“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.

“We will not trade wild insults, but we will produce medical records, work histories, school reports and character references.”

Gabriel nodded his head in agreement with that strategy.

“We’re also going to be asking for an emergency hearing with a judge immediately,” Gabriel said.

“They’re going to say I’m too hurt to take care of my daughter,” I worried.

“Being temporarily physically injured doesn’t make you an unfit parent,” Gabriel retorted fast.

“But if you lay in this bed and do nothing, a false narrative will be written.”

I swallowed hard before asking, “What sort of false narrative?”