I should be fair and say that my father was not a monster in the way that word usually means.

He did not drink, or gamble, or disappear.

He provided; he showed up to the school events; to the neighbors he was a solid, successful man.

His particular damage was quieter and harder to name from the outside.

It was that he could not bear to be one voice among several.

He had to be the one who decided what was true — in the family, at the company, in any room he entered — and he had learned, over a lifetime, that the fastest route to being right was to be the loudest and the most certain and the most willing to punish anyone who disagreed.

It works, is the terrible thing.