“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.

“Are you sure about that, Rachel?“Dad asked softly.

And I wrote those words myself.” Cold sweat broke out on my skin.

Gabriel moved a little closer, careful not to touch the photograph.

Remember that note you wrote?”

“Oh no, I don’t remember it at all,” I said, completely terrified.

I was lying flat on the mattress, but the hospital room seemed to spin around me.

I looked again at the photograph.

The envelope lay on the wooden floor, right at the bottom step, partly under the thin entryway table.