(Vivian grew up in a house where it was important not to say the wrong thing and she’d been editing her thoughts for precision ever since she was a child. Finding the right way to phrase something was as soothing to her then as a stuffed animal was to others, and in fact the closest thing she’d had to a transitional object was a copy of The Must Words, described as “a collection of 6,000 essential words to help you enrich your vocabulary.”)
