“Come get your worthless daughter and take her back,” my mother-in-law shouted my father as I lay broken at the bottom of the stairs after my husband shoved me down. “Your family will answer for it if she has even a scratch,” was the sole warning Dad offered her. They had no notion who my father really was, so they made fun of him.

Every adult in the room froze all the way up.

My breath caught in my throat.

“What do you mean, Maya?””

Her little legs kicked back and forth on the chair rungs.

“Daddy was mad as hell this morning,” Maya said in a low voice.

Dad’s body went stiff, but his voice remained perfectly even.

“When did Daddy get mad, honey?”

“I never went to school,” Maya said casually.