I had never known what it meant.

I was about to learn that the quietest man I had ever known had been, in another life, someone whose name could still, decades later, empty the color from a powerful man’s face — and that he had chosen, with all of that behind him, to raise a daughter and fix cars and never once let it show.

That last part is the part I keep returning to.

Because it would be simple to make this a story about a fearsome man who was secretly fearsome all along, the sheep’s clothing slipping to reveal the wolf.