I Was Lost Then Found

I have to tell you this part first. I had a roommate in my first year of college and one night walking back from the library she was jumped on, r**ed and m****red. I'm sorry to bring this up. It was the day I died inside. I loved her, love her, like I never loved anyone before. My heart was broken and I dropped out and went back home and got my waitressing job back at the Elk Inn.

No one knew of her and no one understood why I came home. One Saturday afternoon a man driving through stopped for lunch even if it was three o'clock in the afternoon. It was only me and him in the dining room. He looked at me and asked me where I went to school. I told him I wasn't in school and he questioned me all about it. And my tears came and my heart hurt and I told this man I didn't know about my roommate, the girl I loved that I lost that night.

He listened and held my hand, he stood and let me cry on his shoulder. He held me for a very long time, until I settled down. He sat there with me and said one thing. You are going to go to school, he said, because I'm telling you. My heart wasn't so heavy after that and I went to school like he said to me and I graduated with my business degree. Once I graduated that man gave me a job and I met a friend, a top drawer young woman, and we grew to love each other. When the time came I asked that man if he could help me. And that's how it came to happen that a girl the likes of me woke up one day and found out she was pregnant.

It's true because I'm telling you so, as far as anyone's business is concerned my baby was immaculately conceived. On her birthday every year she gets a letter even if she can't read yet. In that letter is a receipt for sums to set aside for the day she goes to school.