She glanced sideways at the employees passing us on the sidewalk, suddenly aware that this was happening where people could hear it.

“Can we talk about this privately? You’re making it sound so deliberately cruel.”

“Cruelty doesn’t become an accident just because the people who watched it lower their voices afterward.”

I went back inside without either coffee.

My mother messaged me that evening, to tell me I was letting bitterness damage Brooke’s emotional health. For the first time in months, I answered.

What you’re calling bitterness, I wrote, is just memory, protected by boundaries.