Joe frowned at me.

“That’s it?

You’re not going to tell me I got what I deserved?” “You did get what you deserved, Joe,” I said.

“I just don’t have any need to gloat about it.” “You used to be kinder,” he said.

“No,” I told him.

“I used to be quiet when I should have spoken.

People confuse those.”

I have thought a great deal about that exchange, because Joe genuinely believed it — that the woman standing in that hallway declining to gloat over him was somehow a colder woman than the one he’d married.