“I just wanted to be close to her. I just wanted to watch her sleep, one last time.”

That’s what Cole told the cops who arrived that night. Like it was totally harmless, totally normal. He was drunk and maudlin and sloppy. The officers seemed to pity him, brushed his actions off as puppy love gone awry. But they hadn’t seen the way Cole looked at her as he was placed in the back of the squad car. He hated her. She could see it in his eyes, feel it emanating from him in palpable waves of animosity. Would Cole have placidly watched her slumber? Or would he have grabbed a pillow and held it over her face?

As always, the memory elicited a muddle of emotions in Nat: guilt (she’d endangered her family, her mother’s new perfect children); fear (was Cole still obsessed? Would he harass her again if only he could find her?); anger. At Cole Doberinsky. And at herself. How had she not seen how needy he was? How unstable? Cole had told her he loved her, that he couldn’t live without her, but he’d only wanted to possess her. To keep her down. To hold her back.

They didn’t press charges. It would have been scandalous in their small town. Cole’s family was wealthy, influential, well-liked. Nat’s family could not take them on. And Cole was now “back to his old self,” her mother had informed in one of her e-mails. She and her mom didn’t talk about the incident; didn’t talk much at all, come to that. For a few years, Nat had been the only child of a single mother; more than just a daughter then. She’d been a friend, a confidante, a shoulder to cry on . . . But Derek filled those roles now. Her mom was too busy being a part-time real estate agent, a devoted wife, and mother of two adorable towheaded children, to focus on the daughter from her disastrous first union. Nat had been resentful, at first, but no longer. At twenty-one, she was fine with the long silences punctuated by newsy e-mails (Astrid scored a goal in soccer! Oliver will play a squirrel in the school play!), the obligatory birthday cards containing professional photos of her half siblings frolicking in a hayfield. Her mom’s missives were just reminders of the life she’d gladly left behind.

The train eased into the Third Avenue station, and Nat and several fellow passengers moved toward the exit. This was her life now: one small drop in an ocean of people carving out a life in the world’s greatest city. Anything could happen in New York. Sure, that anything might be a mugging or a terrorist attack (thanks for pointing that out, Derek, moments before she boarded the plane). But the scariest thing that had ever happened to her was as she lay in her own bed, under her parents’ roof, in sleepy Blaine, Washington. Nat would take her chances.

It was her high school art teacher who had urged her to apply to the School of Visual Arts. Ms. Nguyen had confidence in Nat’s artistic talent. The teacher had helped with her portfolio, had pressured her to fill out a multitude of scholarship applications. (Tuition was outrageous, Derek had said. They would not/could not pay.) To Nat’s delight, she’d been accepted into the faculty of illustration. (She and Ms. Nguyen considered it the most practical of the streams. Still, highly impractical, according to her stepfather.) She’d received a school bursary and a partial scholarship that would cover a significant chunk of her tuition. She’d deferred acceptance for a year to work full-time at a Greek restaurant to pay the rest. In New York, her part-time bar job covered rent with a little (not enough) left over for food. She didn’t need anyone to support her. Financially or emotionally. She was on her own. Completely independent. It was how she wanted it, she told herself. But the truth was . . . she had no choice.