Something inside me finished turning to ice, and I want to be precise about what it was, because it was not what people expect.

It was not rage.

Rage is hot, and loud, and it makes you stupid, and I have watched rage lose more cases than any lawyer ever won.

What settled into me, kneeling on that frozen floor beside my wife and my cold son, was the opposite of rage.

It was cold.

Clear, patient, and cold, all the way down — the specific temperature at which I do my best work, and the worst possible temperature for the two women who had put me there to encounter in the man they had decided was harmless.