“Listen to me very carefully,” he said, low.

“Your mother is legally my wife now.

What she does with her money, with her friends, with her time, is none of your concern.

Not anymore.” I held my ground and kept my voice level.

“It becomes my concern,” I said, “when you cut her off, one person at a time, from everyone who loves her.” His face changed then, hardened into something I had seen before on other faces in other places, the particular ugliness of a man who has just decided that reason is not going to get him what he wants, and that he will try fear instead.

There is a moment, in certain confrontations, when the other person stops trying to persuade you and starts trying to intimidate you, and if you have been trained to notice it, you can see it happen, a kind of gear-change behind the eyes.