They are gentle with you when the door is closed — sweet, even, attentive — and then, the moment there is an audience whose opinion costs them something, they set you down like a bag they are tired of carrying.

They do not think of this as betrayal.

They have a whole private theology that excuses it.

They think loyalty is a thing that lives behind closed doors, and that public silence is just good manners, just keeping the peace, just not making a scene.

Callum believed all of that.

He believed that because he was tender with me in his apartment, it did not count against him that he went deaf and blind whenever his mother sharpened her voice at me in daylight.