If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have told you my daughter and I were close.
Nina Rose, 25, brilliant and independent, still made time for Sunday dinners and birthdays.
She always left something behind — a jacket, a bowl, her laughter lingering in the hallways.
And then, quietly, she stopped coming over.

It started with a missed birthday, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas.
Each time came with an excuse — tired, busy, out of town.
Her calls became shorter, her voice more distant, like she wasn’t really there.
I lay awake most nights, wondering what I’d done to make her disappear.

After months of silence, I ran into her by chance — the grocery store, of all places.
She froze when she saw me. Her voice trembled. “Mommy, it’s not you… it’s Richard.”
My heart sank before she even said it: he had mocked her, violated her privacy,
Read her diary, laughed about her miscarriage — and I hadn’t been there to stop it.

That night, I left him. I filed for divorce, cleared the house of him, and showed up at Nina’s door.
“I didn’t know,” I told her, pie in hand and apology in my throat. “But I believe you. And I’m sorry.”
She cried, then smiled. We sat in silence, letting forgiveness fill the spaces between us.
Now, we bake. We talk. We begin again. I chose my daughter — and in doing so, I chose myself.