This time, I drove her there myself.
Before getting out of the car, she turned toward me.
“Are you still angry?”
I answered,
“Yes. But mostly at myself.”
She smiled.
After that, once a week, we visited George together.
Before long, his son arranged for him to have regular help so he would no longer be left alone.
A few months later, Emily’s school started a volunteer program to help elderly people in the community.
The idea had come from Emily herself.
The girl I had spent an entire week imagining the worst about had actually been secretly doing something that still makes me proud to this day.
But the most important lesson I learned from that story was not about George.
It was about Emily.
I realized that your child can live beside you every day, sit at the same table, and walk through the same front door, and you still may have no idea what is happening inside their heart.
