For weeks, my daughter came home from school with dim eyes and quiet tears, and nothing she said explained it. I tried to tell myself it was normal—she was tired, school was hard, it was just a phase—but the uneasy knot in my stomach wouldn’t go away. One morning, after finding her frozen on the edge of her bed, afraid to put on her shoes, I knew something was wrong. She insisted nothing had happened, but the fear in her eyes said otherwise. So I slipped a small recorder into her backpack and waited.
That afternoon, while she watched cartoons, I pressed play. At first, it sounded like a normal classroom—chairs, pencils, whispers. Then a sharp, unfamiliar voice cut through: “Don’t argue with me! You’re always making excuses. Just like your mother.”