Mom and I had spent our lives secluded from the rest of the town. She had committed sucide just after my ninth birthday. Aunt Janice and Uncle Howard had come in from the west coast and took me back and raise me with my cousins.

It wasn't until I graduated college that I returned to the town where I was born. I had remembered bits and pieces of my early years. I remember the loneliness of being alone with mom. She was always sad, or off into another world with her thoughts. I never remember a hug or good night kiss from her. She was never mean, just indifferent. Whenever I asked about my daddy, I always got the same answer. "He died", "He died long before you were born". I accepted that and drew my own conclusions when I was old enough. "She was never married" is what I concluded.

I had married and started a family of my own. Will, the children and I often walked by the house of my childhood. I saw it hundreds of times in my dreams, while I was growing up. It was always in my dreams that I would see myself running through the rooms. "The dreams were so crazy" I would often see myself playing and running with a reflection of myself. It was always as if the one side of the room was lined with large mirrors. It was in these mirrors I would see my mother watching. Her distraught face streaked with tears.

The old house went up for sale. Though it was in need of repairs, the price suited our budget. Since we had never owned a home; this was our golden opportunity. I was reluctant at first since It was the house where my mother had taken her own life. I didn't know at the time, I was being called back for a reason.

From the very first day we moved in my childhood dreams returned. I awoke from one such dream and started towards the bathroom when my barefoot came down on something cold and metallic. Reaching down under my foot, I picked up a small key, which I set down on the night stand and didn't give it another thought.

The next morning as I was preparing breakfast, I saw a key on the counter next to the toaster. I ran upstairs to check on the forgotten key from the night before. The nightstand was empty. I questioned Will about the key. He never saw it. Maybe one of the children had picked it up and brought it into the kitchen. I soon got busy with breakfast and dropped the key into one of the kitchen drawers. Maybe it belonged to the shed out in the back yard.

I was busy unpacking and making the house livable. I could feel my mother in each and every room. I got especially sad and maudlin when I went into the attic to store our unused items. Many of my dreams were of the large attic with it's loose and dusty floor boards. The years had only made it more dismal and dusty. "Maybe a good cleaning would make it a good rainy day playroom for the children", I thought.

The next morning I returned to the attic and began pushing all the boxes to the back of the attic; when I heard something scraping the floor beneath one of the boxes. A KEY was beneath the box. "It can't possibly be the same key I threw into the kitchen drawer", I told myself. WELL IT WAS, the kitchen drawer was empty when I ran down and checked.

I returned to the attic later that afternoon, determined to finish the cleaning and forget about that key, that I had placed on the dusty windowsill. Maybe buying this house was a bad idea after all. It certainly wasn't worth all the anxiety and panic my mind was going through. As I started to the back where I had started stacking the boxes, I stumbled over a loose plank. When I picked myself up, I saw the plank of wood was stuck half out of the floor. I lifted the board out of the floor. I easily lifted two more of the boards and removed a small metal box, with a lock on it. I quickly took the KEY from the windowsill; It unlocked the box with ease.

Inside the box was an large envelope, which was discolored with age. Inside, the first thing I pulled out was a birth certificate. It was a baby girl's born only minutes after me. A letter was also in the box. My mother had written the letter. She hoped that one day the box would be found and I would understand the anguish she had been through. Yes I was born a twin, identical, except my sister had been severly brain damaged. Mom had been the victim of a savage rape. When she left the hospital after our births, she had moved to the other end of the state.

She was not emotionally able to care for two infants. The smaller and weaker one required constant attention. One night when she saw my sister tangled in the blankets and turning blue at the other end of the crib, she made no attempt to aid the baby, or seek help. She cried silently and watched her baby die. At the time she felt this was best. The next morning the police wrote the death up as sudden crib death.

This explained why mom was always so forlorn and solomn. She went on in the letter about all the prayers begging for forgiviness, and yet she never forgave herself. I wept as I read her confession. I had forgiven her so many years ago, she must have known that. I prayed she did...Inclosed was also a news clipping, along with a photo of a young man who was arrested for the rape two young women in their homes. Scribbled up over the picture was just one word..HIM..

Submitted by: Jackie Demko
Background by: Nancy

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