My mother couldn’t erase the sentence she’d said to security.
My father couldn’t undo years of making me the family cautionary tale.
Ryan couldn’t take back the smile he’d given when Madison humiliated me.
And I couldn’t pretend my silence had always been noble.
Sometimes I had used secrecy as armor even when secrecy was no longer needed.
Sometimes I let people misunderstand me because correcting them would have meant being vulnerable.
We had all added something to the distance.
But the cruelty?
That belonged to the people who chose
