One afternoon, while we were alone, I finally asked, “Did Dad do something to you?” Her smile disappeared. She closed the bedroom door and asked why I thought that. When I explained, she went pale. “Your father really is connected to what I’ve been hiding,” she said. “But I can’t tell you everything today.”
The next morning, my parents called me into their bedroom. An old wooden box sat on the table. Inside were photographs, including one from a hospital. My mother looked barely twenty-one, her arms covered in bandages. My father sat beside her, exhausted and asleep in a chair.
Then she rolled up her sleeves. Her arms were covered with old, uneven scars. “There was a fire,” she explained. “Your father and I were engaged. When he heard, he ran inside looking for me.” She spent months recovering, ashamed of how her arms looked afterward.
