“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.

Instead I’d found myself shattered at the bottom of the stairs.

“How did my husband’s parents know that my father had Maya?“I asked, opening my eyes.

They couldn’t have an idea.

That was Gabriel’s logic.

“Maybe they thought she was still at your marital house.”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said softly.

“No, it certainly does not,” Gabriel agreed, without false comfort.

I liked that there was no fake sweetness in his steady voice.