My 16-year-old daughter was terrified when my father-in-law threw her out at midnight and gave her room to her cousin.

when something was funny. She was healing in fragments, and every fragment mattered.

“No,” Daniel said. “I regret not doing it sooner.”

Emma nodded, as though that answer settled something inside her.

The family did not become whole again the way people expect around holidays. Richard moved into a small rental outside Dayton. Denise worked two jobs and continue reading …