Time passed. My house got nicer thanks to the money she kept sending me. Everyone told me I was lucky. But how could I be happy eating alone every single day? Every Christmas, I would set a place at the table for her. I would cook her favorite stew and cry in silence. Twelve years. It is simply too long. Finally, I made a decision: I was going to Korea. I didn’t tell her. For a sixty-three-year-old woman who had never left the country, it was madness. But with a trembling hand, I bought the ticket and left.

I arrived and took a taxi to her house. A two-story house, quiet… too quiet. The garden was beautiful, but lifeless. I knocked on the door. No one answered. It wasn’t locked. I walked in. The house was clean, too clean. No sign of a man’s presence. No sign of men’s clothing. No trace of the smell of food. I went upstairs. One bedroom with women’s clothes. Another, like an office, barely used. And the last one… my legs buckled. Boxes, so many boxes, filled with cash. My mind went blank. At that exact moment, I heard the front door open downstairs.

“Mom.”

It was her voice. I ran down. There stood Mary Lou: thinner, more tired, but she was still my daughter. We held each other for a long time without saying a word. Then I asked her, “What kind of life is this?” She replied, “Mom… I never got married.”

I felt my world shatter. That money didn’t come from a husband. She had sacrificed twelve years of her life to earn it. She wasn’t a wife. She wasn’t free. She was a woman trapped by a contract, and she had two years left. If she broke it early, she would have to pay back nearly a million dollars. That was why she never came home. That was why the house was empty. That was why the look in her eyes had changed.
Continued on the next page PART 3