onLeave a Comment on My mother-in-law slapped my two-year-old daughter across the face at her own birthday banquet, called my little girl “defective,” and my husband just sat there. Minutes later, his glasses were floating in a bowl of stew, his mother was buried face-first in her birthday cake, and I was walking out with my child, but none of them knew I’d spent the past month preparing for the exact moment my husband finally chose his mother over his daughter 
“Go home?”
I kissed the cheek where the handprint had once appeared.
“Yes, baby.”
She smiled.
And as I carried her toward the doors, I understood the thing Luca and Wendy never had:
the mark on Fiona’s face had faded within a week, but the moment her father chose not to stand up would follow him for the rest of his life.
