So he stayed a tired stranger.

He held his sleeping daughter and swallowed the insult and let them show him, freely, exactly who they were when they believed no one who mattered was watching.

It was the hardest kind of power to exercise, the power to not use your power yet, and it was the only kind that ever showed him the whole picture.

His late wife had teased him about it once — you’d rather be underestimated than obeyed — and she had been right.

Being underestimated was information.

Being obeyed was only noise.