“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 feel like I’m failing,” I muttered.

“You’re not failing.” Dad said in his bossy voice.

You’re injured, overwhelmed and lacking some key information.

These are temporary physical conditions, not failures.”

His voice held such authority that it checked my rising panic.

He’d spent decades running rooms of investigators, federal agents, and defence attorneys, but he was using that incredible strength now only to keep me grounded.

I looked at my hands.