“One day my little daughter told me, ‘Mom, every time Grandpa gives me a bath, he asks me to play a game. I have to close my eyes, and while they’re closed, he does something…’ I froze. The next day, I opened the bathroom door without warning… and what I saw made my legs start shakingr told me, ‘Mom, every time Grandpa gives me a bath, he asks me to play a game. I have to close my eyes, and while they’re closed, he does something…’ I froze. The next day, I opened the bathroom door without warning… and what I saw made my legs start shaking

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?”