“My mother is afraid of you,” I said.

“I have watched her be afraid of you all evening.” And that was when the mask I had been half-seeing all night finally came all the way off.

He set the glass down and closed a cabinet door with a hard, deliberate thud, and he turned to face me, and the charming, church-going gentleman was simply gone, as though he had never existed, and in his place was something cold and contemptuous that had been standing behind that man’s face the whole time.

He stepped into my space, close, using his size the way men like him always do.