A woman believes the father of her child had passed away in a car crash, but 14 years later he knocks on her door to deliver a parcel.
Sarah Grant was a week away from the happiest day of her life. She was about to marry the love of her life even though her domineering mother, Janet, was dead set against it.
Nevertheless, Sarah had stuck to her guns, and with her father’s support, she’d faced down her mother and won for the first time in her life.
When the phone rang, Sarah answered with a happy “Hello!” but the voice on the other side of the line dimmed her light forever.
Sarah was speechless when she saw the delivery man’s face | Source: Shutterstock.com
The voice on the other end of the line belonged to the town’s sheriff, and he was telling her that Jim was dead. “No!” Sarah screamed. “You liar!” Then her father was there, putting his arms around her.
That afternoon, Sarah went to the coroner’s office with her father. She wanted to see Jim, she had to. “He’s not dead, daddy,” she kept saying. “I’d feel it if he was. I KNOW he’s alive. That man is not my Jim!”
The sheriff didn’t want to let her identify the body which was badly burned, but he finally allowed her to view it. The man on the gurney was unrecognizable, but around his neck, Sarah saw something she recognized.
The heart always knows the truth.
That was when her knees folded, and she would have fallen to the floor if her dad hadn’t held her up. It was Jim’s pendant, the pendant Sarah had given him on their first anniversary.
For the next six weeks, Sarah lay in her bed, hardly eating. Then she realized she was pregnant. She was carrying Jim’s baby! This baby was precious, it was the last gift from Jim — a little bit of him to make her life bearable.
As soon as her mother found out she was very upset. First, she tried to pressure Sarah into ‘solving the problem’ and Sarah told her, “My baby is not a problem to be solved.”
Then she tried to pressure Sarah into marrying the son of one of her closest friends, a young man who’d always been in love with Sarah. He was the right kind of young man, unlike Jim, her mother said.
“Never!” Sarah said fiercely. “JIM Is my husband, I will never marry anyone else!”
She stuck to her guns and told her mother that if she didn’t stop pushing she would move out and go have her baby somewhere far away. “You can’t take my grandchild away!” cried Mrs. Grant.
“I can,” Sarah said coldly. “I don’t need your money, mom, I can work for a living!”
“Why are you so stubborn?” protested Mrs. Grant. “If you hadn’t insisted on marrying that penniless loser…”
“Jim was NOT a loser,” Sarah said angrily. “He is the father of my child and you will never speak of him like that again!”
Seeing her pregnant daughter so upset made Mrs. Grant back down. She changed her attitude and tried to become more supportive.
When Sarah gave birth to her daughter, her mother and father were there by her side. Sarah had tears in her eyes as she looked down at the tiny precious scrap in her arms.
“Hello, baby!” she whispered. “You look just like your daddy!” She named the little girl Jana.
Over the next thirteen years, Sarah devoted herself to raising Jana, who turned out to be the prettiest and bubbliest little girl in the world, and her grandparents — especially grandmother — spoiled her shamelessly.
Mrs. Grant was proud of her granddaughter, but she never mentioned Jim. In fact, when Sarah spoke to Jana about her daddy, Mrs. Grant would get up and quickly walk out looking very uncomfortable.
Sarah was saddened. After all these years, her mother still couldn’t accept her love for Jim, even though he was dead. But Sarah was determined that Jana would know everything about her dad. Jim was alive in her heart, and she wanted him to be real for Jana too.
Sarah never really got over Jim. Even though her family and friends encouraged her to date and she met some nice men, no one could compare to Jim.
Time didn’t seem to be healing her wound, and she couldn’t shake the conviction that Jim wasn’t dead. “He’s alive in my heart,” she told her daughter. “That’s why I could never marry anyone else.”
Then one day the front doorbell rang, and Sarah decided she really was going crazy, because there was a man at the door with a parcel in his hands, and it was Jim!
She stood there with her mouth hanging open and the man said, “Sarah?”
Sarah hung on to the door so she wouldn’t fall down. “Jim?” she whispered. “That’s impossible…I’m not well…Jim…You’re gone…”
But the man was stepping forward, dropping the parcel and taking her hands. “It’s me, Sarah, and no, I’m not dead.”
“But how?” asked Sarah. “I saw the pendant…”
Sarah was shocked when she saw the delivery man’s face | Source: Unsplash
“I was beaten up, three guys picked me up and worked me over. They took my pendant,” Jim explained. “Then they gave me the message: I stayed away from you or I was dead.
“I was nearly dead. I spent the next six months at a hospital and ended up needing a kidney transplant, and your mother paid all the bills. I was told that if I didn’t stay away, there would be no transplant.”
“My mother?” asked Sarah. “My mother did this?”
Jim pressed her hands. “Yes. But I recovered, Sarah, turned my life around. I went to college and I started up my company. But I couldn’t forget you. I guess you’ve probably married, have a new life…”
“No!” cried Sarah. “I never did, I never got over you! And Jim, we have a baby!” Now it was Jim’s turn to start crying, and Sarah wrapped her arms around him.
That night, Jim met his daughter Jana, and Sarah confronted her mother. Terrified of losing her daughter and her granddaughter, Mrs. Grant broke down and admitted everything.
She begged Sarah’s and Jim’s forgiveness and had to deal with her husband’s disgust. He had known nothing about her plot to plant the pendant on the body of a dead man and pass him off as Jim.
Fourteen years after Jim had ‘died,’ Sarah and Jim finally married.
What can we learn from this story?
The heart always knows the truth. Sarah just couldn’t believe that Jim was dead — and her instincts were right.
The evil we do always comes out. Mrs. Grant’s evil plot was revealed and she had to make ammends for her bad deeds.
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