“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.

“I don’t know,” I said softly.

“Take your time, honey,” Dad said encouragingly.

I looked out the hospital window at the lights of the city, glowing.

My pale face hovered over the glass, along with my father’s broad shoulders and Gabriel’s dark suit.

“I remember walking down the second-floor hallway,” I said, the memory coming back to me slowly.

Maya had her favourite stuffed animal, a puppy, brown.

She wanted to show me something.