Winter Lilies

The first one arrived with the new year, nine years after she had.

She had been out in the yard, you see, wandering about the hedges and collecting snowflakes in her hair when the sister had told her a package had arrived.

It was a plain brown box, and it would have been dreadfully ordinary if not for the dried white flower tied on top with twine.

An odd present, the only one she had ever received since coming to the orphanage as a newborn.

“What is it?” she had asked the sister.

“Why don’t you open it?”

So the girl did, feeling a flush spread across her cheeks.

She felt… happy.

She slid the string and flower off of the box, careful not to jostle the fragile petals. She ripped off the brown paper and lifted the box’s lid only to notice that there was a single letter tucked neatly inside the small package.

“Read it, dear,” the sister suggested.

She flipped the letter back and forth in her hands, fingers caressing the golden seal on its back. Careful not to ruin it, she opened the top flap and pulled out a piece of parchment. There was barely a sentence written on the paper, one cursive message scrawled in ink.

I’m sorry for everything.

There was no name attached to the letter, nor was there any explanation as to why it was sent. She thought maybe it had been an accident, that someone out there was expecting this letter and she had somehow obtained it, instead.

She’d open her bedside drawer where the flower and letter were stored and hope that maybe she’d be privileged enough to get more.

She treasured her gift, even if it had been for someone else.

Then another package arrived, similarly to the first, at the beginning of the new year. It was wrapped in the same brown paper and knotted with the same white flower.

“What type of flower is it?” she had asked, curious about the reoccurring ornament.

“I believe it’s a lily.”

She twisted the stem in her hand and whispered, “How lovely,” before laying the lily in her drawer, where it now belonged.

When she read the note, she realized it was quite different than the last.

I wish I had more time. There’s too much I want to say, too much I can’t. I know you won’t remember, and you’re much older now, but ten is such a tender age. I do not want to spoil you, so wait a little longer for me.

The girl was almost ten, she thought, her birthday on the day after the first of the year, the day after she received her letters. It was then that she decided that these were presents, early birthday gifts sent so they would be on time.

Every year, without fail, the same gift arrived.

Most years, it was well wishes and longing notes about how they wished things were different. What exactly they were talking about, she never knew, but she was happy nonetheless to be the other half of this one-sided correspondence. The rest of her letters were somber, and she noticed that as she grew older, they started to feel sad.

She would wait throughout the night and into the morning, just to catch a glimpse of who was delivering these presents. Many times she waited by the gate of the orphanage, slinking against the stone wall in wait of the post, only to find it in her room instead.

“Can birds deliver mail? Do you think they come in my window?” she inquired of one of the sisters, desperate for answers.

“Only heaven knows,” was her sighful answer as she carried a laundry basket full of wet garments to the clothesline outside. “Come on, then. Help me hang these up.”

The final letter arrived right before her eighteenth birthday, covered in the same brown paper and another white lily to add to her drawer.

Ten letters and ten birthdays had passed her by while she helped take care of the orphanage. She was preparing to leave, to start a journey of her own.

But there had been one thing she was waiting on.

Sitting on her bedside, she found herself shrinking back into a child again, holding the letter in her hands tenderly.

My dearest, you are not so little anymore. What I would have given to be alive and well with you, but life is not always so considerate and kind. I was not strong enough, but know that I gave the last of my strength to you. There is only one thing I have left to say to you, my precious daughter.

Mother loves you, always.

And the girl took that strength and made it her own.

The sisters had been careful not to let her see the gifts every year, stashing them in her room when she stepped out for a moment. They had been hidden away, kept in the same basket her sickly mother had brought them in, along with her newborn daughter.

When she heard this story and was told that this would be the last of her dearest treasures, she had grieved in a way she hadn’t understood, for this bond she had never felt before.

She wouldn’t understand it until she smiled at the morning sunrise, breeze blowing her hair into her face.

She wouldn’t understand it until she loved someone herself, laughing as he tucked the stray strands behind her ears.

She wouldn’t understand it until she had a child of her own, holding her in her arms as they all basked in the warm sunlight of spring.

She named her Lily.