What she had mistaken for weakness was a decision.

I dislike confrontation because I grew up watching my father waste himself on the wrong ones, and I resolved to spend that energy carefully, on things that mattered.

It does not mean I cannot be hard.

It means I choose when to be, and I do not announce it in advance.

Vanessa had spent seventeen months reading a book she was certain she understood, and she had gotten the ending completely wrong, and she was about to find that out in the worst possible way.

I have noticed that predators of a certain kind make this error again and again, and that it is almost a defining feature of them.