“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.

“So I said, ‘Yes, I have my old yearly planners in the house,’” I said.

“What planners?Dad asked.

“My old leather appointment books,” I told him.

“Before Maya came along I tracked every single daily event, errand and meeting in those planners.”

Where are those old planners right now?“Gabriel asked quickly.

They’re in our hall closet, in a decorative wicker basket’, I said.

Gabriel glanced at my father, eyes narrowed.

“Those planners could be important evidence,” said Gabriel.