“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.

Dad’s face darkened.

“What did he ask you that nite?”

I said it again.

“Where did you put the white envelope?” He kept saying it was an envelope that you gave me.

“And you told him the truth, that I hadn’t given you nothing,” Dad said.

“Yes,” I replied.

Then he asked another question.

And what was his second question?” chimed in Gabriel.