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.

He has no authority to order a judge or police officer to do anything.”

Dad nodded.

“And I won’t pretend otherwise.”

That mattered.

Martin’s mother, Celeste Callahan, had spent years boasting about who owed her favors.

I had been invited to dinners where conversations sounded like auctions of influence.

It would have been easy for my father to answer their arrogance with his own.

Instead, he asked how I was feeling and whether the pain medicine was helping.