If you had told me, sitting in that chair beside his bed, that my gentle husband was constructing an elaborate trap in those silent hours, I would have thought the grief had turned your mind.

Lawrence?

My Lawrence, who apologized to telemarketers, who could not bring himself to return a bad meal in a restaurant?

But that is the thing people never understand about the quiet, careful men.

Their mildness is not weakness.

It is control, held so steadily that it looks like gentleness, and when something they love is threatened, that same steadiness can build a machine of astonishing cold precision, and smile at you the whole time it is doing it.

Chapter 4 — Shirley Comes Around