I found this clarifying rather than cruel, and I have tried to be honest with myself about the difference.

I did not rejoice in their difficulty; a brother genuinely struggling to pay down a maxed card is not a thing to rejoice in, and I took no pleasure in it.

But I did feel the specific quiet vindication of watching a thing reveal its true shape.

For two years I had been told, in a hundred small ways, that these lavish dinners were tradition, were family, were the irreplaceable glue of a close and loving clan, and that my paying for them was my cherished contribution to that glue.

The instant the paying stopped, the tradition evaporated, which meant it had never been tradition at all.