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.

PART 3

Dad pulled a chair beside my bed and sat without removing his sweater.

He looked older than he had at Sunday lunch a week earlier.

I wondered how much of that aging had happened in the last hour.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your work?” I asked.

He glanced at Gabriel.

“Because I wanted to come home and be your father, not the man in the newspaper.

It was a difficult job.