Title: Elaine’s Gift
Author: Victoria St. Michael
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 04/18/2023
Heat Level: 1 – No Sex
Pairing: No Romance, Female/Female
Length: 22800
Genre: Contemporary, Contemporary, Family-drama, New Adult, Coming of age, Illness/disease, Grief, Mental illness
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Description
Still reeling from the untimely death of her wife, Elaine, twenty-seven-year-old Kit Barrows is a ghost of herself. But Kit’s fractured life is about to take a turn for the unexpected when she wakes up one morning to discover a mysterious envelope and a notebook sitting on her nightstand, with a note inside—a note addressed to Kit—in Elaine’s handwriting.
As Kit is led on a heartwarming journey of self-discovery and healing, she encounters a homeless veteran on the brink of death, two eccentric old ladies, nine porcelain dolls, a large sum of money, and an anonymous benefactor. As she learns to process her grief, Kit learns that even in death Elaine still has so much to teach her.
Elaine’s Gift
Victoria St. Michael © 2023
All Rights Reserved
In the morning, Kit sits in silence on her bed for a long time. She examines the little black notebook, now open to the second page. The envelope of money burns a hole in the bottom of her mattress, exactly where she had left it the night before. The impossible, mysterious elephant in the room.
Instead of addressing the elephant, Kit focuses on the second page of the notebook. Her eyes scan the address written on the page in Elaine’s familiar handwriting, over and over and over again.
All morning, she’s been debating whether to continue this strange, pointless quest. But is it really pointless, she wonders to herself, or did my visiting Tom Greene have something to do with the huge wad of cash on my nightstand? It can’t be a coincidence.
Kit’s eyes rest on the small urn at her bedside. For the moment at least, Kit is grateful that she hasn’t awoken to any new surprises. She stands up, taking a moment to sweep the fine layer of dust off the nightstand with her free hand. Without thinking, she straightened her bed sheets. It was the first time she had bothered with any kind of household maintenance since Elaine…since that day.
Kit pictures her wife leaning against the kitchen door frame like she had so many mornings before, wearing nothing but one of Kit’s oversized band tees that hung almost to her knees and cradling a large mug of steaming coffee in her tiny hands… two sugars and the tiniest splash of milk. Kit had always been a late sleeper. She would often wake up to her wife watching her like that, with a silly grin plastered on her pixie-like face. Kit finds herself recalling how the morning light would create a golden halo around Elaine’s spiky hair. For the first time ever, the memory doesn’t come with excruciating pain. It hurts, but this time it’s a different kind of hurt. A deep, low throb rather than a razor-sharp stab to the gut.
Kit glances down at the notebook again. If she were here now, Elaine would be smirking. She’d shove a travel mug into Kit’s hands and usher her impatiently out the door. “I didn’t write you that note for you to not follow it,” she would quip, swiping her dark fringe out of her eyes to make absolutely sure Kit could see that she was rolling them. Yeah, yeah, Kit replies silently, I’m going. She takes her phone out of her pocket and examines the address on the second page again:
7217 Lytham Terrace, Minnie & Ella Ferguson.
She types the address into the Maps app; the address is only a few blocks away, well within walking distance. Now I really have no excuse not to go, she tells herself with a sigh. You win again, E.
Kit pulls her boots on, still slightly damp after last night’s excursion. She retrieves a light hoodie from the closet and heads for the door, pausing for a brief moment to fill a glass of water at the kitchen sink.
Kit takes a gulp from the glass and pours the rest into a drooping jasmine plant sitting tragically neglected in the windowsill. Elaine had gifted Kit with the plant on her birthday two years ago. Elaine loved plants. Kit loved the idea of plants but had never been much good at keeping them alive. Kit scrutinizes the plant.
Clearly it feels Elaine’s absence as well.
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Victoria St. Michael is a writer from Ontario, Canada. She has an Honours Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Ottawa and a Diploma in Journalism from Algonquin College, with bylines in various publications across Canada and the U.S. In her spare time she enjoys photography, horror movies, spilling her chaotic thoughts on her blog and going on adventures with her partner and their furbabies.
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