All my life, I’d been silent. Whenever I’d been tempted to speak, I’d quickly changed my mind. “Why bother?” I’d say to myself. “What difference will it make if you speak?” In the past, I’d been just as quick to let emotion get in the way — to decide, on slim evidence, that a certain person could never understand me. But this time, my first impressions stood fast: she would understand me perfectly.
