“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.

Gable had cooked a delicious homemade feast and the whole house smelt of sweet cinnamon and warm apple pie.

That evening, with the golden sunset painting the sky, I sat on the porch swing with Maya snuggled close next to me in her pink star pyjamas, while Dad tended to his garden flowers nearby.

Later that nite Laura came with a bunch of fresh yellow lilies for us.

“The blue ledger is the most complete evidence of corporate fraud we have seen in twenty years,” federal prosecutors said, Laura said with a bright smile.

“None of them are going to be getting out of jail for a long time.”