When my portion came around, I paid it.

Mine and Derek’s, split clean down the middle of the two of us, plus our share of the tip, calculated to the dollar and handed over without ceremony.

I did not pay for the sister-in-law’s wine.

I did not quietly absorb the brother-in-law’s second entree.

I did not round anyone else’s edges off onto my own bill.

I paid for what I had eaten and what my husband had eaten, and I added a generous tip on our share alone, because the waiter had been kind and the kindness was mine to reward, not the family’s to extract from me.

I had spent years letting my generosity be harvested as though it were a public utility, and the quiet pleasure of giving a good tip that belonged to me alone, freely and for my own reasons, was a small restoration of something I had not realized had been taken.