“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 had just accepted the simple, peaceful identity he presented at home.

Why have you kept all of that from me for so long?“I asked him,

“Because I wanted you to have a normal childhood with a loving father, not a target on your back,” Dad answered, painfully honest.

“You made me believe that you were only a clerk,” I said softly.

Dad nodded.

“I let you think I had a little, forgettable career.” “Looking back, that was unfair of me to you.”

I could never be angry with him because he was so frank.