Garnet held the door.

And in that division of labor I saw exactly what he had become — a man who had outsourced his conscience to his wife, who let her be the villain so that he could tell himself, later, that he had only been standing there, that it was her idea, that he hadn’t actually done anything.

That is the specific cowardice that frightened me, because it is the kind that cannot be shamed out of a person; it has already made its peace with itself.

A man who does wrong at least knows he has done it.