Nothing about their steadiness was dramatic.

It was the product of charts kept accurate and beacons kept lit and a thousand unglamorous corrections made quietly in the dark — exactly the sort of patient, invisible competence the world never applauds and cannot do without.

My mother had run her firm like that.

I was trying to run Cardinal like that.

The harbor, it seemed to me, was full of a truth the ballroom had never learned.

“It feels quiet,” I said.