The morning after her eleventh birthday felt no different from the days before. The house was quiet, the air heavy, and the sound of her footsteps on the tiled floor echoed through the empty rooms. Siti swept the porch slowly, dragging the broom back and forth just to pass the time.
That was when she noticed it—an envelope in the rusted postbox by the gate.
Her heart skipped. For a moment, she imagined her parents' car pulling up, her father waving from behind the wheel, her mother calling her name. But the road was empty. Only the letter waited.
She pulled it out carefully. Her name was written neatly across the front: "Siti Suhaili." The handwriting was unmistakable—it was her father's.
Her hands trembled as she opened it. Inside was a folded piece of paper and a shiny plastic card that looked strange in her small palm. She unfolded the paper quickly, her eyes scanning the words.
"Siti,
We have made a bank account in your name. Inside it is enough money to support you for seven months. Every month, more money will be sent to your account. Use it wisely. Take care of yourself.
– Ibu & Ayah"
That was all. No "we love you." No promise to come home. No explanation.
Siti stared at the bank card. She had seen adults use them at shops, sliding them through machines with practiced ease, but she had never held one before. It felt cold, foreign, like something that didn't belong to her. She turned it over and over in her hand, her chest tightening.
"Seven months…" she whispered aloud. The words from the letter echoed in her mind. Seven months of money, but not even one word about when they would return.
For a long time, Siti sat on the front steps of the house with the letter in her lap. Part of her wanted to feel relieved—at least her parents hadn't forgotten her completely. They remembered enough to send money. But another part of her, the deeper part, felt an ache that the money could never fill.
Money could not laugh with her. Money could not hug her when she cried. Money could not sit at the dinner table and tell her stories.
That night, Siti placed the letter and the bank card in a small box she kept under her bed. It was the same box where she kept her treasures—a ribbon her mother once tied in her hair, a stone her father picked up for her by the river, the dried petals of her tenth birthday flowers.
Now, the card joined those memories. But unlike the others, it didn't make her smile.
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Siti asked the question that had been haunting her for months:
"Why did you leave me?"
The silence answered back.
And though she had a bank account full of money, her heart felt poorer than ever.