blameless

By the time she met me she had perfected the art of making herself sound blameless in any situation, or very nearly. I was the only person she really trusted enough to talk about it openly. The trick, she said, was to know what you had done wrong. You could gloss over that part. You could alter the story just enough, add or omit details. Then it sounds like you did the only thing.

Most people do this, of course, but she had made it an art form. She wouldn't tell me the true story most of the time, but it was a little game we played where later on I'd try to guess what really happened. I'm telling you this to explain how strange it was when she had a story about someone who had wronged her and she didn't have anything to say. "I don't want to talk about it," she said. She was sullen and closed off all evening.

Eventually I talked the story out of her. Something had gone wrong and she didn't know what she'd done, why it was happening. She couldn't find a way to tell it which didn't make it sound like she must have done something wrong. Everyone in the story ended up sounding like monsters. She had no idea what she'd done.

I couldn't tell if she was apologetic, concerned that she was such an uncaring person she no longer even noticed when she slighted someone, or if she was just worried that the story got away from her and she wasn't in control. I suppose it could be both.