By lunchtime, I had convinced myself that I was worrying too much.<\/p>\n
That was not unusual for me.<\/p>\n
I could spend an entire morning concerned about something, then find a way to explain it away before the day was over.<\/p>\n
It was easier than making a decision that might upset Daniel.<\/p>\n
I didn't like admitting that, even to myself.<\/p>\n
But I had spent years learning how to recognize the beginning of one of his moods. I knew which questions to postpone, which subjects to avoid, and when a simple disagreement was likely to become a long lecture about respect.<\/p>\n
I had become good at keeping things calm.<\/p>\n
I had not become good at knowing when calm was the wrong goal.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, Grace came downstairs while I was sorting laundry.<\/p>\n
She was still wearing the gray sweatshirt.<\/p>\n
I had placed a basket of clean clothes on the sofa, and she stopped beside it with one hand resting against her stomach.<\/p>\n
I looked up.<\/p>\n
"How are you feeling now?"<\/p>\n
"Better."<\/p>\n
She said it quickly.<\/p>\n
Too quickly.<\/p>\n
I set down the shirt I was folding.<\/p>\n
"Really?"<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
I watched her face, waiting for the little smile that usually followed when she wanted me to stop asking questions.<\/p>\n
It never came.<\/p>\n
"Do you want something to eat?"<\/p>\n
"No, thank you."<\/p>\n
Her voice was polite in a way that made me feel farther away from her than I had a moment before.<\/p>\n
I stood and walked toward the kitchen.<\/p>\n
"You need to eat something, sweetheart. It doesn't have to be much."<\/p>\n
She followed me slowly.<\/p>\n
I opened the refrigerator and looked inside, though I had no idea what I expected to find.<\/p>\n
There were leftovers from the night before, a container of cut fruit, and a bowl of soup I had made two days earlier.<\/p>\n
I took out the soup.<\/p>\n
"How about this?"<\/p>\n
Grace stared at the container.<\/p>\n
Then she shook her head.<\/p>\n
"Please don't make me."<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
The words were quiet, but they changed the whole room.<\/p>\n
I put the container back.<\/p>\n
"All right."<\/p>\n
She looked relieved.<\/p>\n
That relief bothered me.<\/p>\n
Not because she had refused the soup, but because she had seemed to expect that I would force her to eat it.<\/p>\n
I pulled out a chair.<\/p>\n
"Sit with me for a minute."<\/p>\n
She sat.<\/p>\n
I took the chair across from her and rested my hands on the table.<\/p>\n
"Grace, I need you to tell me the truth about how you're feeling."<\/p>\n
"I am."<\/p>\n
"Does your stomach still hurt?"<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
"Is it worse than yesterday?"<\/p>\n
Another nod.<\/p>\n
I swallowed.<\/p>\n
"Why didn't you tell me that this morning?"<\/p>\n
She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the table.<\/p>\n
"I didn't want to make things difficult."<\/p>\n
I had heard adults say things like that.<\/p>\n
I had said them myself.<\/p>\n
I had never expected to hear them from my daughter.<\/p>\n
"You're not making things difficult by telling me you're hurting."<\/p>\n
She looked at me, then toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
"Dad doesn't think there's anything wrong."<\/p>\n
I felt the familiar urge to defend him.<\/p>\n
He had been under pressure lately, I could say. He had a lot on his mind. He was strict because he wanted Grace to be responsible.<\/p>\n
I had used every one of those explanations before.<\/p>\n
None of them answered the question in front of me.<\/p>\n
"What matters is how you're feeling," I told her.<\/p>\n
She didn't seem convinced.<\/p>\n
I reached across the table, but she had already folded her hands in her lap.<\/p>\n
That small movement made me stop.<\/p>\n
I had always thought Grace would tell me if she needed help.<\/p>\n
Now I wondered how many times she had tried and decided that it was safer not to.<\/p>\n
I asked her whether she wanted to stay home from school the next day if she still felt unwell.<\/p>\n
She shook her head.<\/p>\n
"I don't want Dad to think I'm doing it on purpose."<\/p>\n
I leaned back.<\/p>\n
There it was again.<\/p>\n
Everything came back to what Daniel might think.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell her that his opinion didn't matter.<\/p>\n
But it did matter in our house.<\/p>\n
It mattered because he made sure we knew when he disapproved, and because the rest of us had grown accustomed to arranging our lives around that disapproval.<\/p>\n
I couldn't blame Grace for noticing the same things I had noticed.<\/p>\n
I could only blame myself for pretending she shouldn't.<\/p>\n
That evening, Daniel returned home later than usual.<\/p>\n
I was preparing dinner when I heard his keys land in the bowl near the entrance.<\/p>\n
He walked into the kitchen, checked the counter, and glanced at the food.<\/p>\n
"What are we having?"<\/p>\n
"Chicken and rice."<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
Then he looked toward the stairs.<\/p>\n
"Where's Grace?"<\/p>\n
"Upstairs."<\/p>\n
"Still avoiding dinner?"<\/p>\n
I turned from the stove.<\/p>\n
"She hasn't been feeling well."<\/p>\n
Daniel took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair.<\/p>\n
"She's been saying that for days."<\/p>\n
"That's why I'm concerned."<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then he smiled without warmth.<\/p>\n
"Rebecca, children learn very quickly which complaints get attention."<\/p>\n
I felt my face grow hot.<\/p>\n
"She's not asking for anything."<\/p>\n
"She doesn't have to ask. You've been watching her all day."<\/p>\n
I looked at the wooden spoon in my hand.<\/p>\n
I wanted to argue.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him that I was her mother and that I had every right to pay attention when something seemed wrong.<\/p>\n
Instead, I asked the question I should have asked much earlier.<\/p>\n
"What if she's actually sick?"<\/p>\n
Daniel opened a drawer and searched for a fork.<\/p>\n
"Then we'll know."<\/p>\n
"How?"<\/p>\n
He found what he wanted and closed the drawer.<\/p>\n
"By using common sense."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
He didn't explain.<\/p>\n
He didn't need to. He had already made his position clear, and he expected me to accept it.<\/p>\n
I returned to the stove.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Grace appeared at the kitchen entrance.<\/p>\n
She looked at the food, then at her father.<\/p>\n
Daniel pulled out a chair.<\/p>\n
"Come and sit down."<\/p>\n
She did.<\/p>\n
I placed a small portion of rice on her plate.<\/p>\n
Grace stared at it.<\/p>\n
"Try a few bites," I said gently.<\/p>\n
She picked up her fork.<\/p>\n
For several seconds, she moved the food around without eating.<\/p>\n
Then she took one small bite.<\/p>\n
Her face tightened.<\/p>\n
She put the fork down and pressed her palm against her abdomen.<\/p>\n
I was beside her before I had even decided to move.<\/p>\n
"Does it hurt?"<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
Daniel sighed.<\/p>\n
"Grace."<\/p>\n
She flinched at the sound of her name.<\/p>\n
It was slight.<\/p>\n
Someone else might not have noticed.<\/p>\n
I did.<\/p>\n
"Don't," I said.<\/p>\n
Daniel turned toward me.<\/p>\n
"Don't what?"<\/p>\n
"She's hurting."<\/p>\n
"And I am asking her to eat dinner."<\/p>\n
Grace sat perfectly still between us.<\/p>\n
I could see the muscles in her jaw tightening as she tried not to cry.<\/p>\n
I took her plate away.<\/p>\n
"That's enough for now."<\/p>\n
Daniel pushed his chair back.<\/p>\n
"You are making this worse."<\/p>\n
I didn't answer.<\/p>\n
He stood, took his glass from the table, and walked out of the kitchen.<\/p>\n
I heard the television come on in the living room.<\/p>\n
Grace's shoulders slowly relaxed.<\/p>\n
That was when I understood something I had been avoiding.<\/p>\n
She wasn't only afraid of the pain.<\/p>\n
She was afraid of what happened when she admitted it.<\/p>\n
I sat beside her.<\/p>\n
"You don't have to finish your dinner."<\/p>\n
She wiped her eyes with the end of her sleeve.<\/p>\n
"I'm sorry."<\/p>\n
The apology nearly broke me.<\/p>\n
"You have nothing to apologize for."<\/p>\n
She looked at me as if she wanted to believe that.<\/p>\n
I helped her upstairs and tucked the blanket around her legs. Before I left, I asked whether the pain was in one place or moving around.<\/p>\n
She pointed to the same area she had pointed to that morning.<\/p>\n
I asked whether she felt sick when she tried to eat.<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
I stood beside the bed, trying to remember every detail.<\/p>\n
I had no medical knowledge that could tell me what was wrong. I could only see that my daughter was becoming quieter, that meals had turned into something she dreaded, and that the ordinary things she used to do were becoming harder.<\/p>\n
I went back downstairs and found Daniel in the living room.<\/p>\n
He was sitting with his tablet balanced on one knee.<\/p>\n
"We need to get Grace checked by a doctor."<\/p>\n
He didn't look up.<\/p>\n
"For what?"<\/p>\n
"Her stomach. She's been in pain for days, and she can't eat properly."<\/p>\n
Daniel tapped something on the screen.<\/p>\n
"She's eating less because you're encouraging her to think about it."<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
"How does that make sense?"<\/p>\n
He finally looked at me.<\/p>\n
"Every time she complains, you stop what you're doing. You ask questions. You hover over her. What do you think she's going to learn?"<\/p>\n
I had no answer ready.<\/p>\n
Not because he was right.<\/p>\n
Because I had spent so long trying to avoid these conversations that I had forgotten how to respond when he made an accusation.<\/p>\n
He returned his attention to the tablet.<\/p>\n
"Let her get back to her normal routine."<\/p>\n
I stood there for another moment.<\/p>\n
Then I walked away.<\/p>\n
In the kitchen, I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
I was frightened.<\/p>\n
I was also angry, though it took me longer to admit that part.<\/p>\n
I had allowed Daniel's certainty to become more important than my own observations. I had treated his opinion as if it were evidence.<\/p>\n
It wasn't.<\/p>\n
My daughter was hurting, and I didn't know why.<\/p>\n
That should have been enough.<\/p>\n
I took my phone from the counter and opened the contact list.<\/p>\n
I found the number for the hospital we had used before.<\/p>\n
My thumb hovered above the screen.<\/p>\n
I could hear Daniel moving around in the next room.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I considered waiting until morning.<\/p>\n
Then I pictured Grace at the dinner table, apologizing for being in pain.<\/p>\n
I pressed the call button.<\/p>\n
PART 2 END<\/p>\n
By lunchtime, I had convinced myself that I was worrying too much. That was not unusual for me. I could spend an entire morning concerned about something, then find a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39220,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39200\/revisions\/39220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}