After years of silence, I could no longer live with the uncertainty. At sixty-three, having never traveled outside the country before, I bought a plane ticket to Korea and went looking for her myself. When I reached her address, I found a beautiful but strangely quiet two-story house. The door was unlocked, and inside I noticed no signs that a man lived there. Upstairs, I discovered one room filled with boxes containing large amounts of cash.
Moments later, my daughter walked through the door and froze when she saw me. She looked thinner and more tired than I remembered. Eventually, she revealed the truth: Kang Jun had died two years earlier, and she had been grieving alone. She had also built a successful business and become financially comfortable. The money she had been sending was not because anyone was controlling her—it was her way of taking care of me from thousands of miles away.
She admitted that she had hidden her husband’s death because she did not want pity or people questioning whether her marriage had been real. I stayed with her for several weeks, met her friends and colleagues, and finally saw the life she had built. Before I returned home, she promised that the silence between us would end. After twelve years of distance, the trip I had been terrified to make finally gave us the chance to become mother and daughter again.
