Attached

33-Part II

Sometimes Life Surprises You

"I had made a choice a long time ago that I was never going to get married and I was never going to have children because it would get in the way of my music but the fact of the matter is...I did. After I was almost arrested for trashing a hotel room, ODed on cocaine once, and almost ODed a second time my manager, his name is Jeff Buckingham, took me to a restaurant and he said Stevie this is my brother Lindsey I've paid him 300,000 dollars in advance so here's why I brought him. You need to straighten up and settle down and I'm going to tell you how to do it. You and Lindsey are going to get married. I'm not requiring you to but I am heavily advising it because if you don't I'm done. I'm walking out. I can't have you ruin my reputation by ruining yours. And I know that you don't want to ruin your reputation. He picked out a ring for you here it is. I need your answer.

"This is not my original wedding ring set he got me these two gold rings for our 20th wedding anniversary but my original set is a black like a garnet type stone on a braided silver band very tiny and a thin silver band. It cost him a total of 100 bucks. We got married on August 15, 1985. We were only supposed to be married for three years and then we could divorce quietly and go on with our lives.

"Lindsey had just broken up with his Girlfriend before Jeff asked him to marry me and I despite everything was still seeing Joe Walsh. And Lindsey and I really weren't interested in each other at all. We just co-existed. We lived in two separate worlds. He's an elementary school music teacher and I'm a big rock star. We literally spoke in notes. He'd get up at 5:30 so he could be at school by 7:30 because School started at 8. I wouldn't be getting home until 5-6 o'clock in the morning. I'd leave my house around two and he'd get home around 4 so we just didn't see each other. He'd make dinner, some meals very poorly others not so much, and he'd stick the leftovers in the fridge for me. We even slept in two separate wings of the house. 

"What really pushed us together was our first Christmas. His school does this big arts festival twice a year, in the spring and at Christmas. He and two of his fellow teachers that are heavily involved in the festival were meeting at our house and one of the teachers just so happened to be his ex-girlfriend. As soon as I walked into the house after running my errand or doing whatever it was I was doing, she started crawling all over him and touching him and laying her head on his chest and I just felt a bubble of anger and jealousy in my stomach. Lindsey is a good looking man. He's always been that way. Lean swimmer's body gorgeous blue eyes. I had barely known him but I was falling in love with him. 

"He let me go to school with him the day of the Christmas Festival. He let me go in and see him work in his natural habitat and we spent the day together. He bought me lunch at this nice Mexican Restaurant and we just got to know each other. Then I was going to leave for Pheonix to spend the Holidays with my family I came downstairs and there was one single gift poorly wrapped in gold paper sitting under the tree. There was a note on it. Lindsey had gotten me a Christmas gift. It was this moon necklace and a black shawl with red roses on it. I just started to cry because I didn't get him anything. I was still sobbing on the floor infront of the tree when Lindsey got home and I explained that I hadn't gotten him anything and I felt so bad and I wanted to go to the store to buy him whatever he wanted but he just held me and said that he didn't need anything.

"Lindsey is my one great love. My soulmate, yes our marriage was a survival move on my part but it became so much more than that. 

"About two months after my OD with Don Henley I found out that he had gotten me pregnant. I was still strung out on Cocaine and Don and I were just too wrapped up in our careers to even think about having a baby. We weren't even in a proper relationship we just hooked up occasionally. When I told Don that he and I were going to have a baby he flat out said if you're going to keep it, I'm not going to help. I'd rather go to jail than pay you child support, be involved, I want nothing to do with it. So in 1979, I got an abortion. I was absolutely numb. I didn't care that the little creature had a heartbeat and limbs and a brain I just wanted it gone. They had tried to do a suction abortion but they didn't get it all and I started bleeding really heavily to the point where I had to go to the Hospital. They had to go in and do a D and C abortion, and I was admitted for three days. 

"Lindsey and I, having been under the impression that we weren't going to be together after three years never talked about having kids. Lindsey had been a fan of mine and he knew about my past abortion and the fact that I didn't really want kids so we never broached the subject. On February  24, 1987, I was at a regular gynecologist appointment when the doctor told me that she wanted to run some more tests. I was terrified because I thought I had cancer or something but my blood results came back as positive for pregnancy. Lindsey and I had finally consummated our marriage around New Year in 1986. We had been married for a year at that point and we both had started developing feelings for each other so what's next. We started having sex and sharing a bedroom. But the pregnancy blindsided me. 

"I had no symptoms of pregnancy. I wasn't throwing up, and my breasts weren't sore, and I hadn't missed my period yet because I was due for it the week that I found out I was pregnant. We did the ultrasound and it was too early to hear the heartbeat but we could see this tiny shrimp looking creature. I flat out said I need to make an appointment for termination. My doctor asked me if I was sure and she advised me to talk it over with my husband but I said no. He didn't have to know about it because of doctor-patient confidentiality.

"We had to schedule it for about a month later because of my work commitments. They called the house to remind me of it and neither Lindsey or I were home. They left a message on the machine and Lindsey got home before me. When I got home he had moved out of our bedroom to a guestroom and I just asked him why completely not thinking about it because I had actually forgotten that I was pregnant. All he said to me was 'answering machine'. So I went downstairs and listened to it and sure enough, it was my Abortion reminder. I raced back upstairs and I tried to make some stupid excuse but he was packing his bags. He said to me were you even going to tell me. And I said no. He stormed out of the house." 

Stevie stops and lets out a sob wiping the tears from her eyes as her makeup was starting to smear. She sniffles for a little while and then she picks back up. 

"The next day I was laid out on the table and they did the ultrasound and I heard her heartbeat. All I could see was this little girl with curly hair Lindsey's blue eyes and I stopped them. I couldn't go through with it. I went to the school where Lindsey teaches and I waited until the end of the day and then I made my way into his classroom. His stuff was there but he wasn't and I just waited for him. When he walked in he started chewing me out but I just held out the ultrasound pictures to him. Even though he came home he still didn't talk to me for a week and he didn't start sleeping in the same room with me again until a month later. I was so totally heartbroken and devastated that it was hard for me to even get out of bed and eat because I just wanted him to hold me and tell me that we'd be okay. 

"Eva Catherine was born on October 2, 1987, She's in her twenties now and she's having her own baby. That little girl was the best thing that happened to me though because when I held her in my arms and Lindsey was holding me it just felt like my heart was full and our family was complete until it wasn't. Eva was about eight months old when I started talking about having another baby. Me, the one that never wanted kids was begging her husband to try for baby number 2. We tried for four years and we just gave up. I think I took maybe 200 pregnancy tests and they all came back negative. It was when I did Street Angel that things just started to get weird. I was dizzy and I was gaining weight, I came home from David Letterman and Lindsey said just take a pregnancy test. I didn't think I was pregnant at all. And I about castrated him because I told myself that it was going to be negative. But it wasn't. When we went to the doctor I was fifteen weeks. Already in my second trimester and I had no clue. Ethan Christopher was born on February 4, 1995.

"My kids are a blessing and I am so happy that I wasn't able to terminate Eva. Heartbroken about the baby I could've had with Don but when Eva was born Lindsey said that Sara was looking down on me and smiling at me with her baby sister. Because had I had that baby and it was a girl I would've named her Sara and Lindsey will always say that we have three kids because had I kept Sara I probably would've never had met Lindsey, but if I had he said that he would've taken her in as his own.