My father took my mother’s entire paycheck for 43 years. when she finally demanded her money back, he placed a folder on the table and said, “Once You open this, you’ll never look at me the same way again.”

Our neighbors always believed my father was a bad man. To be honest, for many years, I believed the same thing.

He rarely smiled, spoke in a short, stern manner, and looked so cold in photographs that people often asked my mother,

“Margaret, are you really happy with him?”

My mother always gave the same answer.

“Don’t look at Robert’s face if you want to understand him.”

But no one understood what she meant.

My mother worked at a small clothing factory for more than forty years. Every Friday, she received her paycheck, came home,

and placed the sealed envelope in front of my father.