It had always been there.

The gentle wife at the Christmas dinners had been, the whole time, one of the toughest people I have ever known, and it took the worst night of her life to show me.

I have never underestimated her since.

And I have wondered how many gentle, undemanding people are carrying that same unseen strength, waiting only for a test terrible enough to reveal it — and how wrong the rest of us are, all the time, to mistake the people who have never had to fight for people who cannot.

I squeezed her hand.