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 knew how it felt to live through those seconds.

Seeing them from above made me feel like a stranger who had been abandoned in a house.

Gabriel rested his hand on the table near mine but did not touch me until I nodded.

“The clip is important,” he said.

“The investigators will authenticate it and assess it alongside the other evidence.”

“Why did she run away?” I whispered.

“We can’t know from the image alone.”

The second recovered clip provided a possible answer.