Every second I did not scream was a second Christopher believed himself safe, and every second he believed himself safe was a second he kept spending, kept planning, kept building the paper trail that would eventually bury him.

My coldness bought me the one thing rage could never have bought: time to prepare, and the element of surprise.

The women who scream are not wrong; their pain is real and their expression of it is valid.

But I have learned that there is a particular kind of power available only to those who can hold the scream inside, who can feel everything and show nothing, who can sit across a dinner table from the person destroying them and calmly ask how the meeting went.

It is not a warm power.