“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.

Dad frowned, really confused.

“No, I didn’t send you nothing.”

Did you send any papers to my husband?“I checked.

“I haven’t spoken to your husband in over a month,” Dad replied firmly.

Gabriel came closer to my bed.

What prompted your husband to ask about an envelope?”

“Can’t do that,” I said.

He said it was from my father, and he made it plain.