“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 took the folder, but he didn’t realise you’d already pulled the master ledger and the brass key out of the inside.

“Where did I put the master ledger before he came up to my car?

I asked, my heart pounding like a drum.

Laura pointed her finger at the tiny stuffed puppy on my bed.

“You hid the ledger in that dark wooden storage chest in the garage, under all the winter camping gear,” Laura said.

“And you slipped the brass key into Barnaby’s plush stuffing through a rip in his seam.

I glanced down at the stuffed puppy sitting in my lap.