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.

One afternoon, as I sat on the back step wrapped in a blanket, he knelt by the tomato plants and pulled weeds carefully from the soil.

Watching him work, I tried to imagine the man Gabriel had described confronting criminals in federal court.

“You don’t seem like someone people feared,” I said.

He set a weed on the pile.

“I didn’t want them to fear me.

I wanted them to understand that evidence mattered more than intimidation.”

“Did you ever lose?”

“Often enough to remember I wasn’t in control of everything.” He washed the dirt from his hands under the outdoor faucet.