I used to believe my daughter and I were inseparable. Nina Rose, 25 now, was the kind of daughter any mother would be proud of—smart, kind, and independent. But then she stopped coming around, and the silence stretched into something heavy.

I waited for her to come back, until one day, I couldn’t wait anymore. A chance encounter at the grocery store brought the truth crashing down. She told me that during her last visit, while I was out, Richard—my husband—had read her private diary out loud and mocked her most painful secret.

He laughed at her grief, her miscarriage, and made her feel unsafe in her own childhood home. And I, unaware, had let it happen. That night, I packed a bag and left him. By sunrise, I filed for divorce and stripped the house of every trace of him.

Two weeks later, I stood at Nina’s door with a key lime pie and an apology in my throat. She let me in, and we began the slow, aching work of rebuilding what had been broken. Now she visits often—sometimes with takeout, sometimes just to talk.

We bake, we laugh, we grieve, and we heal. I chose my daughter, finally and fully. And in doing so, I chose the kind of mother I should’ve been all along.