“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.

“Rachel, you don’t need to solve the whole mystery tonight,” Dad said.

“I must work it out, Dad,” I insisted stubbornly.

“They are trying to steal my daughter, they have forged my signature on a huge debt, and they are hiding a secret ledger.

I can’t just lie in this bed and not do anything.

Dad’s eyes were full of tenderness and strength.

“Dad, you’re not doing nothing,” he told me firmly.

“You’re recovering from physical trauma.