The Girl In The Dollhouse

Part 4

Jelissa and i started bonding, before Jelissa and my father started dating. The first time I felt she cared for me, I was shaving in the shower, and cut my leg. I screamed so loudly. But I didn't scream for my dad. I screamed for Jelissa and to this day I still don't know why. She saw the cut and helped me stop the bleeding, then bandaged me up and as I sat at the edge of the tub crying, she held my face in her hands and wipes my tears and said "hey hey hey, it's okay honey you're fine, see?"

Once they started dating,there was a day I went to my father and said "Dad, can I go to Lilliths house?"
To which he replied "No, grab your brother and sister, we're having a family meeting."

I did what I was told, and we were all sitting on the sofa.
My father stood next to Jelissa, and said "okay guys, times are getting tough... I don't know what's going to happen in the future, to the house or the business, but..."

He got down on one knee, and my siblings and I gasped.  Then, he looked at Jelissa and said to her as she started crying, "will you marry me?"

She said yes, we all cheered and clapped and hugged in a big group hug. I thought it was the coolest, especially after Gina had left on Christmas Eve, and we had no idea why at the time. We blamed Gina. Now as an adult, I understand more than I did then, though...

My favorite memory happened around that time. My mother and I got into a snowball fight one day. I vented to her about how I missed my friends. I think about this memory with more of a mindset now, thinking how sad she looked back then. She had a horrible relationship at that time, with a man who we'll call Ron. He was hurting her and using her. But how would she tell us that?

Shortly after the engagement, Jelissa announced she was pregnant. We were all excited. But a short time later, my mother got a call in the middle of her visitation, from my father asking to please bring us home early.

When he did, we all sat down and said "what's going on?" Jelissa, with tears in her eyes and her voice trembling, said "you father and I are going to the hospital... the baby didn't make it."

My brother Josiah, who was a misbehaving kid, thought it was his fault. Jelissa hugged him, and told him it wasn't. That the baby had a bad heart. And we all started crying, clinging to our mother, and Jelissa.

We don't know what Jelissa was having. Just that we loved the baby. All of us. To this day, Jelissa refers to her baby as a girl, whom she would have named Sky.

My mother a few months later sadly made the hardest decision of her life. We had been with her walking around the streets of Manheim. It was hot outside. The shoes on my feet had broken the day before and I didn't have any to change into. It was a stressful day before this one. She dropped off my brother, sister and I and said "hey guys, I'll race you to the porch, okay?"

I came home from school one day in late 2013 or early 2014, to Jelissa smiling. I asked her what happened.

She told me: "you can't tell your siblings yet, or anyone else, but look."

It was a positive pregnancy test. She was pregnant again. Everyone was excited again as well.

Jelissa was feeding the new dog one day, we had two of them at that time, Zana and Couragio, Pure Bred German Shepherds. She went to put the food bowl down and tripped over the dog leash, landing right on her belly. She had my father drive her to the hospital. My siblings went to bed, I stayed up on the couch, on Jelissa's tablet. I made her a video slideshow of photos, and a voiceover of how much she meant to me. All she cared about when she came home was that I was still up, and that I had used her tablet. She told me to go to bed. I ran upstairs, laid on my bed, and started crying. The first, of many times, that my stepmother made me cry.