My sister announced in the family group chat that I was officially banned from the reunion—and made it clear no one was to tell me where it would be. I didn’t argue. I didn’t reply. I simply opened the location pin… and laughed so hard I had to cover my mouth.

My father, Mark, is what I think of as a theoretical good man. Meaning: he has never raised a hand, never disappeared with the rent money, never drunk himself into a ruin. He went to work every day. He kept food in the house. He remembers birthdays if they are written down. To outsiders, he reads as steady and decent.

In practice, however, he is a coward.

Not flamboyantly. Quietly. Respectably. He has spent decades cultivating the kind of passivity that people mistake for peacekeeping. He tells himself he hates conflict. What he actually hates is paying the cost of standing up to my mother. So he does what many men do in homes ruled by volatile women: he calls surrender wisdom and lets the children absorb the consequences.

Then there is Bridget.