“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.

The calendar entry that’s been struck out.

Memory wiped out.

“What did he do when he intercepted me?

I asked Laura, desperately.

Laura glanced at the police officer and then back at me.

Laura started off her story, “I can only tell you what I saw and what I heard on the phone.

“You called my private number from your car in your driveway.

You were frightened because your husband’s car was parked just behind yours.