Uncles Refused Grandma; I Took Her In, 26 Days Stunned Me

Elisa Fox once believed that caring for the elderly was a duty as natural as breathinguntil she brought her eighty-three-year-old grandmother home to live with her, and finally saw the full abyss of human nature.

Her four successful uncles ignored their own mother entirely, while Elisa's family took Grandma in out of soft-heartedness, thinking they were doing right by her. Yet in just twenty-six short days, they were driven to the brink of ruin, their family torn apart.

There is a kind of old woman whose viciousness never shows on the surface. She never throws tantrums or rolls on the floor, and she never once cries poorbut with needle-in-cotton faultfinding, endless psychological suggestion, and comparisons conjured out of nothing, she can bleed away every ounce of your energy and wealth, like slicing off flesh with a soft knife.

When Elisa's mother, worn down until her mind was slipping, made that fatal phone call, Elisa suddenly realized what scalp-crawling truth lay behind her four uncles' cold-blooded severing of ties all those years ago...

Elisa Fox is thirty years old this year, and works as a senior operations director at an internet company in Metro City.

Life in this city moves at a furious pace, and the morning rush hour is like a war fought without smoke every single day, but Elisa had always felt she was a person with a solid core of confidence.

That confidence came from her familynot wealthy, but full of warmth and a strong moral sense.

Elisa's mother was named Ida Whitney, the youngest of five children and the only daughter. Above Ida were four older brothersElisa's four uncles.

By all logic, in a traditional family with four sons, an elderly parent's later years should have been spent surrounded by children and grandchildren, cared for in peace and comfort.

What's more, all four of these uncles were doing quite well.

Uncle Warren went into business early and owned two large apartments in the state capital; Uncle Nathan was a mid-level manager in a government institution, with a wide network of connections; the third brother was a contractor, reportedly turning over several hundred thousand dollars a year; Uncle Adrian was more ordinary, but he ran two chain supermarkets in the hometown city center and lived comfortably.

And yet reality was like a resounding slap across the face of this seemingly glamorous family.

Not one of these four well-off uncles was willing to take care of their eighty-three-year-old mother.

Ever since Elisa's grandfather passed away ten years ago, the question of who would care for Grandma had become a ticking time bomb no one wanted to touch.

At first, the four uncles still made a show of taking turns having Grandma stay with them for a few months at a time, but at some point this rotation came to an abrupt stop.

Uncle Warren used the excuse that business kept him too busy and that he was often traveling abroad. Uncle Nathan said his son's wife had just had a second child and there was no room at home. The third and fourth brothers were even more bluntthey changed their phone numbers, and only during New Year's would they send the younger ones over with two boxes of some token supplements to look in for a moment, staying less than half an hour before finding an excuse to leave.

In the end, this hot potato landed squarely in the hands of the youngest daughter, Ida.

Ida was an extremely traditional, soft-hearted woman. One thing she often said was, "That's the mother who gave birth to me and raised me. If my brothers won't care for her, I can't just watch her end up on the streets."

For that one promise, Ida paid an unimaginable price.

She was only an ordinary retired worker, with a monthly pension of little more than three thousand dollars, and Elisa's father was an honest, plain-living high school teacher.

To care for Grandma, Ida not only poured in her own pension but also often took odd jobs behind Claude's back to help make ends meet. Grandma had high blood pressure and diabetes, and the monthly medication bills alone were no small expense.

What tore at Elisa's heart most was that winter two years ago. The north was bitterly cold, and Grandma ignored everyone's warnings and insisted on going down herself to buy some old-fashioned pastriesonly to take a hard fall on the icy pavement, shattering her femoral head.

The doctor said that for an eighty-one-year-old to undergo such major surgery carried an extremely high risk, and that recovery afterward would demand enormous energy and money.

During that stretch, Ida was as frantic as an ant on a hot pan.

She called her four brothers one by one to borrow money. Uncle Warren's phone was answered by his secretary, who said, "Mr. Whitney is in a meeting." Uncle Nathan did pick up, but spoke in an official, bureaucratic tone: "Ida, money's tight for me lately too. Things are being scrutinized hard in the government right nowcover it yourself for now, and we'll talk later." The third and fourth brothers simply played dead and never answered her messages.

In the end, Ida gritted her teeth and pulled out a small portion of the money the family had set aside for Elisa's down payment on a home in Metro City, and used it to pay Grandma's surgery bill.

In the two months after the surgery, Ida lost a full fifteen pounds.

She stayed at the hospital alone, never even changing out of her clothes to restduring the day handling the bedpan, turning Grandma over, washing her, and at night curling up on the narrow cot under the hospital bed, scrambling up at the slightest sound.

From the long stretch of poor rest, Ida's hair fell out in clumps, and she even fainted twice in the hospital corridor.

Meanwhile, those four strong, wealthy, powerful sons, over those two whole months, sent only two grandchildren as stand-ins, who brought a few baskets of fruit, made a token appearance in the ward, and left in a hurry without so much as glancing at the medical bills.

Looking at Grandma sleeping peacefully in the hospital bed, and her mother beside her, face gaunt and worn with exhaustion, Elisa felt a seed of bitter loathing for her four uncles take root in her heart. She wondered: how could there be such cold-blooded, selfish ingrates in this world?

After Grandma was discharged from the hospital, since her legs had failed completely, she moved back into the old house in the hometown. To take care of her, Ida spun like a top every day, shuttling nonstop between her own home and Grandma's.

Elisa couldn't stand to watch it any longer. She ached for her mother, and she was even more furious at her uncles' shamelessness.

One time, Elisa went back home for the weekend, and seeing her mother's back so worn out from washing Grandma's bed sheets that she could barely straighten up, a nameless rage shot straight to her head. She pulled out her phone and dialed Uncle Warren directly.

The phone rang for a long time before it was answered. A somewhat lazy voice came from the other end. "Hey, Ellie, what made you think of calling your Uncle Warren?"

"Uncle Warren, Grandma's been out of the hospital for three months now. My mom takes care of her every day, and she's so worn out her high blood pressure has flared up. You four sonshave you worked out any kind of plan at all? You won't pay the medical bills, you won't even come see her. Are you really planning to dump Grandma on my mom to handle all by herself?" Elisa's tone was blistering, and she gave him no consideration at all.

There was a full ten seconds of silence on the other end.

Then Warren's voice suddenly turned unusually cold, even carrying a trace of barely perceptible irritation. "Ellie, grown-up matters aren't for a junior like you to butt into. You think we don't want to help? You don't understand a thing! Your mother insists on showing offthat's her choice!"

"What do you mean it's her choice? She's your own mother!" Elisa was shaking with anger.

"Enough, I'm busy." Warren didn't offer one more word of explanation and hung up coldly. Listening to the busy tone coming from the phone, Elisa was so angry she threw the rag in her hand onto the floor right then and there.

From then on, Elisa's family bore enormous financial and emotional pressure, sending Grandma living expenses on time every month and buying her all kinds of imported nutritional supplements.

Ida even created a group chat called "One Loving Family" and pulled her four older brothers into it. Every day she would post photos and videos of Grandma eating, taking her medicine, and sitting in the sun, trying to awaken the consciences of these four men.

But the group was like a dead, silent black hole. No matter what Ida posted, the four uncles either played completely dead or, only on holidays, sent a heartless "Happy Fortune" sticker.

Watching her mother quietly grieve in front of her phone screen every day, Elisa's contempt for the four uncles reached its peak.

She was firmly convinced her uncles were a pack of greedy scoundrels who, for money and an easy life, would cast aside the very mother who had raised them like a worn-out shoe.

It wasn't until that gray, rainy winter that things took a complete turn.

That winter was especially cold, and the heating in the old house back home was poor. Grandma complained to Ida on the phone that the cold draft in the house bored straight into her bones, that her bad knees ached so badly she couldn't sleep all night long, and that even getting up to pour a cup of hot water in the kitchen was a struggle.

After the call, Ida hung up and sat on the sofa wiping away tears. Elisa's father sighed and fretted beside her, not knowing how to console her.

Seeing her parents like this, and remembering Grandma's weak, helpless voice on the phone, Elisa felt a rush of heat to her head and made a decision that would change the whole family's fate.

"Mom, stop crying." Elisa walked over to her mother and held her cold hand. "Since the uncles are all animals, then we'll take care of her. It's too pitiful for Grandma to live over there all alone. This winter, let's bring Grandma here to live with us. The place isn't big, but the heat's good, and you and Dad can look after her whenever she needs it."

Ida's head shot up, her eyes full of disbelief, and then her tears flowed even harder.

She hugged her daughter tightly and said over and over, "Ellie, you really are such a good child... but you're not even married yet, and having an old person bedridden year-round in the houseI'm afraid it'll affect you..."

"Mom, we're familyno need to talk like we're strangers. Grandma's already eighty-threehow many more years does she have? Let's just consider it good karma." Elisa's tone back then was full of righteous, morally superior conviction.

Elisa's father frowned deeply, but seeing his wife's hopeful eyes, in the end he silently nodded too.

And so, on that cold, damp winter afternoon, Elisa drove over and brought her eighty-three-year-old grandmother into their once warm and peaceful three-bedroom apartment.

Back then, watching Grandma sit in the wheelchair, clutching her hand with old tears streaming down her face as she said "Ellie is the most devoted of all," Elisa's heart was filled with emotion and pride.

She thought she was a hero rescuing an old woman, thought she had raised a moral banner in this cold-hearted family.

She had no idea that what she had brought home with her own hands was not a kind, frail old woman, but an "emotional vampire" who knew human weakness intimately and could kill without drawing a drop of blood.

For the first three days after Grandma moved in, the house had a long-lost, almost forced sense of warmth and harmony.

Grandma behaved with extreme meekness and restraint.

At meals, she always picked out the cheapest vegetables. When Elisa put a piece of braised pork on her plate, she would refuse for the longest time, sighing over and over, "Oh dear, why should an old woman with one foot in the grave eat so well? What a waste of food. You young people work so hard, eat more, eat more."

Watching Grandma look so cautious and put-upon, Ida's heart ached and she kept tearing up. Elisa's father also felt the old lady had really had it rough, and treated her with even more courtesy.

Elisa even posted a photo to her social media of the whole family watching TV with Grandma from behind, with the caption: "Love can withstand any winter." That post got hundreds of likes, which enormously satisfied Elisa's moral vanity.

But this "honeymoon period" lasted less than a week.

At 4:30 a.m. on the fourth day, Elisa was jolted out of her sleep by an extremely sharp clang of metal.

Clang! Bang!

The sound came from the kitchen, and in the dead silence of that early morning it was especially terrifying.

Elisa bolted upright in bed, her heart pounding, thinking a thief had broken in.

She threw on a coat, quietly opened her door, and saw the living room lights blazing.

In the kitchen, eighty-three-year-old Grandma was leaning on her cane, holding a stainless steel soup pot in one hand while trying to reach the noodles on the top shelf of the cupboard with the other. Because her hand was shaking, the pot lid dropped to the floor with a huge crash.

Hearing the commotion, Ida and Elisa's father came running out too, still half-dressed.

"Mom! What are you doing? Why aren't you asleep in the middle of the night?" Ida hurried over to pick up the pot lid and, her heart in her throat, steadied Grandma.

Grandma turned her head, her expression instantly turning utterly wronged and forlorn. She heaved a heavy sigh and said in a trembling voice, "I... I was hungry.

Back in the old house, I always got up around this time to cook porridge.

I was afraid of waking you all, so I thought I'd make myself something to eat... I'm old, useless now, even getting a bowl of noodles down causes trouble. Never mind, never mind, I won't eat, I'll just let these old bones starve."

And with that, Grandma actually flung down her cane and started toward the bedroom, bracing herself against the wall, looking as though she'd suffered some terrible injustice and was about to end it all.

Ida couldn't take that. She quickly grabbed the old lady, tears welling in her eyes. "Mom, don't say that! Just call me if you're hungry! I'll make you something right now!"

That morning the whole family got no more sleep.

Ida busied herself in the kitchen making Grandma a bowl of hot egg noodles. Grandma sat at the table eating and dabbing at her tears, muttering the whole time about what a burden she was.

Elisa watched from the side. Though it grated on her to be woken up, she finally pushed down her displeasure at the sight of Grandma's pitiful state.

But this was only the beginning of the nightmare.

From that day on, it was as if Grandma had set a special "body clock" in the house.

Every day, between four and five in the morning, she would get up right on schedule.

She no longer went to the kitchen for pots, but the way she made noise grew even more maddening.

She would drag her heavy feet, in those hard-soled old cloth shoes, pacing back and forth along the wooden-floored hallway with a dull "tap, tap, tap"; she would flush the toilet again and again, each flush like thunder in the silent night; she would even deliberately open the bedroom door and slam it shut, calling it "getting some fresh air."

Elisa already had frayed nerves, since she had to handle high-intensity operations data at the company all day.

After four or five days of this, Elisa nearly fell asleep during a meeting at work, and even miscalculated an important figure in her daze, getting torn into by the director in front of the whole team.

Elisa's father was an extremely mild-tempered high school teacher. He could see that his daughter and his wife were both being worn to the bone, so one weekend morning he gently raised the issue with Grandma.

"Mom, Ellie's under a lot of pressure at work, and Ida's blood pressure isn't good either. If you wake up early, do you think you could try to lie in bed a while, or move a little more quietly? This wooden floor carries sound terribly." His father's tone was already humble in the extreme, even with an ingratiating smile.

The moment the words were out, the atmosphere at the table froze solid.

Grandma's hand, holding her chopsticks, stopped in midair, and her eyes turned extremely strange in an instantnot anger, but an unfathomable, brooding grievance.

She slowly set down her chopsticks. She didn't argue, didn't make a scene. She simply lowered her head, and the tears fell like beads off a broken string, plink, plink, into the plain rice porridge in front of her.

"I understand... I understand..." Grandma murmured in a voice so tremulous it was heartbreaking. "A son-in-law is still just a son-in-lawthere's always that barrier of blood between us. I live here, and even my breathing is an eyesore to you. I'll go... this afternoon I'll call the neighborhood association to send me off to a nursing home, or let me go beg on the streets. I'll never be a burden to your family of three."

This "retreat to advance" tactic was textbook-grade moral blackmail.

Elisa's father panicked on the spot, his face flushing red as he desperately tried to explain that he hadn't meant it that way. Ida was even more franticshe dropped straight to her knees before her mother, crying, and slapped her husband, cursing him as a heartless wretch, how could he say such cruel things to an old woman past eighty.

Watching her father cover his face, his eyes full of swallowed grievance yet able only to bow his head and admit fault, and watching her mother dissolve into tears, Elisa stood in the bedroom doorway and felt a chill shoot from the soles of her feet straight to the crown of her head.

She suddenly realized that Grandma had no intention whatsoever of solving the problem; she was merely using an extremely vicious method to test and establish her absolute authority in this household.

The moment anyone dared to offer her even the faintest criticism, she would instantly transform into the most pitiful victim in the world, crushing the one who spoke up under an enormous weight of moral guilt.

In that moment, Elisa finally understood why her father's voice had trembled as he spoke.

Because in the face of an eighty-year-old woman who would never admit fault and would only play the weakling, you didn't even have the right to reason with her.

If the noise in the early hours was merely physical torture, then the psychological control Grandma displayed in the days that followed truly showed Elisa what it meant to "kill a person by destroying their spirit."

Grandma had a terrible habitshe loved to pour out her sorrows to people.

Every day after work, the moment Elisa walked in the door, Grandma would appear like a ghost at her bedroom door, leaning on her cane and looking at her with the most mournful eyes. Out of politeness, Elisa could only grit her teeth and help her in to sit down.

Then Grandma's "performance" would begin.

"Ellie, dear, my heart is so full of bitterness..." Grandma always opened with that same line, and then began to recount, over and over, how hard it had been to raise five children.

"Back then, to pay Uncle Warren's tuition, I washed clothes in a hole in the ice in the dead of winterthe frostbite on my hands rotted right down to the bone. When Uncle Nathan got sick, I carried him more than ten miles through the snow to the hospital... And what came of it? I gave them my whole heart, and now that they're bosses and managers, they turn around and despise me, this useless old woman who won't die."

As Grandma spoke, her cloudy eyes watched Elisa's reaction. Her voice was full of accusations against her four sons, and the details sounded terribly tragicevery time, they made soft-hearted Elisa's eyes redden, and she would join in, cursing her uncles for being heartless.

Yet at the end of every complaint, Grandma's tone would always slide, with eerie smoothness, into a strange turn.

"Our Ellie is the most devoted of all. Grandma didn't dote on you for nothing." Grandma would pat Elisa's hand and sigh. "By the way, Ellie, you're a big boss in a huge city like Metro City. You must make tens of thousands a month, don't you?"

Elisa's heart lurched, and she answered warily, "Grandma, it's nothing like tens of thousands. The cost of living in Metro City is high. After I pay rent there's not much leftjust barely enough for myself."

Grandma seemed not to hear Elisa's explanation, and went right on. "That's true, young people spend a lot. But you know, the other day your Uncle Warren's daughter came back home, and my, what a spectacle it was! I hear she just holds some ordinary job in Capital City and makes over thirty thousand a month. She bought her grandmother a mink coat that cost more than twenty thousand dollars! When her grandmother put it on, everyone in the whole complex said how blessed she was..."

At this point Grandma paused, her eyes sweeping over Elisa's cheap online-bargain pajamas, and she sighed faintly. "Of course, Grandma doesn't crave those vain things. As long as you all give me a bite to eat and keep me from freezing to death in the street, I'll be thankful to heaven and earth. After all, it's my own bitter fate that I never got such a successful granddaughter."

Words like these were like fine needles steeped in venomon the surface not a single ugly word, not one direct request for money, yet they pierced Elisa's pride and her guilt with perfect precision.

She never asked Elisa for money outright, but by setting her cousin's "mink coat" against her own "bitter fate," she sent Elisa a crystal-clear message: You earn so much every month, and even your cousin spends twenty thousand on her eldersif you don't spend money on me, then you're unfilial, you're just as selfish as your four uncles!

Elisa felt a suffocation she had never known before.

To prove she wasn't the "good-for-nothing, unfilial" granddaughter Grandma described, Elisa started buying things for her like a woman possessed. Imported calcium supplements, an expensive cashmere sweater, even a massage chair that cost half a month's salary.

But no matter what Elisa bought, Grandma would never show a satisfied smile.

When she got the cashmere sweater, Grandma would say, right in front of Ida, "This color's far too gaudymakes me look like an old hag. But Ellie meant well, and she'll be upset if I don't wear it." Then she would turn around and stuff the sweater into the bottom of the closet, and go on shuffling around the living room in that ragged old padded coat, hinting to every visitor who dropped by that she had no decent clothes to wear.

As for the massage chair, she wouldn't so much as touch it. At the dinner table she would say, in that snide tone of hers, "How can a machine feel as good as a real pair of hands? A machine is cold as ice. Back when your third aunt was still here, she rubbed my feet every night... Never mind. What's the use of talking about it now?"

Elisa gradually came to see that Grandma's words were always full of winding twists and turns. She was forever using the excellence of "others" to belittle and beat down Elisa's family. She never made a demand outright; instead, through endless complaints and comparisons, she forced you to guess at her wishes and to keep pouring in money and effort to please her.

It was an extremely sophisticated form of emotional exploitation. She didn't need to cry poverty, because she had already succeeded in molding you into someone who owed her a debt.

The days dragged on in this crushing oppression until the twentieth day.

If Grandma's treatment of Elisa was only a soft blade to the spirit, then her treatment of her own daughter, Ida, was a merciless psychological strangling.

Ida was an extremely devoted daughter, but the long exhaustion and mental strain had made her whole person look ten years older.

After Grandma moved in, Ida not only had to wait on her three meals a day, bathe her, and change her clothes, but also had to endure her ever-shifting temper.

Grandma grew harder and harder to please. Her demands were no longer about material things, but about total possession of Ida's time and emotions.

That day was a Friday, and Ida's factory had a batch of rush orders to fill, so she was forced to work overtime until nine at night.

She was supposed to be home by seven to make Grandma dinner, but in the end all she could do was have Elisa's father throw together some noodles.

On top of that, every night at eight, Grandma made Ida sit with her to watch one particular dating show, and while they watched she had to listen to Grandma go on and on about the village gossip.

At nine-thirty, Ida dragged her legs, heavy as lead, and pushed open the front door. Without even stopping to change out of her shoes, she hurried into the living room, her face full of apology. "Mom, the factory was so busy today, I really couldn't get away. Did you get enough to eat for dinner?"

Grandma sat on the sofa with the TV blaring. She didn't so much as glance at Ida, her eyes locked on the screen, and coldly spat out two words: "Not dead."

Ida stiffened for a moment, then poured a cup of hot water and held it out, trying to placate her. "Mom, don't be upset. I'm off tomorrow, it's the weekend, I'll stew you some pork rib soup"

"I don't deserve your pork rib soup." Grandma slammed her cane down on the coffee table, her voice as sharp as fingernails scraping glass. "What am I? I'm nothing but a beggar! You come home whenever you please, and I have to eat whatever pig slop you decide to feed me! You're so busy with work, aren't you so noble! So much more important than your own mother, who's got one foot in the coffin!"

Ida's eyes reddened instantly, exhaustion and hurt tangling together until she couldn't help defending herself. "Mom, I really do have to work overtime to earn money. Don't you need money for your medicine, your doctor's visits?"

Those words seemed to touch Grandma's rawest nerve.

Grandma's expression turned suddenly vicious. She let out a cold laugh and said, in a tone that was slow and yet cut to the bone with every word, "Earn money? You scrape together those miserable few pennies and you feel hard done by? You want to keep a tally with me? Fine! If I'd known you'd resent me this much, I should have gone to live with your second brother and his family back then!"

"Your second brother may not come to see me often, but his wifeyour Aunt Viviannow she used to be so devoted to me! She'd wash my feet, even trim my toenails neat and clean! She was a real lady, soft-spoken and gentle, not like you, snapping at me like a debt collector! It's only because your second brother's family is going through hard times right now that he can't look after me. If he were here, would it ever be your turn to give me attitude?!"

Those words landed on Ida's heart like a rusty hammer.

Elisa had just stepped out of the bedroom, and she caught every word. She was beyond stunned.

Aunt Vivian, devoted? Uncle Nathan's family, going through hard times?

That was a lie to fool the dead! Back when Grandma broke her leg and had surgery in the hospital, Aunt Vivian hadn't shown her face once. She'd even called Ida a "fusspot" over the phone, saying old people live or die by fate and they shouldn't keep guilt-tripping the family with all this talk of duty. And Uncle Nathan lived in a big mansion and drove an Audiwhere were the hard times?!

Yet Grandma, just to wound the very daughter who was working herself to death waiting on her, who had even drained the family savings for her, didn't hesitate to invent Aunt Vivian's "filial devotion" to belittle everything Ida had done down to nothing!

Ida broke down right then. She covered her face, didn't argue, just backed away step by step, then bolted into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. From outside, Elisa heard her mother's sobs, choked down as far as they would go, like the whimpering of a wounded animal.

From that day on, Ida fell completely apart.

She developed severe insomnia, her hair coming out in fistfuls, her whole being in a daze. She'd cut her hand chopping vegetables in the kitchen, forget to switch on the rice cooker. Worse still, her eyes had gone utterly hollow; the look she gave Grandma held no more filial care, no more tendernessonly a deep fear and despair.

The twenty-sixth day arrived.

That afternoon, Elisa was in an important post-project review meeting at work. Her phone suddenly began buzzing wildly in her pocket.

The caller ID showed her mother, Ida.

Elisa felt a terrible premonition. She immediately excused herself from her boss and rushed to the stairwell in the corridor to answer.

On the other end there was no crying, none of the usual complaints.

Only Ida's voice, terribly hoarse, heavy as if every trace of life had been wrung out of it.

"Ellie, ask for leave and come home right now." Her mother's tone was so calm it was suffocating. "Your dad just had a sudden heart attack, they've already taken him away in the ambulance. I... I can't hold on much longer either."

Everything went black before Elisa's eyes; she nearly toppled over on the stairs. "Mom! How could Dad have a heart attack?! What on earth happened?!"

There was a long silence on the other end.

Then Ida spoke in a voice Elisa had never heard in her life, trembling with utter terror and despair, and said one thing.

Her first words left Elisa rooted where she stood, as if in that instant all the blood in her body had frozen solid.

Elisa suddenly realized how pitifully little she knew about those four uncles, far away on the other side of the country, the ones she'd written off as ungrateful wretches.

Until now, Elisa had always assumed her uncles ignored Grandma because they were cold, because they were selfish, because once they had money they turned their backs on their own flesh and blood.

But now, what her mother said blew her mind wide open, and she began to reconsider something truly horrifying:

What if it wasn't that they'd abandoned her, but that they'd been driven away?

What if those four sons, four men who had once been full of vigor, who had once meant to do right by their mother, had each, one by one, gone through the very hell that Elisa's family was living through in these twenty-six days?

Those patterns of behavior that never cry poverty yet leave you forever feeling you owe a debt, forever denied any peace; those psychological demands handed to you one after another, never-ending, and the moment you fail to meet one, they grind you into the mud; those soft blades slipped into your ear through other people's mouths, through false comparisons, enough to drive a normal person mad

So it turned out evil didn't spring up all at once. So it turned out heartlessness, too, was forced out of a person bit by bit!

Her mother was still gasping on the other end of the line, and Elisa's heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would leap out of her throat.

She took a deep breath and gripped the stair railing so tightly her knuckles went white, and asked the question she least wanted to ask, yet most had to askthe question that could tear the last covering off the whole family's shame.

"Mom, tell mejust now, at home, what exactly did Grandma do to my dad?!"

On the other end of the line, Ida's voice was like a rag torn completely to shreds, carrying a despair and numbness that chilled the blood.