Rowena needs the older professor's approval like air. Tabitha Oswald is the department chair who can grant it or destroy everything.
Every thesis review ends the same. Rowena presents herself across the desk for the older woman's hand and voice. Discipline and praise alternate with degradation that cuts deeper each time. The demands grow stricter with every correction. Rowena leaves each time more desperate for the next review. Each week she demands one thing more from her student.
Her degree and the family bookstore are at stake. So is Tabitha's position. Rowena returns week after week anyway, hungry for the structured correction she craves.
Tabitha locks the door.
