rated * for mature themes and sexual references

A Hope that the Sun Will Rise

by Treanna

 

"Please, Trixie," said the young man.

"I can’t. I made a promise."

"But I need to find her. Without her I am nothing. I have hurt her so much and I just want to see her and tell her I am sorry."

"If you had disappeared, baby," said Jim, "I would move heaven and earth to find you."

"I know but…"

"I know you have been writing to her ever since you met," the visitor continued, "and I know that you must have sent her a wedding invitation because I received mine."

Trixie stood up and walked towards the window.

"She doesn’t want anyone to know where she is. She only told me so I could pass her letters on to her parents and theirs to her."

"But I am not anyone. I am the man who loves her."

Trixie looked at Jim, who nodded, and then she walked over to her desk. She wrote on a piece of paper and then handed it to the man.

"I would move heaven and earth to find, Jim, too," Trixie said. "I hope that you two can work it out. You belong together."

"I just have to make her see that."

He gave Trixie a hug and then left the room.

"You did the right thing, Trix." Jim put his arms around her as he said so.

"Oh, I hope so or she will never forgive me."

*      *      *

He sat at the back, in the shadows, his eyes on the vision before him. He felt as if she knew he was there because she kept looking in his direction. Her voice was better than he had ever heard her and she was definitely a favourite amongst the crowd. When she finished, she again looked in his direction. She then walked off stage.

He went back to his room and sat down on a chair, his head in his hands. He did not know what to do next.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. He shot to his feet thinking she had seen him. He hurried to the door and opened it. A waiter stood there.

"Yes?"

"You are Ned, aren’t you?"

"How did you know?"

"May I come in, sir? I only have a few minutes before I am back to work and I need to talk to you."

Ned nodded and let him in.

*     *     *

When she got back to the room, she was exhausted. She was sure she had seen him, but she knew that he would not be there. The last time she had seen him they had argued so heatedly and she had run away from him. Now six months later she thought that she had taken him out of her life. She walked over to the picture she had of him next to her bed and sighed.

Why now?

It must be the invitation to Trixie’s wedding that started her off thinking of him this time. But she knew that it could be anything. A dark-haired man in a crowd. Someone else with his name.

She shook herself and headed for the shower. She needed to wash his image from her mind.

But her heart was a different story.

Half an hour later, dressed in a tracksuit, she sat down to work. She needed to come up with some new songs before her contract was renewed in two weeks.

When someone knocked at the door, she walked over and opened the door, not even bothering to look up.

"Thanks, Joe. I am a little hungry and you always pick for me the best strawberries to go with the cream."

She heard the door close and then looked up. She dropped the papers in her hand.

"Ned."

"Hello, Barbara."

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to talk to you."

"How did you find me?"

"That's not important."

Barbara moved the black her from her face. "Trixie told you, didn’t she?"

"I have just come from Sleepyside and I had to beg her to give me your address."

"How could she! I asked her not to give it to anybody."

"Honey, I am not anybody, am I?"

She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at him.

"What do you want, Ned?"

He sat on a chair in front of her. "I think that it is time we talked. Don’t you?"

She nodded ever so slightly and he was glad.

"It has been six months, Ned, and I haven’t been able to erase it out of my mind."

"I have forgotten what a full night's sleep is," he told her.

She nodded. "I know. So where do we start?"

"How about we go back to Dot’s party?"

She put her hands to her face and he gently removed them.

"Baby, you sometimes have to burn a wound in order for it to heal."

"Then you start."

He sighed. "I remember that we argued on the way to her party, but I can’t remember what the argument was about. I remember you leaving me and going inside on your own. I remember Dot coming over and giving me a drink. She told me it was orange juice, but I now know that she had put some form of drug in it. I can’t remember much after that, but I do remember your face when you walked into the room and found me in bed with her."

He watched the pain tear deeply across her face.

"I remember the argument, too, but I don’t remember what we argued about either. I tried to find you later to apologise, but I couldn’t find you. Then Jason told me you were upstairs and led me to the bedroom. When I saw you..."

"It’s okay."

"I just turned and ran. I heard you calling me, but I had to get away. Jason followed. He stopped me in the kitchen and told me that he would drive me home. But he told me to have a drink of coke first to calm my nerves. I don’t remember much after that, but in the morning I realised I had sex with him."

"They call that a ‘date rape’ drug now."

"When you came over the next morning, I was so ashamed. I realised that maybe you had been given the same drug, too. But I couldn’t face you."

"Is that why you went to stay with Trixie for a month?"

She nodded. "When I came back I was determined that I would see you and try to fix it. But then I found out I was..."

His eyes opened wider. "Pregnant?" he whispered and was shocked to see her nod. "Why didn’t you tell me? I would have stood by you."

"I couldn’t let you raise another man’s child. I was looking through the paper the next morning unsure what to do and I saw the advertisement for singers at a Las Vegas casino."

So, I met you that day and accused you of so much that I knew that was wrong. I wanted you to hate me. You got mad and I ran away. The next day I took a bus and came here and they hired me on the spot."

"And the baby?" he asked her gently.

"A couple of weeks after I started, I miscarried.

"If only you had called me, I would have come immediately."

"I thought by then that you would still be angry at me and I thought that you deserved better."

He stood up and drew her into his arms.

"You are the only girl that I have ever loved and will ever love. What ever happened in the past is past now. And right now I want to start on our future."

"How?" she asked him, unsure what they could do to fix it.

"Come with me," he told her. "I want to show you."

*      *     *

Two hours later, they walked back into her room. Ned carried his suitcase with him and on her finger Barbara carried a new ring.

Ned put the suitcase down and pulled her into his arms. "Well, Mrs Schulz, how do you think I did to persuade you?"

She smiled up at the most important person in her life.

"Let me see. You go to my boss and hand in my notice to finish at the end of my contract in two weeks. And then you take me to a jeweller's and get a wedding ring for each of us and to top it all off you take me to a celebrant and marry me."

"I heard no complaints."

"And you will hear none," she told him. "When I thought I saw you in the casino, my heart stopped. I have never gotten over you. I couldn’t imagine my life with anyone else in it."

"So now we are going to have a honeymoon for the next two weeks and then we are going to Trixie and Jim's wedding and then I am taking you home."

Barbara sighed. "Home sounds so wonderful, especially when you are going to be with me."

"So, you have to sing between two and three in the afternoon and between eight and nine and ten to midnight. Is that right?"

She nodded.

"So the rest of the time we have together."

"But shouldn’t you be getting back to the farm?"

"Dad already knows that I won’t be back until I have seen you."

"Then maybe we should ring your parents and mine."

"Tomorrow should be soon enough. I have other things on my mind."

"Like what?"

"Like you are now my wife."

She smiled up at him and his heart soared. "Mmm forgot about that."

She squealed delightfully as he picked her up in his arms. "Luckily, I didn’t."

*      *     *

She sat on the edge of the bed reading the letter in her hand. Her husband came through the door dressed only in a towel.

"So, how are Trixie and Jim doing?"

She smiled up at him. "She is pregnant.  And guess what? So are Honey and Di."

"You're joking!"

"And would you believe that they all fell pregnant on the same day?"

He laughed as he knelt in front of her and put his head on her enlarged stomach.

"At least we beat them on that score."

"Are you sure that you are not upset that we are going to have a baby in a couple of days?"

He shook his head. "Neither of us remembered birth control on our honeymoon,   so a stud like me should have no problem impregnating his wife."

She laughed as he ran his hand gently over her stomach.

"I am in love with the little baby already and we have yet to meet him slash her."

"So am I," she told him.

"It has been a good nine months. Our wedding, honeymoon, and then Trixie's wedding. And seeing them there so full of love and covered in scars and bruises from the kidnapping. I am glad that they are all right now. Then we came home to see both our folks. And then having our house built near to mum and dad's."

"Well, the farm will be yours someday, so it was logical to build nearby."

He smiled as his hand moved under her nightgown to caress her stomach. Her eyes widened when he moved lower.

"Ned!"

"Hmmm."

"What are you doing?"

"If you don’t know by now, then I would be worried. It will be a few weeks after the baby is born, so I am making sure I get as much as I can now. Is there a problem?"

"None that I can see."

"Good," he said as his mouth found hers.

*      *     *

The labour was hard, but she now sat with her new baby daughter in her arms. Her husband looked down at her, her body exhausted but her face aglow with love.

She looked over to him and smiled.

"So, Daddy, what shall we call this little princess?"

He smiled. "Hope."

"Why Hope?"

"Because that is what you give me every morning when I watch you sleeping as the sun rises. Hope that the sun will rise tomorrow and I will be able to watch you sleeping again."

Tears fell unbidden down her eyes.

"I love you, Ned."

"And I love you."

He reached over and kissed his wife gently on the lips as their daughter Hope slept.

The End

TBH Main