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.

Dad smiled and opened the newspaper to the crossword.

Lily came home at noon with a bracelet she’d made for me.

Its plastic beads spelled BRAVE, though the letters were out of order.

I put it on anyway.

Later that evening, she curled beside me on the couch and asked for a story.

I could have told her about the extraordinary man her grandfather had once been.

I could have told her about powerful people brought low, secret files, and a courtroom where the truth had finally emerged.

Instead, I told her about a little girl who planted a sunflower in a small garden, watered it every morning, and learned that growing tall was not the same thing as never bending in the wind.