“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.

“Did he say anything to you in the car?” “Dad asked,

I remembered that I was shaking and befuddled and sick.

“Don’t ever let the blue book come up to you, Dad,” he told me.

Gabriel scribbled a few quick notes on his legal pad.

“Why did you agree to keep quiet then?

“Gabriel asked softly.

I felt very ashamed.

“Because I was scared out of my mind, and I wanted to believe my husband was trying to protect our family from a huge scandal,” I admitted.