Judith forced a smile.
“Well, you should talk,” she said lightly. “Technically, it’s Grace’s house too. Even though the deed is still in my name.”
She turned and left the kitchen, her scent lingering in the air after she was gone.
The girl who promised me the world.
I took my daughter’s hands in mine.
“What’s going on here, Grace?” I asked.
“Nothing, Mom. Relax,” she replied mechanically. The words came out too quickly, too rehearsed.
It hurt to hear her lie to me.
My mind drifted to another kitchen, long ago, in a small rented house in a quiet Ohio neighborhood, with cracked sidewalks and dandelions pushing their way through the lawn.
Back then, life was simple. I worked at a small fabric store downtown. We didn’t have much, but we had habits that resembled love: cinnamon buns on Sunday mornings, second-hand movies on Friday nights, walks in the public park when the weather was nice. Grace’s father left when she was three. He vanished completely, as if the earth had swallowed him whole. The letters, the visits, and the money stopped. Just a huge void where a father should have been.
I did what I could. I packed lunches, checked homework, attended school meetings, and comforted Grace when she cried because the other children had their fathers at school concerts and she didn’t.
She grew up to be a bright and creative girl. She drew shoes and dresses in the margins of her notebooks, filling the pages with colors and lines.
“Mom, someday I’ll have my own studio,” she would tell me. “You won’t have to work anymore. You’ll get up, have your coffee, and come watch me create.”
I laughed and told her she didn’t have to take care of me. But deep down, I believed she was capable of anything.
She was accepted into a design program in Los Angeles. I worked overtime to cover the expenses her scholarship didn’t. Watching her go through airport security with her carry-on luggage and her big dreams was one of the most difficult and emotional moments of my life.
Then, in my second year, she called me to tell me about a man named Nathan Reed.
CONTINUE READING IN THE NEXT PAGE
