They had never been the point.

Not her students, not Lowell, not me, not our children.

We had all been raw material for the only thing she had ever truly cared about, which was her own image of herself as a woman who was owed.

Her one unchanging line, through every shifting story, was that she was owed an apology.

She was never going to ask about the children, because in her entire life it had never once occurred to her that the children were people, and not just a stage on which her righteousness could be performed.

Chapter 13 — The Order