“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.

He did not look angry or reckless in the least.

He was ready for a fight.

His eyes met mine straight away, and the intense legal look fell away from his face.

“Sweet girl,” Dad said softly, coming over to my bed.

That sweet sentence almost broke my carefully guarded emotional composure.

I’d kept my mouth shut while doctors poked at my swollen ribs, while officers questioned my story.

I even made it through the legal filing with its horrible accusations without crying.

But my father sat beside me, his hand holding my bruised one, and I felt small again.