I woke up the next morning to a pounding on my door.  I lay there thinking…If I ignore them, they will go away.  The pounding got more insistent.  I crawled grudgingly out of bed, and threw a pair of sweats on.  “I’m coming!” I yelled through the apartment, at the door.  I looked out the peep hole, and it was Joshua.  My heart stopped in my chest.  I unlocked the door, and slowly opened it.

“Jesse, I need to talk to you, it’s important!” He all but yelled at me.  His eyes pleading and dark circles under them.

“Josh, it’s 7am on a Saturday, what the hell are you doing?”  I opened the door a little wider.  He was standing there in a pair of pajama pants, flip flops, and a white tee shirt.  I stepped back from the door, with a worried look on my face.

“Jess, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.” He said as he made his way passed me, to stand in the entry way.  He looked like he hadn’t slept in several days, and was a total wreck.  “I really need to talk to you about this last week.  I think that we need to reevaluate everything.  I can’t get you out of my head.  I can’t get you out of my heart.  I have never felt this way about anyone.  It’s a little scary, and yet totally amazing.  I think about you all the time.  Your in my dreams, your in my thoughts, even when I’m not really thinking about you.  A song comes on, and I think of you.  I hear the rumble of a truck, and I think about you.  I go to Wal Mart and I think about you.  You are like an addiction, one that I need to either continue to hold on to…or die without you.”  He looked at me, and there were tears in his eyes.

“Josh, I can’t…you don’t understand.  It’s not really me…”  I stopped, and he saw the look on my face.

“No….she didn’t!  I told her not to interfere anymore.  I told her that she couldn’t control me anymore!  This is it.  It’s done, I won’t let her continue to do this!!”  He stormed out the door, the last thing I heard was, ” I am going to kill her this time!!”

I threw a pair of flip flops on, and grabbed my keys and purse.  I didn’t know if I could keep up with him in the truck, but I was damn well gonna try.  I reached the door of the truck and had it started and backed out, while he was just going through the security gates of the apartments.  I could hear the tires spin on pavement as the gate finally opened.  I followed suit.  He raced through the side streets, out to the highway, out toward Weatherford.  I pushed that truck as hard as I could to stay with him, he always stayed far enough ahead, that I could just see the glint of yellow in the distance.  He weaved his way in and out of traffic.  He took the off ramp at a high rate of speed, and blew right through the stop sign, and was sideswiped by a Ford Expedition.  It all happened in slow motion.  One minute he was there, the next he wasn’t.  I slowed down, and threw the truck in park, grabbed my cell phone, and called 9-1-1.  I got to the porche, and he wasn’t there.  I looked around…

I could hear the voices…I could hear the sirens…I could hear my heart.  I saw him laying there on the ground.  His body twisted up in angles, it really shouldn’t twist.  Everything seemed to stop.

I woke up in a hospital room.  Bright lights, and voices.  Shelly was there, her hand in mine.

“Nasty spill you took there, paramedics said you just passed out.  You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”  She looked at me with that look, the one I knew all to well.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?”

“Yes, hun, he is.  He was DOA.  They couldn’t do anything to help him.  He didn’t have his seatbelt on, apparently and went through the passenger side window.”

I started to cry.  I continued to cry for the next several days, off and on.  The funeral came and went, I didn’t go.

About a month after the accident, I was feeling kinda nauseous, I thought it was from all the meds I had been on, and was slowly taking myself off of.  This went on for a few days.  I finally decided to go into the doctor.  He took some blood, ran some tests.  Came back in, and told me I was pregnant.

I woke up a few minutes later, to a cold compress on my head.

“Are you sure?” I asked, rather shakily.

“Yes ma’am.  Do you remember the last time you had your cycle?”

“Yeah, it was about a month and a half…oh hell…I am…Oh my God!  I am having Josh’s baby.”  I reflexively put my hand on my stomach.  I left the doctor’s office, in a rather shaken up state.

*                              *                                 *

A week after my visit to the doctor, I got an email from the unknown person.  It simply said:

It’s your fault he is dead.  Now you don’t have to worry about him messing with your head anymore.  It’s probably for the best.  Just know that I will hate you for as long as we are both on this Earth, for what you have done to me.

I replied with this:

Well, you can hate me, for as long as you like.  I will always have something to remind me of Josh.  I am having his child, and it isn’t my fault that he is dead.  It’s yours.  Your the one he was coming for.  Your the one that caused this.  If you had just kept your nose out of his life, he would still be alive today, and he would be here to help care for this life coming into the world, within the next 8 months or so.  You can rot in hell you lowsy Bitch!

I sent it, with tears in my eyes.

It wasn’t long after, that I got a knock on my door.  I looked through the peep hole, and my breath caught.  I opened the door slowly, wondering…what could have brought her here?

(More to come)