Courtesy Never Dies

No one told her the city would become the enemy.

She had lived in this city for years. She knew its rhythms, its shortcuts, its unspoken rules. She wore heels on Thursday evenings and had a table near the window at her favorite Italian restaurant and sat close enough to the stage to watch actors cry real tears. She belonged here—completely, effortlessly, the way anyone belongs to a place they have never had to fight to enter.

Then one Tuesday morning in February, a patch of ice on her front s...