My husband slapped me across the face when I came home from work seven months pregnant, then stood beside his mother while I began bleeding on their kitchen floor. But when they mocked my “pathetic country bumpkin” father and called him themselves, they had no idea whose phone was about to ring.

I slowly lifted my head from the cold kitchen floor, staring up into the eyes of the man I had once stupidly loved.

“Then call my father,” I whispered through my bloody lips.

Carter burst out laughing, a sharp, ugly sound that echoed off the high ceilings. Mrs. Eleanor joined in, her shrill laughter cutting through the tense air of the kitchen.

“Your father?” she sneered, shaking her head. “That pathetic, uneducated country bumpkin? What’s he going to do? Bring you a basket of apples?”

Carter picked up my shattered phone from the floor. The touch screen was spiderwebbed with deep cracks, but the liquid crystal display was somehow still flickering to life.

“Sure,” Carter said, waving the ruined phone inches from my face. “Let’s hear how the old man plans to drive his beat-up pickup truck down here and rescue his precious little princess. Let’s see what Mr. Blue Collar has to say about high-society legal matters.”

He tapped the screen carefully through the broken glass, located the contact listed simply as “Dad,” turned the device onto speaker mode, and pressed call.

The phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The air in the room felt suffocatingly heavy as the rings chimed out loudly through the broken speaker. On the fourth ring, the call connected with a soft click.