ElizabethMr Stevens would be bringing Chase over about eight. I left the day care at six thirty and drove straight home. I needeed to clean up a bit before he saw what a terrible house keeper I was.
Lucky was coming to my house, the house we had shared unofficially before he disappeared. The house that would have been our house once we were married, and we would have been married soon after we found out I was pregnant.
Lucky was coming home. No, not Lucky. Not coming home. Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens was bringing his son to stay the night at my house. With me.
I had to keep reminding myself to stay calm and breathe. If I forgot, even for a second, I knew I would go out of my mind. He was so close, and yet so far. Sonny told me I had to be careful, I didn't want to freak out everytime I saw him. I needed to be calm, I needed to relax and let him come to me on his own terms.
Dear God it was hard, so hard, to be patient. I missed Lucky so much, and he was finally home, but he didn't remember me. And I still didn't know what had happened to him, where he had been for three and a half years. And just how did he get a son that was so close to Loren's age? Maybe he had met someone else, and he ran off with her, because she was pregnant. Maybe she told him she was pregnant before I had the chance. So he chose her, and made it look like something awful had happened to him.
He'd left me a note saying he'd gone to the store. We needed milk and he wanted to buy me more cold pills. He said he loved me and he'd be home soon. But he never came home. Detective Taggert came by the house two days later to say they found Lucky's car, abandoned at the side of the freeway about 300 miles away. There was no sign of Lucky anywhere.
Until now. Mr. Stevens was my Lucky. I knew it as sure as I knew my own name. He was my Lucky and he had found his way back to me. He was coming home to me and our daughter.
Eight o'clock came and went without a word from Lucky--Mr. Stevens. I had to remind myself to call him that. Stevens. What was his first name? I didn't even know his first name!
Loren and I sat on the front porch for a long time. I held her in my lap and she played with my hair. How wonderful it would be if we were only waiting for Lucky to come home from work.
I looked at my watch to see it was after nine. Something pulled inside me and I wanted to throw myself down on the floor and cry. He wasn't coming. He had changed his mind, and he wasn't coming. He was probably halfway to Cleveland by now. I wouldn't blame him if he had hopped in his car and started driving, anywhere, just as far away from Port Charles as he could get.
I took Loren inside and walked around with her for a long time. I tried three times to put her in her bed, but each time I turned around and kept her with me. She was my only true link to Lucky, and I felt like I would lose that if I put her down. Like when she was born, and I no longer carried a part of him inside me. I had felt so complete, even though Lucky was gone, he was still with me. Then she was a little person all on her own, a living, breathing piece of Lucky with his blood inside her, and I had nothing. Nothing but her to hold on to.
I froze when I heard the car in the drive, like I was in suspended animation, and I couldn't really believe he had come. I could not move, could not even breath, until the doorbell rang.