I had imagined her sitting in a beautiful garden, surrounded by children and grandchildren, perhaps occasionally remembering the boy she had loved.
I had never imagined her hiding in a bathroom, waiting for her husband to fall asleep.
I had never imagined her standing in front of a mirror, trying to cover the evidence of what had happened behind closed doors.
And I had never imagined that the woman who had once laughed so freely would learn to measure every sound she made.
“Did your children know?” I asked.
“No.”
“Not even when they were older?”
She shook her head.
“They knew their father could be difficult. They knew we argued sometimes. But I tried to keep them away from the worst of it. If something happened, I made sure they were somewhere else, or I told them I had been careless.”
She paused.
“I wanted them to remember their childhood as a happy one.”
