“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.

“Maybe the blue ledger itself,” Dad said softly.

Suddenly, a vivid sensory memory flickered in my mind and my hands pressed to my temples.

14th October.

A cold rainy afternoon in autumn.

Water running down the side mirrors of my car.

Maya is sitting safe in her elementary school.

I could dimly see myself standing in our kitchen, holding a thick blue file folder to my chest.

Then another vivid vision flashed through my mind.