He never understood it was a stage I owned, that I could raise or lower or, if it came to it, remove.

They had both made the same error, the error the comfortable always make about the quiet: they mistook my silence for weakness, and my plainness for the whole of me.

It is a very old mistake.

It is also, almost always, a fatal one.

Chapter 4 — Evidence Makes Decisions

When Amber finished laying her glue across my wife’s velvet chair, she stepped back to admire it and said, to my son, “Imagine her trying to stand during the speeches.” Garnet covered his mouth to keep from laughing.

I waited until they had gone.