Letters From the Other Side

writer name : Nadeem shah

The morning after Margaret Ellis’s funeral was quiet.

Too quiet.

Emily stood on the porch of her childhood home, coffee cooling in her hands, watching as fog curled between the trees of the small Vermont town of Willowbrook. Her mother had passed just four days earlier—peacefully, in her sleep—but the ache in Emily's chest hadn't dulled.

The house felt haunted. Not with ghosts, but with silence. With everything left unsaid.

Emily had returned from Boston to handle her mother’s affairs: the house, the will, the dozens of old boxes her mother had refused to let her touch while alive. Margaret was private, even secretive. She never spoke of Emily's father, barely talked about her own past, and always brushed off questions with a soft, distant smile.

Now, Margaret was gone. And the answers, Emily assumed, had gone with her.

That was until the first letter arrived.

It was placed carefully on the porch that morning, just beneath the welcome mat, the corner peeking out like a whisper trying to be heard. The envelope was yellowed and soft, her name—“Emily”—written in her mother’s unmistakable cursive.

There was no postage, no return address. No footprints in the dew-covered grass.

Heart thudding, Emily opened it.

Letter One

My dearest Emily,

If this letter has found you, then I am no longer with you. But my love never left. Nor did the truths I was never brave enough to share while I still had time.

There are more letters. One for each truth I buried. You deserve to know me—not the mother who smiled and made tea and changed the subject—but the woman behind her.

Look beneath the kitchen floorboard, the one that always creaks when you step near the sink.

With all my love,

Mom

Emily stared at the page, numb. It was her mother’s handwriting, unmistakable in its looping grace. She rushed inside, heart pounding, and dropped to her knees by the old wooden floor.

The board lifted easily. Beneath it, wrapped in plastic, were several more envelopes, numbered in red ink.

She took the one marked “2” and read it slowly, her eyes stinging with disbelief.

Letter Two

Emily,

You asked about your father more times than I can count. I always told you he left. That much was true. But I never told you why.

His name was Daniel Monroe. We met when I was twenty-one. I was naïve, looking for love, stability, a name to build a family around. I thought I found it in him.

But Daniel wasn’t the man he claimed to be. He was married. With two children. I didn’t know until I was already pregnant with you.

When I confronted him, he vanished.

I told everyone he had left us. It was simpler. Cleaner. I wanted to shield you from that truth. Maybe I was wrong to do so.

Emily folded the letter slowly, fingers trembling.

Her father wasn’t the man she’d imagined—a ghost who had walked out on a young family. He was a stranger. A liar. Someone who never even tried to know her.

The weight of that realization hit hard, but underneath the pain was something else: clarity. For the first time, the shape of her life felt sharper.

Over the next two weeks, the rest of the letters came—one by one. Always placed just outside the door, without explanation. No footsteps. No car. No witnesses.

Each one pulled back another curtain.

Letter Three

I was diagnosed with breast cancer when you were eleven. It was early, and the doctors were optimistic. I didn’t want to worry you, so I kept it secret. I wore wigs and told you the hair loss was from a new shampoo. I went to “work” when I was actually going to chemo.

I survived that time, but not without scars. I learned how fragile life is. How quickly it slips through your fingers.

That’s when I began writing these letters. I needed to make sure you’d know the truth someday.

Letter Four

When you left for college, I cried for three days. Not because I was sad you left, but because I was proud. You were everything I had worked for—strong, brilliant, kind. I never told you enough, but I watched you become a woman I admired. I regret not saying that more.

I was too focused on protecting you. Too caught up in the idea that love meant shielding you from everything dark. But real love, I’ve learned, means trusting someone to face the truth.

The fifth letter brought a memory that had always haunted Emily—the night she’d found her mother crying alone in the backyard, staring up at the stars.

Letter Five

You saw me that night, didn’t you? You were seventeen. I told you it was nothing, just a bad dream. But that night… I was mourning your sister.

Yes, Emily. You had a sister.

Her name was Grace. I lost her before you were born—six months into the pregnancy. She was stillborn. I never told anyone. Not even the doctor knew how much I had hoped for her. I buried it, like everything else.

I couldn’t face that loss again, so I poured everything into you. And you were enough. More than enough. But I want you to know: Grace was real. And I loved her, too.

Emily sat with that letter in her lap for hours. A sister. A name. A story that had been buried beneath decades of silence.

How much of her mother’s pain had she never seen?

The sixth and final letter arrived on a windy Sunday morning, tucked beneath a single white lily. Emily knew, the moment she saw it, that it would be the last.

Letter Six

My sweet girl,

If you’ve come this far, thank you. Thank you for listening. For not turning away from the parts of me that were broken. I spent my whole life trying to protect you from my past, but in doing so, I denied you pieces of yourself.

We are made from the people who came before us, Emily. Their stories. Their pain. Their mistakes. Carry mine gently, but don’t let them weigh you down.

You are free now—to forgive, to move forward, to live boldly.

Know this: I loved you with every breath I had. I still do.

And I will always be just beyond the veil, whispering your name in the quiet moments.

Until we meet again,

Mom

The fog lifted that afternoon, revealing a sky so blue it hurt to look at.

Emily stood beneath the maple tree her mother once planted and buried the letters in a small wooden box, placing a stone on top. Not to hide them—but to honor them.

To remember.

She finally understood the woman her mother had been. Not just the mother, but the woman—flawed, strong, wounded, and brave.

And as she stood there, wind tugging at her hair, Emily whispered into the breeze:

"I hear you now."