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.

I studied my younger face, searching for a warning I might have missed.

Dad sat down beside me.

“You couldn’t know every choice he would make.”

“I wish I’d known sooner.”

“I know.”

I turned the picture face down, then gathered the photographs into a box.

They were part of my past, not instructions for my future.

Upstairs, Lily called for one more chapter of her bedtime book.