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.

When her friends left, she sat beside Dad on the step and asked whether she could make a wish without blowing out a candle.

“Of course,” he said.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds.

Then she opened them and asked, “Does a wish still work if you tell someone?”

“That depends what kind of wish it is,” he replied.

“I wished everybody would stop being mad.”

Dad looked across the garden at me.

His expression told me he was choosing his words with care.