If a story only works when the person isn’t there to tell their side, it isn’t ready to be told.

Some accounts depend entirely on the absence of a witness. If the version you are about to tell would collapse the second the person walked in and said their part, then what you have is not a story but an edit, and you are the only editor. Their absence is doing the heavy lifting, not the facts.

Try a quick test before you start: ask whether you would tell it with them at the table. If not, hold it. If it genuinely needs saying, say it to the person it is about, which is harder and about a hundred times more useful.