Strange but True by John Searles Read Free Book Online Page A

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

chapter 3
    â€œARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?” CHARLENE CHASE SHOUTS AT MELISSA from the passenger seat. “Is that it? Are you some kind of a nut job?”
    Melissa knew Ronnie’s family would have a hard time believing what she just told them. Even she had a hard time believing it … at first. But now that the baby has grown full-term inside of her, there is no denying that this is the miracle she has prayed for all these years. Night after night after night, on her knees, beside her bed, in the run-down cottage she rents from sweet old Mr. and Mrs. Erwin, Melissa has sent up an endless stream of desperate, drunken cries from her lips, as they say, to God’s ears. Please… If I could just have Ronnie back… If you could just give me another chance like I almost got that summer … And now, somehow, those prayers have been answered. Melissa’s fate, which had been snatched away from her, has been returned. She sees herself as a modern-day rendering of those stories her father preached from the pulpit every Sunday morning throughout her childhood as she squished between Stacy and her mother, absently kicking the heels of her white buckle shoes against the front pew while she listened to him prattle on.
    There was a woman in the crowd who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. She had spent everything she had on doctors and still could find no cure. She came up behind Jesus and touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped .
    â€œWho touched me?” Jesus asked .
    Everyone denied it, and Peter said, “Master, this whole crowd is pressing up against you.”
    But Jesus told him, “No, someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me.”
    When the woman realized that Jesus knew, she began to tremble and fell to her knees before him. The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed. “Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”
    Melissa sees herself as that bleeding woman whose bleeding has finally stopped.
    This baby is her healing. Ronnie’s healing too.
    Yes, of course, she is afraid. And yes, of course, she had expected shock from the Chases, along with all the rest: confusion, bewilderment, a neverending parade of unanswerable questions. But somehow she had allowed herself to imagine an edge of excitement and anticipation beneath it all, because that is the way she feels. If anyone might share those feelings, it would be Ronnie’s family—or so she thought before tonight. The last thing Melissa anticipated was this venomous reaction from his mother. As a result, she feels blindsided by her own disappointment, knocked offkilter by Charlene’s relentless verbal pummeling. Melissa tries hard to get hold of herself and stop crying as she fixes her eyes on the woman’s creased, mole-speckled face, on the ringed flab of skin that shakes above the folds of her beige cowl-neck sweater while she rages on and on.
    â€œHow dare you come here in the middle of the night and deliver this line of horseshit! My son is dead, and you’re fucking with my emotions! What is this, your idea of a joke? Well, let me tell you, it’s a pretty sick joke at that.”
    â€œCalm down, M,” Philip says from the backseat, for what must be the tenth time tonight. “Why don’t you forget this ever happened and go on inside?”
    â€œDon’t tell me to calm down, and don’t tell me to forget anything! My son is dead and this … this … this nobody who dated him for one lousy year of his life shows up in the middle of the night and claims she is carrying his baby.” She thrusts her finger forward and this time does more than point; she jabs it with such force into Melissa’s shoulder that it stings. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Huh?