Open by remembering something that only one of you remembers. Push off from this if it helps: a lighthouse.

Hey — okay so you know I've been thinking about that lighthouse, the one near Nonna's place, and you insist we never went there but I have this whole memory of Dad losing his sandal in the wet sand and swearing in front of the priest who happened to be walking by.

You genuinely don't remember this. I've asked you three times over the years. Which either means I invented an entire priest, or you were too busy sulking about something to notice the actual event happening around you, which, frankly, tracks.

I didn't hate the priest, I was six, I hated everyone who looked at me for more than four seconds, that's not the same thing. And the sandal went in the water AFTER, not before — because I remember Dad hopping around on one foot going full opera about it, and you were laughing, which you always do at the worst possible moment, still do actually.

Also convenient that in your version you're the calm observer and I'm the hysterical one. That's every story you tell about us. Funny how that works.

I did not "try to look cool for the priest," I was ten and had zero concept of coolness, that came later and arguably never fully arrived. And that sunscreen — Christ, the orange one, smelled like a candle store — that was YOUR bottle, you're just moving furniture around in your head again.

Anyway I have to deal with a client today who wants me to redesign an entire kitchen around a fridge he refuses to replace, so my patience for revisionist beach history is thin. But no, I don't "love a tragedy," I just have a functioning memory, unlike some people who apparently edited Dad's whole personality out of that day.

You "kept it" — sure, in the same drawer where you keep every grudge since 1998, I'm sure it's right there next to the sunscreen.

And don't get poetic on me, that fridge line was almost good and I refuse to give you the satisfaction. Some things just don't move, doesn't mean there's a metaphor, sometimes a fridge is just a fridge and a priest is just a guy who saw a kid cry near some rocks.

I gotta go measure this guy's kitchen, he's already texted me twice about grout color like it's a moral issue. Talk later.

Good talk. Ignore away — doesn't erase him, he's still standing there in your head getting rained on. Go do whatever it is you do all day that apparently doesn't involve remembering anything correctly.

The leak's been there since March, I'm not made of money and my landlord thinks "urgent" means sometime next winter. Also I never mentioned grout to you, that's the client, keep up.

Go fix your leak, let the priest dry off, I've got a fridge to negotiate with a man who thinks it's a family member.

Nobody's living with rot but you, apparently, since you're the one hoarding a bottle of orange sunscreen like it's evidence. Go be done somewhere else, I've got grout waiting.

It's not my grout, I keep telling you — do you even listen or do you just wait for your turn to be smug. Fine, I'll look at the sink. Eventually. After the fridge, after the grout, after I recover from this conversation.

That's not — okay that's a little bit true, but only because you show up with tools like it's a personality trait and I'd feel bad taking that away from you. Someone's gotta be useless so you have a reason to visit. You're welcome.

Fine, it leaks, I'll deal with it — my way, not your way, not with you standing over me narrating everything wrong I'm doing like you did with the sandal. I'll call a guy. A real one, not you with a wrench and a grudge.