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 spoke about careful witnesses and persistent clerks, people whose names never appeared in headlines but whose work had helped establish the truth.

He did not tell it to show how powerful he had been.

He told it because he wanted me to know that justice, when it arrived, was rarely the achievement of one formidable man.

I thought of Agnes refusing to wipe the banister, Priya refusing to overstate a finding, Ortiz refusing to guess, and Lily’s counselor helping her find words for feelings too large for her age.

The Callahans had laughed at my father because they thought he was nobody.