“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.

“Is Maya all right at home?“I asked him right away.

“She’s sitting at the kitchen table, drawing pictures,” Dad said, smiling warmly and reassuringly.

“Mrs.

Gable made hot cocoa for her, though Maya protested that she was too grown up for marshmallows.

I laughed a little shakily.

“She is only seven years old, but she fancies herself very grown up,” I murmured.

Dad reminded me gently.

“She said the same thing when she was four.