“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 have no idea,” I said.

Dad got up out of his chair, went over to the window and braced himself.

“Did your husband ever ask you to remember a specific date from last spring, Rachel?” Dad said, still not turning around.”

Something tightened in my chest and I knew.

“Yes he did,” I said quietly.

Dad spun to look at me.

“When did he ask you that?”

“The nite before he threw me down the stairs,” I said.