For years, Tiffany had been protected by those people — the board members and the politicians and the administrators — not because they knew her to be good, but because she was useful, and connected, and smiled the right smiles at the right fundraisers.

The same social machinery that had let her build a placement pipeline in the shadows had wrapped her in respectability in the daylight.

And the instant that respectability cracked, in front of witnesses, at a wedding where the wrong story could stain the wrong families, that machinery did not hesitate for a heartbeat.

It did not weigh her years of service or extend her the benefit of a doubt.

It simply dropped her, cleanly, the way a body sheds something it has decided is a liability.