She was not a charity case someone had let in.

She was an honored expert — a woman who had built an institution out of her own intellect and will, without a cent of my money — and the realization tore through the last shreds of my ego.

For thirteen years I had believed I was the winner of our silent war.

I had been wrong about that the way I had been wrong about everything that mattered.

I would learn the rest of it later, in pieces — some from the program, some from Coraline herself, some from the simple public record that anyone could have looked up at any point in the previous decade, if anyone had thought to look.