“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.

“Only a little.”

Maya thought about this for a second.

“Then I shan’t tell you any jokes this evening.”

I gave a soft, real laugh, despite the tight pain in my side.

“Thank you, my sweet girl,” I murmured.

She put her folded construction paper right on my hospital blanket It was a bright picture of a house with big blue windows and a yellow front door and grass all over the page.

“I drew this for you on Grandpa’s kitchen table,” Maya proudly announced.