cut tomatoes with such grace, but now….all thanks to that bastard-

I stop that train of thought before it gets out of control. It’s hard enough trying to keep it together with her standing in front of me like that without having him in my head.

Bastard got what he deserved! Thirty years in a maximum security prison will teach him to attack out of hurt pride!

I grin to myself. Abby’s father booked his ass in no time flat, and her mom made sure he got the worse possible sentence. They are quite the pair…the Chief of Police and the city’s best attorney. And what did they produce? A chef. Abigail. My Abby. My dear Abby.

“Sit down, John.”

I start at the sound of her voice.

She turns to me, knife held in her left hand, eyes impassive. Her entire face is numb. No emotion. I can’t stand to look at her so broken. Where was that beautiful smile that captured me so when I first met her? Standing there at the front door of my parent’s house, a freshly baked pie in her hands, and that radiant smile on her face. All I could think at that moment was how beautiful she looked when she smiled…also, why was there was such a young woman in my mother’s baking club? A young woman with the most beautiful smile in the world.

Abigail hasn’t smiled for six months. Not since then…

“Sit down,” she says again. Turning back to the counter, she continues, “Breakfast will be done in a minute.” She sets the knife down and picks up an egg. She taps it on the edge of a heating frying pan, cracks it, and lets the yoke splash onto the black, non-stick lining. Two more eggs splash into the pain and are quickly scrambled into one large yellow mess. Satisfied, she turns back to her tomatoes with a look of intense concentration. The red fruit keeps slipping from her grasp. Irritably, she tries to steady it with her right hand.