Beyond Eden by Catherine Coulter

nowhere near great. Her forehand was a killer, her backhand two-handed but still unpredictable. As for her serve,she got an ace at least one in twenty times. She wasn’t playing tennis until tomorrow morning with Gayle Werth, her best friend from the Stamford Girls’ Academy, also a senior at Columbia, majoring in physical education. Gayle was her doubles partner and the better player.
    Lindsay had one more final exam. She would graduate with a B.A. in psychology in two more weeks. From Columbia, a school with a good reputation.
    Then what would she do? There had been company reps on campus a few months before, but nothing they had to offer interested her in the slightest, except for the foreign service, which sounded exciting, at least until she’d met the young man who was their primary representative. He couldn’t talk about any place but Italy. Lindsay was never going to Italy.
    Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten since the previous night at Marlene’s apartment. Salami pizza with extra cheese and a can of light beer. It had made her sick.
    The pizza had been god-awful, but it alone hadn’t done her in. It was also that guy, Peter Merola, a friend of Marlene’s, a classmate. He’d been persistent, and when he’d pretended to accidentally rub his hand against her breast, touching her nipple, she’d bolted to the bathroom and been sick in the toilet. When she’d come out, Peter was coming on to another girl and this one looked interested.
    She was safe.
    Lindsay rose even as she pulled a sheaf of notes from her large floppy purse. It was fine cordovan leather, soft light brown, and it grew softer by the year, four of them now. She carried everything in it, her cell phone, her books, some tennis balls, a razor, and an extra pair of socks and underwear.She fanned the notes out on her lap. This was her last course and it was taught by Professor Gruska, who was an ardent Freudian, a dying breed, thank God. He had intense eyes, looked like a professor, and lived with his father on the West Side at Eighty-fourth Street. He was at least fifty and had never been married. He was strange, but he thought she was stranger. Dr. Gruska had come to the conclusion that Lindsay was screwed up after he’d read a short play she had written, an assignment showing how members of a family related to each other. Lindsay had made up a family, but Dr. Gruska had probed and prodded. He’d gone so far as to read some of her play aloud in class. Then he’d called her to his office after class. He’d asked her questions about her father, wondering aloud if she had a thing for him. He suggested to her that he could help her sort things out. They could begin right now if she liked.
    Lindsay had walked out, saying nothing. She was shaking and cursing and afraid within five minutes of leaving his wretched little office. Time had dealt with the worst of it, but not her intense hatred of Gruska, hatred coated with a goodly dose of fear. She would have never gone back, but she needed the class to graduate. She’d forced herself to apologize two weeks later; it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. He’d nodded, looking grave. He’d said only that she could call him or come to his office at any time. She could trust him. She realized then that he’d probably looked her up in old newspapers, and now he knew she’d been raped by her brother-in-law. She realized then that she wasn’t certain what the papers had reported; she’d refused to read any of them. For all she knew, she’d been the one to seduce Alessandro and to shoot him. She closed off her memories. Now she was takingGruska’s final—essays, he’d told the class, because they were graduating seniors, psych majors, and reportedly somewhat literate. She read her notes as she walked toward the cafeteria, thinking it was a great deal of bullshit. She’d never had a