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.

In the hallway outside the interview room, I sat with a cup of water until the shaking passed.

“I thought seeing it would make me feel better,” I said.

Dad was waiting in the corridor.

“Sometimes being believed and being ready to remember are different things.”

I looked up at him.

“Did you ever get used to watching terrible things?”

“No,” he replied.

“I got used to doing my work even when they were terrible.