I would not put on that coat, even for them.
I want to be honest about how close I came to wanting to, though, because I think the wanting matters.
Standing in that corridor with their child on my shoulder, I felt the full, ugly pull of it — the knowledge that I could make their lives so much worse, that a word here or a push there could turn a bad day into a permanent ruin.
For one long breath, the part of me that had spent four years being made small wanted nothing more than to make someone else small in return.
And then the baby shifted against my neck, warm and trusting and entirely blameless, and the wanting simply drained out of me.
Not because I’m a saint.
I’m not.
But because I had finally learned the difference between justice and revenge, and the difference is exactly this: justice is content to stop the harm, and revenge always wants to pass it on.
I had spent a year being handed someone else’s damage to carry.
I was not going to hand it to a one-year-old just because I finally could.