“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
frightening possibilities around it.
The next morning, I started remembering little things that had never seemed important before. A few weeks earlier, Dad
had told me,
“You’re busy. I’ll get Emily ready for bed.”
Another time, the bathroom door had been closed. When I knocked, I heard both of them laughing. Back then, I had smiled.
Now the same memory felt completely different. All day, I kept telling myself I was overreacting. But something in me
refused to let it go.
The next evening, Dad came over again. After dinner, Emily ran up to him.
“Grandpa, are we going to play our game today?”
I looked at my father. He smiled.
“If your mom doesn’t mind.”
“Of course,” I said.
But I had already made up my mind. Ten minutes later, I heard the water running.
Then Emily laughing. I slowly walked toward the bathroom. The door was closed, but not locked. I stepped close enough to
hear them. Dad said,
