“Mom — why didn’t you just tell me?”

The tears spilled down her wrinkled cheeks.

“Because I saw you come home, every single day, with swollen eyes, telling me you were only tired.

Because a mother knows her daughter’s silences better than her daughter knows them herself.

And because if I had come to you with no proof, and told you the man you loved was planning to kill me and ruin you — he would only have had to look at you sadly and say that poor Teresa was finally going senile.

And you might have believed him.