I can’t say I never wondered why my mother walked out. I was only a baby when she left, so I never got to know anything about her that might’ve offered some reasoning. My father didn’t know or care where she had gone. Over the years, I had managed to console myself with the fact that I had no mother of my own.

I was calm when I received the letter. It said my mother was dead, she had been for two years, and was signed by a woman named Stella, who claimed to be my mother’s friend. The letter was accompanied by a set of keys and a plane ticket. Each line seemed more alien to me than the last. My mother had moved back to Japan, lived there for the rest of her life. I reread the letter countless times on the plane ride there. In some cruel twist of fate, my father and mother had died in the same year, together to the end. When I got to the house it was already night.

It was obvious no one had been in here for quite a while Most things in the house were covered with a thin coat of dust. Only faint imprints that someone had once lived here remained. A closet filled with coat hangers but no clothes, the marks of cups on the wooden table, a lampshade with painted fingerprints on it but no bulb inside.

There were a few cardboard boxes sitting on the floor, filled with the belongings of my mother. In one, I found a picture of her. She stood between two other people: a man with a thick beard and another woman that looked to be my age. The woman was Stella; I knew that much because I had seen her picture.

The man must have been her second husband. His facial hair reminded me of how much my father hated beards, how he would go on and on about how they would catch all the food that missed your mouth. I wondered if my mother was reminded of that when she married this man, if she held the same gleeful sense of spite my father often did.

My mother herself had aged gracefully. I had her nose. I had always known that because it didn’t fit with the rest of my face. Her hair came down in black sheets, carrying a sheen that I had often tried but failed to achieve with my own hair.

I kept trying to reimagine the picture. First, I placed myself where Stella was and my father in the man’s position. I tried swapping our spots and then considered just my mother and I or my parents alone. I put myself in front of all three of them, joining in on their smile. It never looked right.

Among the old cardboard boxes was a smaller wooden one, dark and rich in colour. There were shiny metal clasps keeping it shut. I handled it delicately, moving it up to the kitchen table and undoing the mechanisms holding it closed with light fingers. When it opened, I was amazed.

It was a selection of papers that was inside. Some were cut out from larger sheets, some printed out sections of articles, others cropped photographs. What they all shared in common was me. They were of my accomplishments, arrivals, announcements. There was a picture of me for every year up until the last two. Someone must’ve been sending them to my mother, to get so many like this.

I had told myself on the plane not to get too emotional, but it was hard to contain the lump in my throat as I sorted through the stack of papers. There were so many moments I had forgotten about. I found a photo similar to the one I had seen of my mother, with two friends on either side of me. We were only teenagers. I remembered that photo, how my friends’ parents had been on the other side of the camera, telling us to come in closer and slink our arms around our shoulders. I had wished so badly for my own mother to be there. I suppose she had been, just in a different way than I had expected. At the very end of the stack was a lonely, innocuous note. On it was a single word written with blue pen. For you. I wasn’t sure who it was addressing.

I had never asked exactly how Stella had managed to find me. The only thing she had said was that she had found something in my mother’s belongings after she died. It must’ve been this. It was practically my whole life, encased in a wooden box. An unwanted thought snuck into my mind, weaseling in between the bombardment of memories from the box. Maybe if I had done something remarkable, she would’ve seen it. Maybe then she would’ve come for me and my father. Was she ever planning to return? Was she content to simply sit away, watching me from afar until she died? I had often asked myself if my mother would’ve cared for what I was doing. She had been keeping track of me all along, from the other side of the world. And yet, she never came. With the mass of papers laid out before me, I asked myself if I would’ve wanted her to return. I could hear the doorbell ringing, my mother standing at the door with a suitcase, my father shouting and yelling. I didn’t know if I liked it or not.

In the dramas my father liked to watch, big reveals were accompanied by a host of sound effects and overacting. I always thought they were silly, that no human would really react like that no matter what the news was. But sitting there, with the box my mother had made before me, I found myself longing for the comedic crash of a drum or cymbal. It was better than what I was left with. Me, the thoughts of what could’ve been, and the silence of what was.

The next morning, I was woken up by the sound of a doorbell ringing. It was well into the day already, but the jetlag dragged my eyelids down. I stumbled towards the front door, opening it in the clothes I had slept in.

Stella was standing on the other side, slightly older now than I had seen in the photo. The overlapping greens of her clothing made her stand out against the background of cement and brick. She opened her mouth and I nodded, but it all seemed like a blur of noise. The words only slipped past my still-closed ears and disintegrated into the air.

She let herself into the house and I scrambled upstairs. The splash of cold water on my face kickstarted my brain just enough to function. I readied myself for the day, slamming my contacts into my eyes and grabbing the first clothes I found, before returning to Stella. She was standing next to the kitchen, examining my mother’s things that I had taken out the night before. The wooden box was removed, placed next to the bed upstairs. Stella held up a scarf.

“Well, what do you know?” Her voice sounded like she had dipped it in crushed walnuts and covered it in honey. It was accompanied by a slight accent. “This is my scarf! She never gave it back.” I smiled, an attempt to break the tension that filled the space between the two of us.

“Have you had anything to eat?” Stella asked. “We could go get some breakfast.”

“No, not yet,” I replied. “Sorry, I haven’t really looked around. I’ve barely thought about food.”

“No problem, no problem. I know you must be feeling a lot right now.” She thought for a moment. “And if you have any questions, feel free to ask.”

“Did you know?” The question came out suddenly, so fast even I was surprised. “About me? Did she say anything before she died?” Stella looked at me like she was considering what and what not to say.

“No,” she sighed. “Your mother…I don’t think she told anyone. I only found out about you when I was cleaning out her house.”

“I figured.” Both of us directed our eyes to the floor before Stella clasped her hands back together.

“You know, your mother had a guilty pleasure when it came to breakfast,” she said. “We could try that.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Sure. I don’t have any plans.”

“Sounds good. Something you can only find in Japan, I promise.”

We put our coats on and headed outside, Stella wearing the scarf she had liberated from my mother’s possessions. The morning sun brought with it a slight cold that nipped on our skin as we walked down the street. The walk wasn’t long, but it wasn’t short either. The minutes seemed to melt into each other as I took in the street, the light illuminating every detail I had missed the previous night.

We stopped at an inconspicuous corner. It held two large vending machines, complete with multicoloured lights on the edges of the metal. One of them held drinks, sodas and sweet teas. The other was more interesting. I moved my face closer to the glass to get a look. An array of cans sat inside.

“You know what they are?” Stella asked.

“No.” There were groups of Japanese letters plastered all over the machine, bold and brightly coloured, but I couldn’t read any of them.

“Canned cakes.” Stella announced it proudly, like she had made them herself.

Canned cakes. The cans were transparent, but all you could see was the cream that covered the outer layer of the can. Each can looked identical to me, though I assumed they had to be different flavours.

“Are they any good?” I wasn’t sure of the quality of a baked good in a can, though admittedly I had never tried one.

“I like them,” Stella shrugged. “But your mother loved them. On days she felt lazy, she would come here and eat one of these for breakfast.” Cake for breakfast sounded like something my father would complain about my mother doing.

“It was a tradition for just the two of us,” Stella continued, “getting one of these in the morning.” Her voice quieted. “The week before she died, I was here. She was too.”

I ran my finger down the glass until I found one with more than just cream visible. There were layers of brown graham crackers in it as well.

“What’s this one?”

“Cheesecake,” Stella responded.

We bought two, one for each of us. I got the cheesecake while Stella got chestnut. I waited for the cans to fall off the display, but instead two new ones appeared in the open slot.

“They want to keep the display cans looking perfect,” Stella explained.

The cakes came with two spoons. I opened the top and only then could I see what was in them, past the layers of cream that covered the walls of the can. It was light and fluffy, easily scooped by the spoon. Even when I was finished eating, I scraped at the cake sticking to the bottom. I thought if I looked hard enough that I might find a lifetime hidden inside.