Dear Ng.,

Ann sat at the table she hated the most; his table. The place where conversations turned into interrogations, where truths became accusations, and where he always had to be in control. She remembered. Not just the yelling on the drive back from her primary school graduation. Not just how her six-year-old self whispered “shhh” into the backseat air, praying they wouldn’t crash, praying they’d stop screaming. Not just the fear that her family might end that day, her siblings asleep, her small body bracing for impact. She remembered being the first daughter. The one who was supposed to know better. The one who absorbed it all, and said nothing. She remembered the silence. And the first soldier, her mother’s first son. Gone. She watched her mother carry the grief like a second skin, hoping the second son would heal the loss. But ten years later, he too was gone. Ann lived in a house of ghosts. Ghosts of children. Ghosts of joy. Ghosts of a mother who stayed silent and a fath...