Page 154 of The Professor's Wife

“The couple beside us.”

“What about them?”

“The woman checked his face before she answered.”

“So?”

“So she already knew there was a right answer.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know.”

“How?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came.

“She nodded,” I said eventually.

He frowned. “People nod, Daisy.”

“Not like that.”

“What was different?”

“She wasn’t agreeing with him. She was trying to make it stop.”

Tristan looked at me briefly before returning his attention to the road.

Maybe none of it meant what I thought it did. Maybe the woman really hadn’t cared about the sandwich. Maybe I had carried Oliver out of that house with me and was finding him in places he had never been.

“What’s wrong with me, Tristan?”

His hands tightened around the wheel.

“What do you think is wrong with you?”

I looked down at my hands.

There were so many answers I could have given him.

I had always been different. Too angry. Too loud. Too sensitive. Too quick to take offense and too slow to let anything go.

June used to warn me about it.

Keep your feelings under control, Daisy, she would say.

She didn’t say it to be cruel. She said it because she knew how easily people could use them against me. She had seen mefight with teachers, neighbors, girls at school. She had watched me say things I regretted before the anger had even left my body.

Sometimes she stepped between me and whoever had set me off. Sometimes she dragged me away. Sometimes she waited until we were alone and told me I couldn’t keep treating every insult like a threat.

But when you grew up feeling threatened by everything, it was hard to tell the difference.

“I used to cause trouble,” I said.

Tristan glanced at me but didn’t interrupt.

“I got angry. I fought with people. June used to tell me I had to control myself before somebody decided I was the problem.”