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’ll find a way to send a message.”

She grinned.

“Good, because the moon probably doesn’t have pancakes.”

I laughed.

She took my hand as we walked home, and I realized that the future no longer felt like something the Callahans could seize and define.

It was a place Lily could imagine freely, all the way to the moon.

PART 24

On the anniversary of the day I fell, I woke before sunrise.