Chapter 1 - The Voice My Daughter Was Never Supposed to Use
"Mom... if Grandma hears me talking to you, she's going to make me kneel on the rice again."
Those were the first words my seven-year-old daughter whispered after secretly calling me from inside a locked laundry room.
Three hours later, Child Protective Services would tell me something that made my knees buckle.
"This wasn't the first child."
At 2:43 on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I was folding laundry in my apartment in Columbus, Ohio, when my phone buzzed with an incoming FaceTime call.
It wasn't from Hailey.
It was from my ex-husband, Ethan.
I almost ignored it.
Since our divorce eighteen months earlier, Ethan rarely called unless it involved our custody schedule. Most weekends, Hailey stayed with him and his mother, Gloria, at their large colonial house on the outskirts of Dublin, a quiet suburb where everyone seemed to know everyone.
I answered anyway.
The screen stayed black.
No face.
No voice.
Only heavy breathing.
Then I heard a tiny whisper.
"Mom..."
My heart stopped.
"Hailey?"
"I can't talk loud."
"Sweetheart, what's wrong?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she asked a question no seven-year-old should ever have to ask.
"If someone hurts you because they love you..."
"...is that still love?"
Every hair on my arms stood up.
"What happened?"
Another pause.
Then she quietly lifted the phone.
At first, I couldn't understand what I was looking at.
Then the camera focused.
Her knees.
They were bright red.
Covered with tiny cuts.
Some of them were bleeding.
May you like
My chest tightened.
"Hailey..."
