“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.

PART II

Gabriel didn’t wait for me to ask what the legal paper meant for my near-term future.

He put his right hand on the folder, to keep it from sliding off the narrow table.

“The motion was filed by your husband’s family through an electronic filing system,” Gabriel explained carefully.

It is asking for temporary emergency custody of your daughter, supervised visitation for you, and a mental fitness evaluation.

My fingers dug into the hospital blanket until they were white.