ORDINARY THINGS

The afternoon sun slanted through the bedroom window as Jennifer pulled another stack of sweaters from her mum’s closet. The disliked scent of mothballs, the lavender sachets, strangely now meant home, a longing for something lost that she couldn't describe. Beneath that, if she breathed deeply, she could almost grasp the shadow of her childhood—the smell of her father’s cigar, her mum’s rosewater perfume.
She’d been putting off this task for days—a holiday was meant for recovery, not resurrection of ghosts.
The house had once been alive—sunlit and airy, her father’s grin as he played with her and her brother, her mum’s humming as she watered the garden blooms. Now it was just a shell, hollowed by time and silence.

Sorting through a lifetime of possessions felt like dismantling her mum piece by piece. The jewellery box with its velvet compartments—a few expensive items. The good porcelain, still bearing the lipstick stains of many dinner parties. But the personal artifacts—yellowed photos with unfamiliar smiling faces, diaries with their brittle pages bearing secrets, the inexplicable trinkets saved for ‘who knows what’ reasons, accumulated over sixty-five years of living—those were harder.
That’s when her fingers brushed against the shoebox.
It was shoved deep in the closet behind a row of shoe bags, its white cardboard softened with age. Something about the way it had been hidden—not thrown away, not displayed, but carefully preserved just out of sight—made her pulse quicken.

Jennifer squatted on the faded floorboards—her mum would’ve hated their neglected state. The box askew in her lap. The lid resisted at first, as if reluctant to reveal its secrets. When it finally gave way, the scent of old paper and faint cologne rose to meet her.
Letters. Dozens of them, neatly stacked and tied with a faded blue ribbon.
Her father’s handwriting leaped out at her from the top envelope—that distinctive slant, the way his ‘y’s always looped a little too far.
Muriel Guermond written in bold strokes across the front.
A chill ran down Jennifer’s spine. Her father had been dead for thirty years, but in that moment, it felt like he’d just walked into the room.

June 12, 1972
My dearest Muriel,
I’m writing this by torchlight because Caleb is snoring loud enough to wake the whole jungle and I can’t sleep. Funny—I used to complain about your cold feet keeping me up. Now I’d give anything to be annoyed by them again.
Today was bad. We lost Patrizio. He just turned 19 last week. He was showing me a photo of his girl back home when the sniper got him. One second he’s laughing, the next he’s gone. Just like that.
They tell us it’s for something greater, but all I keep thinking is how much he must have wanted to live. The look in his eyes—Muriel, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same after this. I don’t know if you’ll recognise me when I come home.
Promise me something? When I get back, let’s go to that diner by the river. The one with the strawberry pie. I want to sit in a booth and watch you roll your eyes when I order coffee at midnight. I want to hear you complain about my boots tracking mud everywhere. I want ordinary things so bad it hurts.
Yours always,
Albert
Jennifer’s vision blurred. She wiped angrily at her eyes. This wasn’t the father she remembered. This scared, grieving boy—was someone she’d never met.
The next cluster of letters bore domestic postmarks.

March 3, 1973
Muriel,
I know you’re only downstairs, but I need to write this.
I saw how you flinched last night when I knocked over the lamp. And I heard what you told your mum on the phone today—'He’s different.’
I am different. But not in the ways you think.
When I close my eyes, I still see the rice paddies. Still smell the blood and the burning. The doctor says it’ll fade with time, but what if it doesn’t? What if this is who I am now?
You deserve better than midnight sweats and a husband who jumps at car backfires. But God help me, I’m trying.
A.
Jennifer traced the smudged ink where a drop of water had fallen—her mum’s tear or her father’s, she’d never know. She remembered arguments behind closed doors, her mum’s tight smile at breakfast the next morning. She’d been too young to understand then. Now the memories took on new meaning.
A pink envelope, slightly singed at one corner.

May 17, 1978
My Muriel,
She’s perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes, and a cry that could wake the dead (good lungs, the nurse said). When they put her in my arms, I was so scared I’d drop her that I nearly handed her back.
But then she grabbed my finger. This tiny, fierce grip—like she was claiming me. And I thought: This is my chance. To be better. To leave the war where it belongs—in the past.
I don’t know how to be the father she deserves, but I swear I’ll learn.
Love,
Albert

Jennifer’s breath near stopped. She remembered that grip—her father had told the story often, how baby Jennifer had refused to let go, how he’d walked around for an hour with her tiny fist clamped around his thumb.
But what came after? The letters grew sporadic, the handwriting increasingly uneven.

‘Undated, mid-1983’
Muriel—
I found Jennifer’s crayon drawing under the couch. ‘My Family’ with the four of us (she included the damn cat but forgot Jeff’s ears—kids are brutal).
I sat there staring at it until the streetlights came on. That’s when I realised—I wasn’t in the picture she drew in her head. Not really. Just some shadow that comes and goes.
You were right to hide the whiskey. I’m sorry you had to.
A.

Jennifer’s chest ached. She had vague memories of her father’s absences—‘business trips’ her mum called them, though she’d later learned they were stints in rehab. The crayon drawing still existed somewhere, probably in one of the albums her mum meticulously maintained. She wondered: Would her world have been greyer if she’d known the truth at eleven? Or would the pain have been easier to bear, because at least she’d have understood?
She thought of the way he’d sometimes stare out the window, his eyes distant, even when she tugged at his sleeve. The way he’d missed her school play, claiming a work trip, only for her to find him sitting in the dark garage, a bottle in his hand.
If I’d known, she thought, maybe I wouldn’t have taken it personally. Maybe I’d have realised it wasn’t about me.
She reached for the next letter, but her fingers found only empty box. Then—there, tucked in the corner, one last envelope.

February 14, 1985
Muriel,
Happy Valentine’s Day. Twenty years ago today, I brought you daisies because I couldn’t afford roses. You said you liked them better anyway—‘Roses are for people who don’t pay attention.’
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. All the things we didn’t say because we assumed the other knew. All the ways we let each other down because we were too proud or too scared to ask for help.
I’m sorry for all the things we didn’t learn about each other. Maybe in another life, we’ll have more time.
Yours,
Albert

Three weeks later, he was dead. A massive coronary at thirty-nine—‘Like his father,’ the doctor had said, as if that explained everything.
Jennifer sat frozen, the letter crumpling slightly in her hand. All these years, she’d thought her mum’s silence was about grief. But maybe it had been about guilt.
Had her mum wondered if she could have done more? If she’d missed some crucial moment where she might have saved him? Had her mum lain awake, tracing the outline of his absence in their bed? Had she replayed every argument, every silent car ride, searching for the exact moment where love might have pivoted into salvation?
She'd died two months ago—the illness had whittled her to bone, yet her eyes stayed unchanged: that same knowing gaze from her youth, as if she'd already glimpsed whatever comes next.
The thought was a live wire.

Jennifer grabbed her phone, thumb hovering over her daughter’s name—but what would she say? This wasn’t a conversation for voicemail. Her fingers moved:
Found Grandpa’s letters. Come home this weekend? Need to tell you—
She backspaced. Too ominous. Tried again:
Found Grandpa’s war letters. Can you skip class Friday? There’s things you should know.
Three dots... Then:
Already packing. U ok?
Jennifer exhaled. The shoebox lay between her knees like an unconfessed sin. Inside, decades of ink and anguish, the fragile arithmetic of how much a family could withstand before it shattered.
She typed:
It will be. Time to ask the questions no one else did.
At the funeral, people had called it a tragedy. A young father, struck down in his prime. But reading these letters, Jennifer understood—the real tragedy had been the silence that came after. The stories untold, the questions unasked.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake.

Carefully, she retied the ribbon. The past wasn’t hers to change, but the future? That was still unwritten. Jennifer walked into the living room.
The piano stood by the doorway—her mum’s pride, when played for friends at drinking late afternoon soirees. Now, silent, taciturn, dust settling from complete abandonment. An old acquaintance that she never really understood. Too clumsy for music, her mum would say when Jennifer was young and fumbled through Mozart, Bach, her fingers would play such disconcerting notes. The memory still stung.
The liquor cabinet yawned empty beside it. Once, it had held bottles in mesmerising shapes—sapphire gin, amber whiskey, a squat green absinthe bottle she’d been forbidden to touch. Her parents’ laughter used to ricochet off those bottles during their parties with friends, as if happiness were a performance they’d rehearsed.
She knew better now...

A frustrated marriage—ten years of folded arms and cold silences—a husband from romantic to a womanising scoundrel. Her job as a secretary for a whimsical handsome architect, most of time, grumpy, who tried to get her into bed—nevertheless, the pay kept her in therapy and her daughter at college.
She hadn’t learned happiness. Hadn’t taught it to her daughter either. But maybe she could still teach her this: how to choose. How to spot the cracks in charming smiles and walk away from gilded cages.
If only her father had been there to teach her.

Jeff would’ve needed it more. Her brother had shed his name like a snakeskin at eighteen, trading it for ‘River’ and a one-way ticket to an unknown place. Their father’s death at nine had unmoored him; by twenty, he was a smudge on the family’s horizon, sending postcards from communes and ketamine clinics.
Jeff— ‘wanderer.’ A self-fulfilling prophecy? Or just convenient blame for a boy who’d lost his compass too young?
If their father had lived, would Jeff still be here? Where to find her brother? Would she have married a man who kissed like a promise and left like a thief?
The house offered no answers.

Somewhere beyond the window, a robin trilled—crimson flash against the oak branches. Her father had loved robins. Jennifer stood, her knees stiff from sitting too long. The bird outside sang again, a bright note in the stillness. So rare to see them these days. Could it be a sign?
She wouldn’t end up like her mum, preserving secrets in shoeboxes. She wouldn’t vanish like Jeff, yet this house could no longer hold her. The walls pressed in, thick with decades of unspoken words. She needed space. Air that hadn’t been breathed before.
‘Okay, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s start over...’