“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.

The picture had been taken from above, probably by an officer standing on the landing-stage.

Because when you finally remember what you saw in that room.

Those words on paper were like a heavy door opening on a dark room I had completely blocked from my mind.

“When did I write this on earth?” I looked up at Dad and asked him.

‘We don’t know yet,’ Dad said softly.

“Who found the envelope?“I asked.”

“Your neighbor’s big boy,” Dad said.