My friend at
Scriber's Web has the first part of this story, and then we are to continue it. Here is my version of the ending....
...and I saw him. There he was, my Carlos. The man that I thought I would leave my husband for, the man that promised me the world....
he was sitting in the park, enjoying the beautiful day, with another woman! They weren't sitting too close, but who was she? How could he deceive me like this? Make a life together? Leave my security for this?
I thought my heart had already endured what no other could have. So I turned the other way. I could not bear for him to see me.
I started to cry into the folds of my son's sweater. I didn't know what to do, where to turn. I wanted to run away from it all....
the life I left my family for in Russia was too hard to go back to....
the life I had with my old husband was unbearable, but it provided me with a house, food and a little money to help out my family, but my unhappiness was also just as unbearable...
and now, the life I thought I would start with Carlos seemed to be a distant dream, a mere fantasy world that came crashing down, just like all of my other dreams.
But I had my son. We were going to make it. As long as I had to bear whatever life I was dealt, I wanted to make sure that he would grow up in a different situation than me, never knowing what it meant to ache from hunger, shiver from the cold, yearn for a better life.
So I stopped crying. and I made a plan...
I walked into my front door, but instead of being able to tell him that I was leaving and starting a new life, I found my husband grasping for breath. I called 911, but it was too late....
by the time he was taken to the hospital he had died, heart failure...
I went home, crying again...left without anyone.
I pulled out my phone to call home, and let them know what happened. There was a text message...
It had Carlos's number...do I open it?
I left until the next day, and the day after that....in fact I truned it off completely so that I could concentrate on what I was going to do...
I was left the house, his money...so I was secure, but where do I go? What life am I to make for myself now? Until the knock on the door came....
and there he was, a dozen red roses in his arms....Carlos. I almost shut the door on him, but his intense eyes bore into my heart. I couldn't close it on him.
He came in and asked me why I had not answered his calls and texts. He had heard about my husband and thought our life was given a turn that was way too fortunate for two immigrants as ourselves.
I looked at him in astonishment. Did he really think I would just forgive him? So the days of my pent up emotions came spilling out of me in one rush. How dare you expect me to take you after being with someone else? What am I going to do now all alone in this country that is not mine? How will I survive the tear in my heart that your deception tore?
and he looked just as astonished? My tears, my words looking like they stung him worse than a hive of wasps....and all he said was...
but I love you, with all of my heart. I do not know what deception you are talking about? How could I deceive the love of my life that I never thought would come in this foreign land?
So once it was all out we settled down and I poured us a glass of scotch. We sat down, and talked. As two lovers do...
we held each other and I cried on his shoulder. He held me as if I was always a part of his body, attached there. And he explained to me that the girl in the park was his sister, who had just gotten her visa to stay .... a hug for his sister, and smile that was of a different kind of love.
My fantasy that seemed to be a faded hope was lit up like a star in the night sky....our dreams to make a fantasy that was all of our own, built on the kind of love that lasts forever....
