My daughter, Emily, was six years old when she first said the sentence that kept me awake almost the entire night.
That afternoon, we were in the kitchen. I was making dinner while she sat at the table drawing.
Then, without even looking up, she said,
“Mom, did you know Grandpa and I have a game?”
I smiled.
My father, George, was seventy-six years old, and he and Emily were almost inseparable.
He picked her up from school, read her stories, and taught her how to plant flowers in the garden.
“What kind of game?” I asked.
Emily thought for a moment.
“When Grandpa gives me a bath, he tells me to close my eyes.”
The knife in my hand stopped. I turned toward her.
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“So we can play.”
“And what does Grandpa do after you close your eyes?”
Emily smiled.
“I don’t know. I can’t see.”
I don’t know why, but something inside me went cold. I tried to keep my voice calm.
“Did Grandpa tell you not to tell me about it?”
My daughter went quiet for a moment. That silence was the worst part. Then she said,
“He said if I tell you everything, the game won’t be fun anymore.”
I could no longer pretend I wasn’t worried. But I also didn’t want to scare my child. I sat down beside her.
“Emily, if anyone ever asks you to hide something from me, you can always tell me. Okay?”
She looked at me, confused.
“But Grandpa doesn’t do anything bad.”
That sentence should have reassured me. It didn’t. That night, I barely slept.
My father had always been the person I
trusted most. Whenever my husband had to work late, Dad came over to help me.
Whenever Emily was sick, he could sit beside her for hours.
I had never seen anything that made me suspicious of him. But now my mind had taken one sentence and built a hundred
