“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.

“Nobody told me.

“I just invented it myself.”

I squeezed her little hand gently.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good rule.

Maya laid her head on the mattress.

“Are we going home tomorrow Mama?”

I looked at my father before answering her.

‘We’re going to stay a little while at Grandpa’s nice house,’ I said softly.