Re-Gifted

By P.A. Hopkins

The sudden death of her mother slams the door on everything Rosalee believed and opens the door to the truth about the life her mother was living. On the eve of her mother's funeral, Rosalee and her twin sister begin to unravel their mother's life and the heritage they never knew they had.
Thrown into an adventure without knowing what the outcome will be. They have no choice but to continue on the journey that has been laid out before them. They have four days to uncover the secrets of their mother's life and put the scant clues of their heritage into place.
The major clue they have is right in front of them but it won't open. Rosalee knows that the answers she needs are in the last gift her mother gave her. Not participating in the journey is not an option. The only choice the girls have is to continue and to stay alive until the time limit on the gift is up and the package can be opened. Failing to figure out their heritage could have catastrophic results for the world they grew up in and the new one they're discovering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.A. Hopkins
• Release date: Jun 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9780983727309

P.A. Hopkins

P.A. Hopkins lives in Michigan with her husband of over 25 years.

Book preview

Re-Gifted

By: P.A. Hopkins

A Gift that changes your live forever isn’t easy to give away.

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Smashwords Edition

Published By: P.A. Hopkins on Smashwords

Re-Gifted

Copyright 2011 by P.A. Hopkins

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Chapter 1

"She knew she was dying and didn’t even have the decency to tell us. It’s just so like her. All she ever thought about was herself. She never included us in anything. It was always ‘no girls you can’t go with me, no girls you can’t work in the greenhouse with me you might hurt one of the plants.’ Hurt a plant….humph. Who ever heard of hurting a plant? You break it and it grows back. I mean come on…it’s not like they have feelings. In fact, I know she cared more about those plants then she ever cared about us. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have sent us away all the time just so she could spend time with them. Why couldn’t she ever include us? I’d have been happy to sit down with her friends and drink coffee. But noooooo, it was always ‘girls you need to go outside and play or girls you need to go to your rooms so I can talk to so and so in private.’ " Rosalyn was on one of her rampages, pacing back and forth, trying to wear a hole in the floor of the already almost worn out yellow floor of what used to be our mothers kitchen. This could carry on for hours if I don’t stop her. I just don’t have the strength to stop her. I’ve been through enough today and my sympathy level for everyone is at the same level as the weather; cloudy, rainy, cold and Wednesday.

What is a Wednesday, it’s nothing. It’s not the start of the week and it’s not the end of the week. It’s just a day. It’s just there with no real purpose. Some say it’s hump day, it’s the day when you’re supposed to be most productive because you’re not still bummed about the weekend being over and yet you’re not looking forward to the upcoming weekend either. I’ll beg to differ with whoever thought that up. I begin thinking about the weekend the minute I get out of bed on Monday morning. I hate my job.

I guess Rosalyn does have a point though, mother never did include us in her secret life and she had to have known she was dying. If she hadn’t why would she have given me this box last week? She even took the time to attach a note saying don’t open until one week after my death. Like I could open it even if I wanted to, I’ve tried but the box doesn’t open. It’s like the ribbon is made of steel and melted together. I even went so far as to break my favorite pair of scissors trying to cut the ribbon. She even gave me her last will in testament.

I’d still like to think mother thought enough about us that she would have told us if she had known she was going to die. Maybe she thought that by not telling us she was sparing us the pain of it all. But if she’d have told us at least we could have asked some questions. There are so many questions I’d have liked to ask her. For starters where the hell did she get this ribbon and what’s it made of.

Every time I started to ask a ‘what if’ question she always told me there will be time for that later. Now she’s dead and I’ll never get my questions answered. But like Rosalyn is still rambling on about, mother always kept to herself. Well not totally to herself. She included us in everything except her greenhouse, her friends and anything that happened before I can remember anything. It’s almost like she didn’t exist until we were born.

She sheltered us from her life other then when we were what her life was about. She didn’t shelter us from the outside world though. She was constantly telling us what we need to do if we’re ever going to survive on our own. Go to school and listen to what you’re told, it’s hard to hear what you need to learn if your mouth is running so keep your mouth closed. That was one of her favorite sayings.

She wasn’t like the other kids mothers. They were always at the school, part of the PTA, involved in their kids sports, what ever their kid was doing they were there pushing them. Not our mother. I asked her once why she didn’t get involved with the school, her response was. I’m not always going to be around to take care of you so you need to learn how to think for yourself and take care of yourself. You need to be your own person, not a version of what I want you to be.

I wonder if her pushing us to take care of ourselves is because she was completely responsible for herself and us? I’ll never know because she’s not here for me to ask. Whenever one of us asked about our father or grandparents, we got the standard response of You don’t have one. Come on, what kind of response is that to give to a kid. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. Once in an attempt to get a different answer I asked her if we were test tube babies. She said no and left it at that.

Through all the years mother never had a boyfriend or an adult female in her life. There weren’t even friends she went out with. You’d think she would have wanted to spend more time with us sense we’re all she had besides her greenhouse, this house and Joey. That reminds me, he’s probably hungry and a lot more confused than we are?

Joey is or was mother’s cat. Joey is a severely overweight smoky gray cat with huge sometimes tan, sometimes green, sometimes in between eyes. Thinking about his eyes just sent a shiver down my spine. We were sitting on the couch watching a movie, just relaxing. One second his eyes were grass green with just a tiny black slit down the center. The next second his eyes we’re completely black. He leapt off the couch, bounded off the floor once landing in the kitchen. By the time I got to the kitchen he had a mouse in mouth, his eyes were almost yellow and he had a satisfied look on his face.

I bet you’re hungry? I asked Joey as I walked past him towards the refrigerator. He looked up at me and opened his mouth but no sound came out. He tuned into where I was heading though and followed me. I picked up his dish and scooped a quarter can of food into it while he sat patiently and watched with big tan eyes. As I bent to place the dish on the floor he squeaked.

Squeaked, like a toy mouse, not meow like a normal cat. I stood bolt upright and stared at him. Rosalyn stopped her pacing and ranting and also stood there staring at him. Did he make that sound or did you? She stammered at me while pointing at him.

It had to be him. I didn’t make that noise. But he doesn’t make sounds. I said as I bent to place his dish on the floor again. In all the years mother has had him I’ve never heard him make any sounds other then his feet thumping across the floor. Did you know he made sounds? I asked.

Rosalyn shook her head from side to side then bent down towards Joey. The second her hand touched him his head spun from his dish towards her hand. He didn’t bite her but the expression on his face was completely understood. If he didn’t have all that fur and walk on four legs I’d swear that cat is human. What he wants just radiates off him. Tie that in with his facial expressions and he’s easier to read then most of the humans I know. Rosalyn had drawn her hand back immediately when his head turned but she was about to make another attempt at him. I don’t think that’s a good idea. The look he just gave you said to leave him alone he’s eating. You know better then to disturb him when there’s food around. I said.

I know. I just want to get him to squeak again. She said.

He’s not a squeaky toy Rosalyn. Just leave him alone until he’s done eating. I said.

Joey has a much different relationship with me then he has with Rosalyn. Our relationship though is nothing like he had with mother. It’s been five year sense Joey appeared at the back door all ragged looking and stinking like sun baked two week old trash. We tried to talk mother out of letting him in but she opened the door anyway. Mother told him to come in and he walked in like he owned the place.

We didn’t even know he was gray at first. His hair was so matted he looked like an oversized black sewer rat. There was no way that mean looking animal was going to let mother give it a bath but the way it smelled it couldn’t stay in the house without one. Mother bent down and told it that it needed a shower. Follow me she said and it did. It followed her into the bathroom. She closed the door and I could hear the water running in the shower.

Some time later, mother and the cat emerged from the bathroom. Come with me and I’ll get you some food she said to the cat as it followed her towards the kitchen. The cat that came out of the bathroom behind mother sure wasn’t the cat he is now. He was nothing more then a skeleton covered with dark droopy fur. As time wore on his fur dried to a dark gray. He spent the next several weeks cleaning himself, eating and sleeping. Mother would sit for hours brushing and talking to him like he was a long lost friend.

After he was cleaned and we knew that mother was going to keep him, Rosalyn and I got rather excited. We were finally going to have a pet. Mother would never allow us to have a pet. She said that all pets were good for was something to spend money on. Rosalyn and I spent hours trying to come up with a name for our pet. At dinner that night we started peppering mother with the names that we had picked out. His name is Joey. Mother said.

How do you know what his name is? I asked

He told me. Mother said. The way she said it we both knew that the conversation was over and that the cat’s name was Joey.

He is defiantly mother’s cat. He never pays attention to anyone but mother, unless mother isn’t here. If there were people here other than us girls he was off hiding somewhere. Even when we were here the only time he paid attention to either of us was when he wanted treats or to be scratched.

During the years that we lived here with him and the months sense we moved out he’s never made a sound. He opens his mouth like he’s meowing but nothing comes out. Just look in his eyes, he’ll tell you exactly what you need to know. Mother used to say. If he can tell me what I need to know, Joey and I need to have a long conversation.

Well Rosalyn now that you’ve stopped wearing out the floor. Would you like some coffee while we try and sort this all out? I asked. She shook her head yes at me, still staring at Joey and speechless over the fact that he could make sounds. If I’d have known that all it would take to get Rosalyn to be quiet was a sound, I’d have made weird noises long ago.

Mother always had the best coffee. I don’t know what makes her coffee taste so much better then mine. I buy the same brand and have the exact same coffee maker but it never tastes as good at my apartment as it does at mother’s house. I poured us each a big mug and headed back to the dining room or as mother used to call it, the conversation room. Although mothers house is very comfortable and makes you feel like your home, her taste in decorating could really use some work. Nothing matches there’s no theme, everything is just hodge-podged together. She could tell you who gave her each and every item and the history behind it though.

A lot of what she told us about the items she collected was made up but it was nice to sit and listen to her. She was a very good story teller. She made up names to places that don’t exist on any map and she could tell you all the details about the place like she had been there before. Sometimes she would go into such detail that if I closed my eyes it was like I was a character in a movie walking through distant lands.

Mother never bought anything new. Everything she owned was given to her by someone. I believe she could have afforded new stuff because whenever Rosalyn or I would ask for money she would refer to the paid chores list on the refrigerator then hand the money over like it was no big deal. I shouldn’t say she just handed over the money there was a list on the refrigerator of things around the house that needed to be done. Next to each item was a price that the job paid. If either of us wanted money, it had to be earned before it could be spent. There were occasions though that she just handed money to us, like for school shopping and such. She would hand us the money and tell us to get what we needed. If we couldn’t get what we needed with what she gave us then we went without.

She never bought anything new for herself though. She said new stuff had no life which made absolutely no sense to me. Everything she has looks like it’s at the end of its life. Someday you’ll understand the power that objects collect during their existence she’d tell me. The only power I could see the stuff having was if a burglar broke, in you could pick up one of the rocks or vases and crack him over the head with it.

I set Rosalyn’s coffee in front of her and set mine next to the stack of papers I had dropped on the table when I walked in. Well we might as well start with the biggest one first. I said as I picked up mother’s death certificate. I had intended to just set it aside but I couldn’t put it down. A tingling sensation started running from my hand to my heart. Once the sensation reached my heart it instantly started at my finger tips again.

I was about to tell Rosalyn what was happening when I felt a sudden burst of joy. Unable to set the death certificate down and not wanting to tell Rosalyn about the happiness I was feeling, I forced my hand holding the paper towards her. She looked at the paper and tears began to appear in her eyes. Just as quickly as the tears started they disappeared and were replaced by a look of joy. Rosalee this isn’t right. She said to me with a bewildered look. I should feel sad but I feel happy that I’m holding mother’s death certificate.

I felt the same thing when I touched it. Are we cruel and heartless to feel joy over our mother’s death certificate? I asked.

You may be cruel and heatless but I’m not. I want my mother back. She said. I didn’t have to say it, Rosalyn knew I wanted mother back also.

Next on the stack was mother’s last will in testament. I read through the two page document. Other than her specific funeral instructions it just stated ‘everything has been transfer to who should have it.’ I handed it to Rosalyn. When she was done reading it, she looked at me with a look that mirrored the confusion I was feeling. The remainder of the stack of papers explained it all. Mother had transferred everything into our names. I looked at the date on the quick deed for the house. She knew she was going to die. She transferred the house into Rosalyn and my names April 11th, the same day she gave me the box.

As usual mother took care of everything for us. Now that we own this house and everything in it, do you think we should sell it or become roommates again? I asked.

I’m for becoming roommates. I’ve had just about enough of living with five other people in a house with only two bathrooms. She said.

"My rent is paid through the end of the month and I don’t have much that I want to keep. It should only take me a couple of loads and I’ll be moved back in. Do you think your roommates will let you out of your