PARTIALITY

I joined the signing call for the merger at nine that night, an hour later than planned, but Herr Krüger didn’t reproach me for it — he just said: “You did what was right for yourself.

That’s what matters most, Frau Fischer.”

Three months later, I heard the wedding had been called off entirely.

No one explained exactly why, but I suspect that after that night, Sophie and her family had seen clearly enough what kind of man they’d nearly married their daughter into.

My mother called me many times over the following months.

At first, I didn’t answer.

Later, I took a few of her calls, but they were short, distant.

She still didn’t seem to understand why I’d reacted the way I did — she still thought of it as a moment of temporary anger, nothing more.

I didn’t cut my family off entirely — she’s still my mother, he’s still my brother.

But I stopped the monthly transfers.

I stopped automatically taking the short end of things.

I stopped treating “giving way” as an obligation that simply came with being the eldest.

I bought a small holiday flat near Lake Chiemsee in southern Germany, somewhere I could drive to on weekends and watch the Alps alone.

I took up skiing in the winters, hiking with colleagues in the summers, joined a book club — small things, but things I’d never once let myself have in twenty-eight years, always too busy worrying about everyone else.