“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 heard a giant crashing noise,” Maya said, gesturing with her hand.

“It’s like when the big laundry basket falls down.

“What did you hear after that noise?”” I asked quietly.

“Daddy said a bad word real loud,” told Maya.

Then grandma came running through the front door and told me to stay in my room.

The room was quiet, quiet enough to hear the low thrum of medical monitors.

I stretched out and took her little hand in a firm grip.

“Your Grandma tell you anything else?”