“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.

I ran my thumb along the side seam of the plush, feeling a small, hard object buried deep within the soft stuffing.

Dad reached over immediately, looking closely at the stuffed toy.

“The second key is in the toy,” Dad confirmed, his voice thick with emotion.

“And the written message on the envelope?’ “Laura?” Gabriel asked.

“After your husband went into the house with the empty blue folder, you ran to the hall basket, grabbed a plain envelope, wrote that warning message to yourself, and stuck it under the stairs,” Laura continued.

“You wanted to leave a clue in case they drugged you, or tried to mess with your head.”