“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.

“Don’t touch a thing,” Dad commanded firmly.

“I’m on my way there right now.”

He replaced the receiver and stood up from his chair.

“What’s the matter, Dad?” I said, my chest tightening with panic.

Dad looked down at me and for the first time in my life I saw real fear in my father’s eyes.

It was not fear for his safety.

The father’s frozen terror when he saw his child in mortal danger.

“The police just found a sealed white envelope in the mailbox at your house,” Dad said.