Her friends thought she was lucky.

The neighbors thought he was charming.

To the whole watching world he was a generous, attentive, devoted new husband, and that public image was not an accident; it was armor, carefully maintained, so that if my mother ever did try to tell someone what was happening behind the door, she would sound like the unreasonable one, the ungrateful one, the confused one.

He built his reputation in daylight precisely so that he could do his real work in the dark, and it very nearly worked.