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Every once and a while a story just presents itself and demands to be written down. It's not great literature -- it's just fun and I hope you all like it.

The Leigh family -- alive and well: DL Link

The Leigh family: Ghostly DL Link

Heaven's Haven: link to cottage

Heaven's Haven
Heaven Leigh was raised in a series of well meaning foster homes. The minute she turned 18 she was on her own and living in a run down studio apartment, supporting herself with two waitressing jobs and a side gig as a freelance artist.

Heaven was much too busy working to have a social life. Besides, she was relishing the time spent alone. Life in a foster home was noisy, busy, chaotic and she had to share everything — nothing belonged just to her. So for the moment Heaven didn’t mind her solitary existence. Her life was predictable and boring — one job, then the other, a quick bite to eat, some time spent painting at her easel, a walk around the park with Puca and then an exhausted tumble into bed. Each day was the same and that was ok with Heaven.

One evening after a particularly frustrating shift at her second job, Heather arrived home to find a well dressed gentleman pacing impatiently back and forth in front of her door. Heaven cleared her throat and the man looked up with a start.

“Heaven Leigh?” She nodded. “Would you possibly have some form of ID I could see? I can’t give you this letter unless I’m sure you are really her.” Against her better judgement, Heaven handed her drivers license to the man. He studied it for a minute and then handed it back.

“I am an attorney and I represent your birth family.” The man looked at Heaven and waited for her reaction. “I have been searching for you at the request of your Aunt Prosperity Leigh. She had hoped to have found you while she was still alive but sadly she has recently passed. Ms. Leigh was your last living relative. She bequeathed her money and belongings to you. I’m here to deliver this letter and a key to Prosperity’s estate. Before you take possession of the property you will need to come see me and sign the deed. My card is attached. Call my office and make an appointment with my Secretary before the end of the week.”

With that he was gone, leaving Heaven in the hallway with her mouth open and the heavy envelope in her hand.

The sound of barking brought Heaven back to reality. Setting the envelope on the table where she kept her keys, she grabbed Puca’s leash and took the small dog for a walk around the park across the street. Pretending nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, Heaven grabbed a container of leftovers to heat for dinner and glanced at some sketches for her latest painting project.

When she could not put it off any longer, Heaven grabbed the envelope, sat on her couch, took a deep breath and opened the envelope. Inside were several smaller envelopes: the first held a stack of legal papers, one had a brochure someone from a real estate company had made in case Heaven hadn’t been located and they had to sell the house, another had her name written on it in delicate script and one held a jumble of old photographs. Heather took a deep breath as she opened the envelope bearing her name and read:

Heather,

I am your Aunt, Prosperity Leigh. If you are reading this letter then my attorney has done his part and informed you that I am no longer alive. I am sorry for that because I had so wanted to meet you. I’ve been looking for you for as long as I’ve known of your existence. I am your Mother’s sister. I’m sure you’ve found the envelope of photographs. Well, if you look at the picture of the two of us, I’m the one on the left. I am the younger one and everyone said, the prettier, but I never believed that was true. I always thought your Mother shone with a special light that transcended what most people understand of beauty.

I know you are wondering about who you are and how you came to be raised by strangers and where your family was throughout your life as an orphan. If I could have found you earlier in your life I would have raised you as my own. But fate had other plans for all of us and fate is not always kind.


Your Grandparents, were well meaning people who encouraged your Mother and I to be the best we could be. Their expectations were not that high -- they wanted us to do well in school, to learn the arts, to be able to cook, and to meet young men who would take care of us in the manner we were raised and accustomed. But your mother and I wanted something -- anything -- different from the life our parents had envisioned for us. Your mother wanted to devote her life to her painting and I wanted a life in the theater. Our parents were horrified at the thought of both. Our family was very well off and our parents insisted we live a life suited to a well heeled society. We attended etiquette classes and coming out balls. Your mother hated them and would have rather stayed home in her attic studio to paint. I was looking for a different crowd to run with than the socialites I was surrounded with in our uppity neighborhood and snooty private school.

Much to the chagrin of our parents we both eventually got our wishes. I escaped first. A theater group was putting on a performance at a local church and I was desperate to join. Of course, your Grandparents were adamant that I stay far away. Most of the performers were local and went to the public high school and community college. None of my private school friends were involved. But it was my chance to get involved in a real performance of a real play and I couldn’t wait to take part.

I can’t sugar coat this part of the story at all. I lied and snuck out of the house at night to rehearsals. I got a part in the play and I was good. I loved every minute I spent in the theater but I knew I couldn’t keep up the lying for the duration of the play. At some point we’d be done with rehearsals and ready to perform in public. My parents were bound to find out by then if they didn’t find out sooner. Your mother, who was a terrible liar, had been keeping up her part by covering for me even though I knew it pained her to do so. To top it all off, the director who loved my performance had invited me to join in and star in the traveling version of the show. We were to start out small in theaters all over the country but if we were successful here at home, a trip overseas was in our future. There was no way I was going to give up an opportunity like that to spend a life at home as a society wife, having children, running a household and performing acceptable acts of charity. On the eve of the final rehearsal I broke the news to our parents. I told them the decision had been made. I was to perform with the theater group in town and at the end of our run, travel with them for the duration of the play. After that? I wasn’t sure but I hoped they would support me and see my name in lights.

My father was furious. My mother cried. My sister sat silently watching us fight. It didn’t end well. I packed a suitcase, hugged your mother and moved in with another cast member. Your Grandfather cut off all ties with me and insisted the rest of the family follow suit. I am pretty sure your mother and grandmother snuck in to a performance on a night he was at the men’s club but they slipped away before I could find them in the crowd as they left the theater. I never saw my father again. He died and your grandmother and mother packed their things and moved out of the house we grew up in and took up refuge in the cottage.

My father had been the love of my mother’s life and when he died, a part of her died with him. She became as reclusive as your mother. She took up gardening and studied herbalism. She started hearing voices that no one else could hear. She insisted that fairies lived in the small cottage garden. She took up woodworking and sculpture and filled the garden with her creations. People started avoiding the property and saying she was a witch.

As for your mother, I wrote her letters from all over the world and she wrote to let me know what was going on with her and with mother. She painted a very positive slant on everything despite the fact that our mother may have been slipping over the edge between fantasy and reality. She set up a space in the attic of the cottage where she could paint and set up a small bedroom space.


Happy to rarely leave her studio, your mother purchased her supplies from a catalogue and received everything she needed by mail. Besides, there wasn’t an art supply store in our town for most of her life. And then, one day an Artist moved to town and set up shop within walking distance of our house.


He offered classes, private tutoring and sold supplies from the parlor of his home. My sister heard about him and there was nothing anyone could do to keep her from his door. At that point I don’t know if your Grandmother would have really noticed she was gone all that much. Most of the time my mother was either in the garden with her plants, out back in an old shed sculpting or in the kitchen creating medicines from what she had grown. As far as she was concerned your mother was simply upstairs painting. My sister slipped in and out of the house without the notice of her mother, who’s attention was always somewhere else.
I have a great many letters with a great many details of my sister falling in love with the Artist. And sadly a great many letters with the details of how when she informed him he was going to be a father he told her he was not fit to be a father, that his art was his calling in this life and how he could have nothing in his life that got in the way of what he thought was to be his legacy in this world.

Your mother returned to her attic studio without much of a word and turned to her painting for solace. She painted her pain and heartbreak away and one day, huge with child, she went into labor and you were born. While our mother had seemed so very far away in her own fairy world, she rallied for your birth providing her daughter with support, guidance and medicines to keep the labor manageable. But despite all she knew and all she could provide your mother slipped away from us as you entered this world with a loud and forceful cry. Your Grandmother took one look at you and knowing that she could not remain in our reality for long and would not be able to care for you on her own, made the fateful decision to let you go. The minute she handed you over to the foster care system it was as if you were lost to us forever.

I wished I had been there to snatch you up and give you the love and the life you deserved. But I was too busy with my own life being famous and traveling around the world. Being selfish and not noticing that the letters from my sister had all but stopped. And then, one day about 5 years later, my mother had a glimmer of sanity and wrote to me to tell me about all that had happened. About how my sister had died having you and about her decision to give you away. About how she’d been living with the fairies ever since that fateful day. About how she missed me and needed me now everyone she loved was gone.

Needless to say, I dropped everything after I read that letter. I flew as fast as I could to the cottage and found my mother more out of this world than in it. I moved in to my sister’s room in the attic and took over the full time care of our mom. The most surprising part about what I found was that despite the fact that she was truly “living with the fairies” was how neat and orderly the cottage was. The house was immaculately clean and the garden was thriving. Our mother looked not only well fed but was very well dressed. And despite the fact that I insisted on cooking and cleaning, it was as if I really didn’t have to. Someone or something in the cottage was always a step ahead of me in making sure my mother’s needs were met.

Another odd thing I noticed was that she was becoming more transparent with each passing day. At first I thought it was my eyesight but she was truly disappearing before my eyes. I tried to hold on to her and to keep her with me but one day she simply faded away from sight. And when she disappeared, so did whatever or whoever it was keeping the cottage tidy, the garden lush and the meals cooked and warm.


The cottage was becoming dingy and dusty, things were cracking and breaking, paint was peeling all around me. I was completely alone and so I turned my attention on finding you. My father had left us ridiculously comfortable and well off financially and I had made a pretty penny as a famous actress and so I spared no expense in finding you. But it was almost as if fate was keeping us apart. I would get a potential lead on a family you had lived with only to find that they had given you up, turned you back over to the orphanage and you had been placed with yet another foster family. No matter who I pried with cash, no one was willing to cross the line to let me know where you were.

I had so wanted to meet you and to tell you that you were and still are very loved. That you have a family and a story. That you have money and all the comforts of a home if you choose to accept them. That you have an aunt who is so very sorry to not have found you sooner.

But all I can do now is offer you what is rightfully yours. I hope you take the money and use it to fix up the cottage and turn it back into the home that your mother and grandmother loved. I hope you see it in your heart to forgive us and move on to do great things in your life. And I hope that you see fit to think of me kindly from time to time. Your mother, grandmother and I will be watching over you always.

Until we meet on the other side,

Your loving Aunt Prosperity.

It was dawn when Heaven finished the reading the letter. The sun had come up and it filled her shabby little apartment with light. Heaven wiped the streaked makeup from her eyes and blew her nose loudly. She opened the envelope of photos and went through them one by one. How amazing it was to see her own face reflected so clearly in the faces of her lost family. She picked up the large brass key and turned it over in her hand, feeling the weight of it and running her fingers over it’s smoothed edges.


Despite having worked 2 jobs the day before and not getting any sleep, after a shower and a cup of coffee Heaven called in sick to both jobs and she and Puca were on a bus from the city to Brindleton Bay.

The cottage was exactly as Heaven had expected it to be. The paint was peeling and the entire house was covered in vines. The garden beds were overgrown with weeds. The water in the old swimming pool was green with algae but the decorative tile work seemed to be in good shape. The yard was filled with sculptures, many of them lying on their sides but none were broken. The grass in the yard was long but not unruly. For a house that had been left without an occupant, Heaven thought it looked suspiciously lived in.


The air in the cottage was damp and musty as Heaven stepped inside. All the heavy curtains were closed. She felt her way along the wall to a window and pulled back the drapes. The bright sunlight made her blink and revealed a thick layer of dust on the furniture and in the air. Paintings and photographs hung askew on the walls. Heaven wandered into the kitchen.
Puca followed her into the room, sat down by a counter and barked. “What could you possibly want?” she said to her dog. Then she noticed a small dog biscuit on the countertop. “That’s odd.” she said to Puca as she gave the dog the treat. “it’s almost as if someone knew we were coming.”

Heaven wandered from room to room. She climbed the stairs and found herself in the small attic bedroom that had belonged to her mother. She pulled the dusty old sheets off the furniture and stretched out on the single bed. The exhaustion from the shock of the news of her family and from having gone without sleep hit her like a brick. Heaven closed her eyes and dreamed: her grandmother was working magic in the garden, her mom was putting the finishing touches on a painting in the next room and Prosperity was practicing lines for her next play. When Heaven woke from her nap the sun was setting. Despite her deep sadness at finding her family only to learn she had lost them in that very same moment, she felt comforted and at peace for the first time in her life. It was as if the small cottage had reached out and was giving her a huge hug. She looked around the room and smiled. For the first time in her life, Heaven was home.

I hope you enjoyed reading the story of Heaven and her family as much as I enjoyed creating it for all of you. I’ve taken the liberty of renovating her cottage as I thought she would like it. I’d love it if you download Heaven, her family (both alive and as ghosts) and her cottage home and help create the rest of her storyline. If you feel like it, post it here and share some links and images.
I’m looking forward to seeing what brilliance is created here in the Sims 4 community!