Author's Note: This was written and published in our school paper twelve years ago. Again, please do not judge me by my former self. :)

She opened the door cautiously, as if afraid of waking sleeping memories that have lain peacefully in her father's work room for years. The little room, so long-cherished by her father was now dilapidated. The roof is almost completely gone and she figured that the next storm would destroy the remaining part.

She glanced around and sighed. The coffins were still there, waiting for her to remember them, to love them.

...

For as long as I can remember, my father had been making coffins.

My father was a painfully shy man who hated to be around strangers. Maybe that was the very reason why he took to making coffins.

Right from the beginning, I hated those coffins because they stole my father from me. From morning until dinner, he would be in his work room, fashioning boxes that grieving people would come to buy from him. My father's coffins were popular in town. Not only were they cheap, they were also adorned with exquisite carvings and were made of good wood. But the real reason why I hated those coffins was because they scared me.

For most of my childhood, I would watch my father silently carve wood without noticing me. It was not that he didn't care for his only daughter, he just wasn't the talkative type.

Then when I was about twelve, Daniel came. He was my mother's godchild and his father had died suddenly from a bad heart. From what a classmate had whispered to me, I learned that his mother had run off with another man when he was about three.

Daniel was quiet like my father, but he was also cold to me. He would spend hours with my father, learning how to make coffins. In a way, he became the son, and I was ignored more than ever. Because he was about three years older than me, he acted like a sullen older brother at school. He would just look at the bullies that teased me and they would all scamper off. He had the same effect on me though.

He led his class from the first time he stepped in our school but he didn't make any friends. Not that I ever saw him try. With his finely chiseled face and good features, he was also popular with the girls, but he never paid them any attention except to look scornfully at them. I was his only companion and he seemed to resent that also.

Every day, from the time I was twelve until he graduated from high school, we would walk home together. He'd be walking silently while I skipped beside him. When he was in the mood to indulge me, we would gather wildflowers, and watch for shooting stars while catching fireflies.

There were times when he would not be able to go to school because of the heart problem he had inherited from his father. But then Daniel was nothing if not strong. Maybe his heart was weak, but his determination was not. He graduated valedictorian of their class.

After that he left our town to study at the big university in the city. I missed him like crazy, which was funny since when at home, Daniel would either be with my father or in his room studying. He took up Engineering and as his course cost him many hours of patient studying, he could not come home as often as I would have preferred.

On Daniel's graduation day, a photographer took a picture of the three of us, my father looking pleased though a bit shy amongst the crowd, me, wearing a white dress with sprigs of red flowers whispering summer days and Daniel, serious and unsmiling, wearing his toga though not his cap. I still have that photo in my room.

He didn't move back home as I thought he would. One of the best firms in the city hired him and his visits became even rarer than before.

The summer before my twenty-second birthday, my father died. It was sudden — in fact it was so sudden that I didn't even have the time to say goodbye to him.

He was at the funeral home, delivering a new casket when he suddenly collapsed. He didn't even make it to the hospital. The doctor said he suffered from a stroke. It was a wonder because I had never known my father to have been sick before. But then it didn't really matter to me how he died; it was that he just... died. One moment my silent father was there, the next, the silence had already swallowed up the whole house.

Daniel came home then — and brought a girl with him. She was silent, like him; polite and had a pretty face.

I couldn't even muster a smile for him when he introduced Ingrid to me.

The night that my father was buried I told the neighbors that they need not come and pray or play mah jhong. I want to mourn for my father.

I opened his workroom, half hoping he'd be there with his carving tools and timid smile, but he was not.

I took the old chair he had sat upon for years and sat on it. It was then that I finally cried. Neighbors had not failed to note that in the ten days that they mourned for him I had never shed tears.

I remember his quiet smile whenever I brought my report card to him, or when I made him coffee or when I gave him the bottles filled with fireflies that Daniel and I caught. I mourned for the father I never listened to, for the father whose voice I'll never hear.

"Analia..."

I didn't turn but he came and stood in front of me and knelt down.

"Where's Ingrid?" I asked, trying to wipe away the tears but he took both my hands and held them.

"I sent her home."

For a moment I wondered if he knew what was in my heart while we were growing up.

"Did you know your father was deaf-mute?" His question left me dazed.

Deaf? Mute? Why hadn't I noticed? Didn't he come whenever I called him? Didn't he call my name?

"Analia? I'm asking if you knew your father could neither hear nor speak."

"No..." It was a completely stupid answer.

"I thought so. But then you two never needed ears nor voice. You always talked with your hearts. Just like us."

I could only nod as he spoke, not quite catching the things he said.

"You better go. She's waiting."

I could tell that he didn't understand me immediately, but it slowly dawned on him.

"Ingrid is my half-sister. We met when our mother called me a few months ago."

"Oh."

How could I have been so silly?

"It's a wonder, your being talkative always annoyed me, your vivacity tires me. But you... you always make me want to come home. You're... home..." he whispered and kissed me.

...

She slowly took off her slippers, then carefully lay down inside one of the open coffins and gazed at the piece of sky that showed because of the broken roof.

She could still see his face, his finely chiseled face that betrayed no emotion. It was the same face that peered at her from a coffin three years ago.

They only had a few years together before Daniel died of his bad heart. But then as he had said all those years ago, they need no ears nor voice. Their hearts can talk.

She is no longer afraid of the coffins; in a way she had finally understood why her father loved the coffins he made. It was when he was with the coffins that he felt closer to his dead Anita. Each coffin was a love letter to the wife he had lost.