It wasn’t until she reached the bottom of the staircase that the full implications of what she’d done hit her. She was already buried under problems she didn’t know how to solve, and she had just added another one. When was she going to learn not to be so impulsive?

Trying to escape her troubled thoughts, she made her way to the French doors at the rear of the house and stepped outside. The night was quiet and fragrant with the scent of pine and roses. The floodlights on the back of the house illuminated the fringe of deeper woods at the edge of the yard, including the old maple tree that had been her refuge when she was a child. She found herself heading there. When she reached the tree, she saw that its bottom branches were too high to reach. Leaning back against the trunk, she stared toward the house.

Despite the peacefulness of the night, she couldn’t shake off her worries. She didn’t know anything about raising a teenager. How was she supposed to overcome Molly’s hostility? She slipped her fingertips into the pockets of her slacks. Her problems with her sister weren’t all that was bothering her. She missed Viktor and her friends. She felt like a freak when she walked in the door of the Stars complex. And she spent far too much time thinking about Dan Calebow. Why did he have to be so adamant in his refusal to let her rehire Ron?

She sighed. It was more than his attitude toward Ron that kept him in her thoughts. She was much too aware of him. Sometimes when he was nearby, she experienced an emotion that was very close to panic. Her heartbeat accelerated, her pulses quickened, and she had the unsettling sensation that her body was coming awake after a very long hibernation. It was a ridiculous notion. She knew too well that she was permanently damaged when it came to men.

Even though the night was warm, she removed her hands from her pockets and rubbed her arms against a sudden chill. Memories flooded her, and as the night sounds enveloped her, she could feel herself being drawn back to those early months in Paris.

When she’d arrived, she’d located a friend from Crayton and had moved into her tiny, third floor flat in Montparnasse, not far from the gaudy, bustling intersection where the Boulevard du Montparnasse meets the Boulevard Raspail. For weeks, she had seldom left her bed. Instead, she stared at the ceiling while she gradually convinced herself that she had somehow been responsible for her own rape. No one had forced her to dance with Craig. No one had forced her to laugh at his jokes and flirt with him. She had done everything she could to make him like her.

Slowly she grew to believe that what had happened was her own fault. Her roommate, alarmed at her withdrawal, begged her to get out, and eventually it became easier to go along than to resist. She began spending her evenings drinking cheap wine and smoking pot with the ragtag band of students who frequented the sidewalks and brasseries of Montparnasse. Her misery had destroyed her appetite, and the last of her baby fat melted away, slimming her legs and emphasizing the hollows beneath her cheekbones. But her breasts remained as full as ever, and despite her shapeless clothing, the boys noticed. Their attentiveness deepened her self-hatred. They knew what kind of girl she was. That’s why they wouldn’t leave her alone.