“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.

I kept my voice as steady as I could.

“Do you remember what happened when Daddy got mad?”

“He screamed at me to go up to my bedroom,” Maya recalled.

“Did you see what went on in the staircases?I asked, my heart pounding against my ribs.

Maya looked at her drawing of the blue window.

“No, I was in my room with the door closed,” she said.

A long, silent breath of relief escaped.

“Did you hear anything out of your room?” I tapped gently.