She wanted to know where Kang Jun was.
She wanted to know whether Mary Lou was happy.
But something in her daughter’s voice made her stop.
So Theresa did what she had done for years.
She let it go.
She stopped asking.
Life continued around the silence.
Theresa’s hair gradually turned gray.
The house became quieter.
The years accumulated.
The money kept arriving.
And yet the loneliness never disappeared.
Every Christmas, Theresa continued a ritual she couldn’t bring herself to abandon.
She prepared the meal Mary Lou loved.
She set the table.
And, sometimes, without even realizing she was doing it, she placed a plate in front of the empty chair where her daughter should have been sitting.
Then she would stare at it.
For a moment, she could almost imagine Mary Lou walking through the front door.
But the door never opened.
Only the silence remained.
The money had made Theresa financially comfortable. It paid for improvements around the house and removed many of the worries that come with getting older.
Neighbors sometimes told her how fortunate she was.
“You’re lucky,” they would say.
“Your daughter takes such good care of you.”
Theresa would smile politely.
But inside, she never felt lucky.
Because money could pay a bill.
It could repair a roof.
It could improve a house.
But it couldn’t replace a daughter sitting across the dinner table.
It couldn’t replace a hug.
It couldn’t replace a conversation.
And it certainly couldn’t answer the question that had been growing inside Theresa for twelve years:
Was Mary Lou really happy?
Or was she simply telling her mother what she thought she wanted to hear?
Theresa had spent years convincing herself that she shouldn’t interfere.
Mary Lou was an adult.
She had her own marriage.
Her own life.
Her own responsibilities.
Perhaps this was simply what adulthood looked like.
But as the twelfth year approached, Theresa could no longer ignore the feeling that something was wrong.
She remembered the girl Mary Lou had been before she left.
The laughter.
The conversations.
The way her daughter used to tell her everything.
Then she remembered that brief video call.
The distracted eyes.
The rushed answers.
The strange distance.
The contrast haunted her.
Eventually, Theresa stopped asking herself whether traveling to South Korea was sensible.
Instead, she asked herself something much harder:
What would I regret more — going, or never finding out?
That question changed everything.
One ordinary Tuesday, Theresa opened her computer.
She stared at the screen for several minutes.
Then she bought a plane ticket.
To South Korea.
She didn’t tell Mary Lou.
She didn’t send a message.
She didn’t warn her daughter that she was coming.
For the first time in twelve years, Theresa decided she wasn’t going to wait for an answer to come to her.
She was going to find it herself.
Theresa had never traveled internationally before.
She knew very little about navigating Seoul.
The thought of crossing an ocean alone frightened her.
But the fear of never knowing what had happened to her daughter was greater.
During the long flight across the Pacific, Theresa barely slept.
Her mind kept creating possibilities.
Maybe Mary Lou was simply overwhelmed by work.
Maybe her marriage had become difficult.
Maybe she was struggling with something she didn’t want her mother to know.
Maybe nothing was wrong at all.
Maybe Theresa had spent twelve years worrying about nothing.
She tried to convince herself of that last possibility.
But something inside her wouldn’t accept it.
As the plane descended toward Seoul, Theresa looked through the window at the enormous city spreading beneath her.
Thousands of miles away from home, she suddenly understood that the messages she’d received all those years had become her only connection to her daughter.
“Mom, take care of yourself. I’m doing well.”
Eight words.
Eight words that had somehow become a substitute for an entire life.
