Northwest Girl
By Tvdfanpam
Chapter 19
Endings and Beginnings
Ray stopped pacing in his living room and turned to the front door. Marissa was standing there knocking on it. She wiped a tear out of her eye as she waited for Ray to answer the door. This was the first time she had seen him up close since they broke up. She hated to tell him the bad news!
"Marissa, what are you doing here?" Ray asked, very annoyed to see his ex-girlfriend at his new house. Still manners dictated he let her in. He stood to the side as he held the door open for her to enter his house. She looked around in interest.
"Nice house Ray. It suits you." She said softly as she looked everywhere but at him. "I am so sorry Ray!" She wailed then launched herself at him. He caught her in his arms. "I think Mrs. Wallace overheard me talking to the pastor last week about us. I have been seeing him for counselling since we broke up."
He led the distraught woman over to the sofa and they sat down. "Explain why you were airing our business to the pastor? We broke up amicably and I thought you were fine. You told me you were fine when you left my old house for the last time."
"I lied. I was pregnant with your baby, but I lost it the week after we broke up. The doctor told me that there was an abnormality with the pregnancy and that was nature's way of taking care of things. I am so sorry! I wanted a baby so badly that I was willing to do anything to get one. Worse than that, I cannot have any more children; that was my one chance. I must have surgery to have my uterus removed next month. I found out I have cervical cancer when I miscarried and will have to take radiation treatment after the surgery. That will remove my chances to have another child."
"I'm deeply sorry to hear that. I will be happy to go with you to the hospital when you have your surgery. You should not have lied to me about the baby. Surely, you weren't going to hide it!" Ray just realized he too had lost a child and he teared up. "That was my child too! You should have informed me right away!" Marissa nodded in agreement.
"I know, I was going to come to you, but I was so ashamed, lying to you then losing the baby then the cancer. I felt like I got what I deserved!" She fumbled in her purse and found a Kleenex and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
"No one deserves what you went through." Ray hugged Marissa close and ran his hand down her back to soothe them both. She cried against his shirt. "What did Mrs. Wallace say to you? Is she trying to blackmail you?"
"She wanted to know if I knew who won the lottery. She said if I told her who won, she would not spread it around that I tried to trick you. She told me I got what I deserved. I did not tell her Ray, I swear. I do not know how she knew Ana won. I am fearful she will tell people that I tried to trick you though, I am afraid I could lose my job. Please forgive me. I am so sorry. I am so tired of being alone, of dying alone in my old age. Desperate times called for desperate measures. With the counselling I received, I realized I was wrong. The only good thing to come out of this is I found out about the cancer before it was too advanced for treatments."
"I will handle Hilda Wallace. Thank you for telling me. I am sorry about the baby and about your cancer. I hope you will be able to live to an old age. You are a great person who made a lousy choice. I will forgive you if you promise to never do anything like this again. Honesty is always the best policy." He was so upset but felt like he needed to treat Marissa kindly. She had been through a lot!
Marissa hugged Ray and promised him that she would never try to deceive someone again. No chance of that! She felt lucky to be alive now and that God had given her a second chance to redeem herself. She vowed to find a charity to donate to in penance.
Ray sat down on his sofa after Marissa left and tried to stop the tears flowing down his face. He had lost a child! Life was not fair sometimes! He could hear his phone ringing and picked it up to answer it. "Hello?"
"Daddy?" Ana asked. Ray cleared his throat. "Are you okay? I had an overwhelming feeling to call you."
"Well,,,,I just got some bad news." Ray cleared his throat again and sat back down on the sofa. "Marissa left here, and she told me that she had lost our child." He paused, not able to speak for the lump in his throat.
"I am so sorry. Why don't you come out to Bainbridge Island and stay with us for a few days? You and Christian can take the boat out and you can fish." Ana was trying to get Christian's attention to come over so he could hear the conversation. She had tears in her eyes which made Christian run to her side in panic. "You don't need to be alone right now. I'll call Elliott and he will come and get you."
"He doesn't need to come get me. I can make it there on my own. Fishing sounds good. Are you sure I won't be in your way?" Ray asked. He felt so sad, it was the last thing he would have thought to have happened. He needed to see his daughter and his grandbaby on the way.
They made plans to pick Ray up from the ferry the next day. Ray left his house and headed to the newspaper office. He was not going to let some old nosy busybody interfere in his private life. He thought of the pastor of the church and decided to go see him first. He needed to know that someone was eavesdropping on his counselling sessions.
Christian woke up in a cold sweat. He touched Ana who was sleeping beside him in their bedroom of their Bainbridge Island house. He eased out of bed quietly and went to the sliding door that led to the deck and slipped outside and sat down on the chair outside. He ran his hands through his hair as he remembered the dream. He was talking to his birth mother who looked a little bit like Ana only she was only about 18 years old in the dream. She was beautiful and looked healthy. She hugged him and told him that he was going to have a son! He was secretly hoping that their first child was a boy but would be happy with either. She told him that he had made better choices in his life than she had, and she was very proud of him. She said that she was introduced to drugs at a college party; yes, she had gone to college before her life turned to shit! It was a highly addictive drug and she had never tried drugs before that and quickly became an addict. She lost her scholarship and dropped out of college and followed her deadbeat boyfriend to another state where he left her stranded. She was a drug addict and pregnant and turned to prostitution to get by. She did not mean to kill herself! She begged Christian's forgiveness and wished him well in his life.
"What are you doing out here Christian?" Ana asked softly as she walked over to where Christian was sitting. She shivered in the cold and he grabbed her and pulled her to him to keep her warm. She turned to him and wiped his tears off his face. "Are you okay? Bad dream?"
"I think we are a pair!" He kissed her hair and hugged her close. "I had a dream about my birth mom. She told me she was proud of me and that we are going to have a boy!" Ana smiled into his chest. She knew he wanted a boy first but was trying to hide it from her.
"I think we shouldn't eat Mexican food late at night then go to bed on it!" Ana took his hand and led him back into their room and shut the door and locked it. She got in bed beside Christian and rolled on her side. "Are you sorry that you found out who your birth mother was?"
"No, I am glad I could find out about her. She was a girl who got in over her head and did not know how to get out of that situation. I think we all need to be slow to judge someone. I held so much anger in my heart towards her for abandoning me, but I think that dream was my way of letting it go. I am so excited to welcome our son in a few months!" She smiled at him in the dark.
"Or daughter!" She laughed.
The End
A/N : Thank you to everyone who read this story, favored it and followed it. I loved reading all the reviews! Sorry to end the story here. I felt like it was a good place to stop.