Okey dokey, here is my entry! I hope it fits the guidelines! Plus, I am trying to think of a better title.
Forgiveness From a Stove
Rachel inched her way up the creaking porch stairs. Everything here was so cold and dank and quiet; one would think she had stumbled upon a forgotten crypt. The stairs creaked under her, moaning because they had not felt the tread of footsteps for many a year. Rachel shuddered. But she had to do it…she had to come in here to conquer her ghosts of the past.
She herself was almost a ghost of the past. She had been born many years earlier, almost before the time of cars or planes. Rachel still preferred horses, even to this day. Yes, for one hundred and two years old, she was doing very well, yet.
The note she clutched matched her hands; they were both old and worn and wrinkled. This note was half as old as she was, in fact. After staring at the door for another long moment, she took a deep breath and turned the ancient door handle. It creaked open slowly, as if it did not remember how to open.
There before her lay the object she had been both seeking and dreading for many a year. Cloaked under a blanket of dust and grime, it sat, the now dull handles on its door staring at her like beady copper eyes. Steeling her resolve, Rachel stepped forward and lightly touched the top of the ancient stove. Her mother’s voice, tired and worn, floated through her mind suddenly like a breath of wind let out of a room.
Yes, Rachel. The stove supervised a century, at least, of your family. It alone burned through cold nights, and merry nights, and the night I learned your father left. The Depression was a hard time. Yet some in the town say he left us, you and I, some money to get by. Yes, he did indeed, Rachel. He did indeed…
Rachel slowly sighed as she stared at the old, wood-burning stove. The only thing her father had left behind, besides their old house. When she was twenty-five, her father left her and her mother to fend for themselves. They strained an existence out of doing any odd jobs they could find, until Rachel married a kind man who took her mother in as well. Meanwhile, their old prairie home stood alone, and their stove stood cold.
Years had passed…Rachel had not returned to the house that held so many memories in it, the bad outnumbering the good. She lived in a wonderful neighborhood, next door to an old man who loved to garden all day long; she nearly giggled as she thought of him, bending over his carrots and pretending not to be interested in what she and her children were doing outside. She had slowly forgotten about her old house on the plains, until one sunny morning she remembered like it was yesterday, although it was well over thirty-five years ago. She had been sitting on her porch, and the mail came while the old neighbor was peeking his head over her fence. In it was a letter, a letter from the father she had erased out of her memory. It was old and looked like it had been drowned and twisted and left to rot for a while, but still, there was a note.
Inside, in her father’s squiggled handwriting, a message:
Daughter: I know your mother passed away. I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for everything, although this apology coming from me probably redefines the word “hollow.” But know that I regret leaving you. There was no excuse for it.
This I ask of you. Go to your old home, the one in the middle of Texas where I left you. Inside you will see the stove. I have left something in the stove, something I wish to give to you. I know it will not make up for my abandoning you. Love, your father, Bartholomew Sloane.
Rachel had lowered the message, tears streaming down her face, and proceeded to dump it in her box of mementos. She had had no intention of going back and retrieving something from her errant father. She had faintly wondered how old the note was; her mother had died ten years before.
She furrowed her brow as she remembered that. Now, at last, she was going to put the past behind her and solve the mystery of what was in the stove. With quaking hands, she began to search the old stove. When she opened its oven door, she could almost remember pulling a freshly baked loaf of bread out of this very stove and setting it before her father and mother, but now there was nothing in it except dead trapped bugs. She sighed. Where could her father have put what he wanted to give her? She sighed once more.
There was a small hole in the back of the stove, to let out heat from its oven. She reached her hand back into the darkness…and almost screamed when she touched something. It seemed like papers and something hard.
A large roll of money slid out first. She then wrestled many sheets of paper out of the small opening. She unfolded one with trembling hands, and began to read aloud.
“July 4th, 1953. I went to the town’s celebration today, with hopes of getting a glimpse of you and your husband, with my grandchildren. Oh, they are getting so big! I long to run over and scoop one up, just like I used to do with you, Rachel. Your children truly are beautiful.”
“July 19, 1953. Today I watched you and the children romp in your backyard. I watched your husband, as well. You married a fine man, Rachel. Your mother was there, watching you play with her grandchildren. I could not look at her. I want to join you, join your family and play in the backyard, but I am not worthy of you or my grandchildren’s love. I am sorry, Rachel, but perhaps someday you will understand.”
With a sob, Rachel lowered the letter. She reached inside the old cubbyhole again, and pulled out a necklace. A locket. Nestled inside was a black-and-white photograph of her and her mother, a long, long time earlier. The locket was scratched and faded from being opened and shut so many times.
Rachel wiped a lone tear from her wrinkled eye. It was her father. Her father had lived next door to her for twenty years, and she had never once known it. Never. Tears started rolling down her cheeks in abundance now; she picked up the letters to avoid them being stained. It would not be fit to let them be ruined, now. Her children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren should get to know their old grandfather.
For he had not abandoned her; she felt forgiveness flood from her old heart like a dove being released from its cage after a long time without freedom.
Forgiveness at last.
). There will be one first place, second place, and third place winner. All the other entries will win something also! Blessing prizes are as followed:
When do we find out who won?? 
