“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.

“Because you found something dangerous and needed a record of it in case you were pressured to forget,” Gabriel said gently.

I looked at the legal counsel and said nothing.

It was a horrible thought, but somewhere deep down it made sense.

“You think my memory loss was trauma based?”I said quietly.

“Trauma and extreme fear do strange things to human memory,” said Gabriel kindly.

“When people feel threatened, they will often write down the important things and hide the evidence until it is safe.”

Dad came back to my bedside and held my hand again.