“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 love it,” I said, complimenting her work. \”Is this our house?”

“Yes, that is our house,” she replied cheerfully.

I ran my fingers over the windows, blue with crayon.

“Why did you paint the windows blue Maya?”

Because blue windows mean the house is safe inside,” she explained simply.

That innocent answer struck my heart with a terrible force.

“Who said blue meant safe?”I asked quietly.

Maya shook her head.