It is invisible.

It is a held breath in a foyer, a hand kept at a side, a sentence delivered instead of a blow.

And it is worth more than every dramatic gesture ever thrown, because the dramatic gesture usually costs you everything, and the held breath, if you can manage it, wins.

Chapter 8 — Cold Precision

I drove straight to my office in the city, and my mind, which had been a fog of accommodation for three years, operated now with a cold, clean precision I had almost forgotten I possessed.

For three years I had let Trevor persuade me that family comes first — that enduring his mother’s contempt and his sister’s parasitism was the price of love, the sacrifice a good wife makes.