My husband pushed me down the stairs, and as I lay shattered at the bottom, my mother-in-law called my father and said, “Come get your worthless daughter and take her back.” Dad gave her only one warning: “If she has so much as a scratch, your family will answer for it.” They laughed at him because they had absolutely no idea who my father truly was.

He gripped my elbow.

I told him to let go.

I remembered his palm striking my shoulder and a sudden loss of balance.

Then wood, light, noise, and nothing that came in the right order.

“Were there witnesses?”

“Celeste.

And possibly the housekeeper, Agnes.

I heard a vacuum downstairs before the argument.”