After he left, I asked Grace, “Are you sure about him?”
She rolled her eyes, the way young people do when they think their parents are overly cautious.
“Mom, he loves me. His family has taken me in. I’m safe.”
I wanted to believe it. So when I received the offer to move to Chicago and join a fast-growing import-export company, with a salary that could have changed both our lives, I asked her if I should go.
“Here, Mom,” she said. “We’ll be fine here. I’m with Nathan. You’ll be able to help us better from there.”
And so I spent eight years in another city, sending money back every month, believing my daughter was living a beautiful and safe life.
I was wrong.
Coffee, Tears, and the First Cracks
Back in that big house in Los Angeles, in a guest room that felt more like a storage room than a bedroom in the family home, I finally found myself alone with Grace. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, twisting her fingers.
“How long have you been cleaning like this?” I asked.
She looked up at the sun.
“Judith likes the house spotless,” she said cautiously. “She’s very particular. It’s her way of showing affection.”
I almost laughed.
“Is that her way of showing affection when she tells you that ‘all you’re good for is cleaning’?” I asked.
Grace shuddered.
“She doesn’t mean it, Mom. She’s just frustrated.”
I’d heard it before, from other women, from other lives. Excuses that mask suffering. “Where’s Nathan?” I insisted.
“He’s at the office,” she said. “He’s working hard. It’s a big company. He has a lot of work.”
“And you?” I asked. “Are you still designing?”
Her shoulders slumped.
“I haven’t had time,” she murmured. “Judith says a good wife focuses on her home first. I can take care of my dreams later.”
A lump formed in my throat.
“Where are the sheets I embroidered for your wedding?” I asked suddenly, remembering the long nights I spent embroidering in my small Chicago apartment, each thread a prayer for her happiness.
Grace hesitated, then opened a box that had been pushed to the back of the closet.
The sheets were torn, stained, and wrinkled. The delicate blue flowers I had embroidered with my own hands were faded and bled.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
“Nathan spilled wine on them,” she said, her voice trembling. “Judith said they looked cheap anyway, that they didn’t match the house. She told me to throw them away.”
“And you didn’t.”
“No,” she murmured. “You did. I couldn’t have done it.”
For the first time, she cried: silent, trembling tears that soaked the torn fabric. “How long has this been going on?” I asked.
Years. That was the answer hidden between her words, in the trembling of her shoulders, in her apologies for everything.
Then I understood that I had two options: I could go back to Chicago, tell myself that my daughter, now an adult, had chosen her own path, and try to sleep at night.
Or I could intervene.
I’ve never been good at looking the other way.
That night, in my hotel room, I stared at the ceiling until dawn. At dawn, I picked up the phone and called a man whose number I’d carefully saved for years, hoping I’d never need it.
Marcus Doyle was a private investigator I knew through professional contacts. He handled background checks and sensitive situations for people who couldn’t afford any unpleasant surprises.
“It’s about my daughter,” I told him during our meeting the next day in his small downtown office. “I need to know everything about her husband and her family. Her businesses. Her money. Absolutely everything.”
He scrutinized me over the top of his glasses.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Sometimes people learn things they can’t forget.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “It’s all I have.”
He nodded and took the folder containing the names I’d written down: Nathan Reed, Judith Reed, Reed Global Imports.
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