“I can’t believe you kept Mother’s letters from me!” I hissed.

Auntie tried to shush me. “I have given them to you now.”

“Do you think that makes it okay? How could you? They were not yours!”

Auntie couldn’t look at me and her cheeks turned red. “I’m sorry, Lily. I don’t know what else to say. I can’t change the past.”

“Do you know how many times I thought she didn’t care or think about us?” I started to cry. Auntie tried to comfort me, but I pulled away.

“I thought I was doing what was best.”

“You were doing what was best for you.”

“Lily, I was there. I watched you and Bea suffer. I didn’t want you to hold out hope. I knew she would not come back.”

“How could you have known? And even if she wasn’t going to come back, don’t you think Bea and I had a right to whatever she sent us? It was not yours to keep.”

“I know that now. All I can say is I thought I was protecting you girls.”

“We didn’t need protecting. We needed the truth. What if I could have reached out to her? What if I could have saved her? Does Father know about these?” I had sensed that Auntie and Father were hiding things from me all these years. Here was the proof.

“Yes, but don’t blame him. I was the one who insisted we keep them from you and Bea.”

Auntie couldn’t say anything more. Her face was downcast, in the shadows of the overhead lights. I felt her regret pooling around me and opened the air vents above my head, trying to remove the remorse seeping from her pores.

I asked John to switch seats with me once again and pulled the letters out of the sealed bag. I sat for a few moments, staring in shock at the pile of paper on my lap. There were six letters, still in their envelopes, all sporting blue and red striped airmail borders along their edges. There was no return address, and the postmarks were from Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Half were addressed to me and half to Bea.

The envelopes had neat openings along the top, carved out by a letter opener. I took out the first letter like a White Rabbit candy, carefully peeling off the wrapper to avoid tearing the edible rice paper. As I unfolded the thin, delicate paper, I recognized Mother’s handwriting and felt like a warm blanket was being tucked over me. I tried to read the letters slowly, to savour them like the candy I was given as a child. They were short, one-page missives that didn’t tell me anything about where she was or what she had been doing. Instead, she asked Bea and me questions: How is school? What are you reading right now? Do you still play with Hilary? In the early letters, she assured us she was okay and told us she was sorry she had to leave without saying goodbye. She said she hoped we would see each other again soon. The last few letters seemed less optimistic. She wrote that she missed us, that she hoped we remembered her and missed her, too. She said she was sad we were not together. In the very last letter, Mother apologized again and said she hoped we would forgive her one day.