“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.

What envelope are you referring to?” I asked him in confusion.

“The envelope you got from your father,” he had urged.

“I got no envelope from my dad,” I told him the truth.

He stared at me for a few long seconds in silence before forcing a fake smile and telling me to forget he ever spoke of it.

I thought he was just tired from work.

Now someone had given me a paper I knew nothing of.

“Dad,” I said slowly, “did you send me a white envelope last week?”