My mother was unusually quiet too.
The next morning, I heard voices coming from their bedroom.
“We’ve hidden this for too long,” my father said.
“I was ashamed,” my mother whispered.
“You never had anything to be ashamed of.”
A few minutes later, my mother called me into the room.
There was an old wooden box on the table.
My father stood beside the window.
My mother opened the box.
Inside were old photographs.
The first one had been taken in a hospital.
My mother looked very young.
Both of her arms were wrapped in bandages.
Beside her was my father, also young, exhausted, asleep in a chair.
I looked at them, confused.
My mother slowly rolled up her sleeves.
For the first time in my life, I saw her arms.
They were covered in old, uneven scars.
Not fresh.
Not the kind I had spent months imagining.
They were decades old.
