But patience, I understood at last, is not always a virtue.

Sometimes patience is just fear wearing a virtue’s clothes.

Every time I had swallowed an insult to keep the peace, I had taught Stephanie that insulting me carried no cost, and so she had reached for a larger insult.

Every time I had let Steven off the hook for his silence, I had taught him that his silence was acceptable to me, and so he had grown bolder in it, until banning me from a birthday felt, to him, a manageable thing.

I had trained them both.