“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.

“Yes, under all your old black books,” Maya added.

Dad and Gabriel exchanged a look of comprehension.

“Your old appointment planners, they were in that same basket,” Dad said quietly.

I looked at Maya fondly.

“Did Grandpa bring home those old black books tonight?”

Maya shook her head.

‘No.

The nice police officer said the books had to stay in the basket for now.